April Ehrlich

(Oregon Capital Chronicle) A yearslong endeavor to change logging and environmental policies for millions of acres of Pacific Northwest forests is getting a restart.

The U.S. Forest Service is going back to the drawing board with an update to the Northwest Forest Plan, a set of policies that broadly dictates where logging can occur on 25 million acres of forests in Oregon, Washington and northwest California. It came out of the timber wars of the 1980s and ‘90s.

Environmental groups worry new changes that could be made to this plan under the Trump administration will increase logging in mature and old-growth forests, potentially harming wildlife species that are already on the brink of extinction, including the spotted owl.

The Forest Service has been working on a Nor

See Full Page