Last Chance old-growth timber sale outside of Wolf Creek, OR
November 2024 Update:
Litigation has been filed against the BLM’s Last Chance timber sale.
Local BLM timber planners like to contend that they don't log old-growth anymore. Unfortunately that claim is simply false. While some old-growth trees are designated for retention in some BLM logging units, it is common practice for the BLM to fell old-growth trees to facilitate logging road construction, landing establishment and yarding corridors. Additionally, while the BLM retains some old-growth trees in some logging units, the agency nevertheless often removes the forest canopy and structure that defines an old-growth forest. These logging prescriptions involve the "downgrading" or "removal" of so much old-growth forest canopy that the logging units no longer support the habitat needs of spotted owls and other wildlife species that depend on ancient forest habitat.
Check out the Medford BLM's latest old-growth timber sale called "Last Chance" here, and read KS Wild's "scoping" comments.
See the BLM’s Environmental Assessment here.
Read our comments about the BLM’s Environmental Assessment here.
Last Chance timber sale fast facts:
1,297 acres of riparian reserve logging- including trees in the "secondary shade zone"
2,590 acres of cable yarding
5,080 acres of ground based yarding
570 acre of helicopter yarding
Page 48 of the EA: "The 787 acres of variable retention harvest would convert the mature structure to early successional stand establishment, delaying promotion of large fire-resilient trees”
Page 48 of the EA: the 4-acre "gaps" (clearcuts) throughout the logging units will not improve fire behavior and will increase wind speeds
252 acre of logging in Late Successional Reserves
Building a logging road through coho critical habitat in Bull Run Creek
Includes waivers to allow for logging road construction through botanical buffer sites
29 miles of new logging road construction
3,420 acres of NSO Nesting, Roosting and Foraging habitat removal
