Forest Defenders take to the trees at Blodgett Timber Sale in Cottage Grove

Cottage Grove, OR -- Under cover of darkness last night, several members of the Cottage Grove community, along with support from the Cascadia Forest Defenders (CFD) of Eugene, constructed a tree-sit at the Blodgett timber sale. Blodgett is located in the Brice Creek Watershed of the Cottage Grove Ranger District of the Umpqua National Forest. This area has been mired in controversy over the past two years. Local citizens have tried to make their concerns known to the Forest Service, but the response has been increased law enforcement and being locked out of public events.

The forest advocates are protesting the sale of old-growth trees and have erected the tree-sit in order to defend the sensitive network of biodiversity that makes up the last native forests in the Pacific Northwest. Meera Subramanian, a local citizen, said, "All other means to stop the destruction of these irreplaceable old-growth forests have been thwarted by the Cottage Grove City Council, the Forest Service, even Congress. None of these things have worked."

The residents of Cottage Grove and CFD are also demanding that Allyn Ford, the President and owner of Roseburg Forest Products, the purchaser of this sale, refuse this and all other old-growth and native forest sales. The Blodgett timber sale was offered to Ford as part of the "Replacement Volume" program in order to "replace" a second-growth sale in the Siuslaw National Forest. Other Cascadia sales that are Replacement Volume are North Winberry, Slap and East Devil (Willamette NF), Peak and Silver-Sturgis (Rogue River NF), and Felix (Umpqua NF); all of which have been given to Allyn Ford. Mr. Ford is also the Chairman of Umpqua Bank, the target of a recent boycott because of its association with forest destruction.

The Blodgett timber sale includes massive old-growth hundreds of years old. There have been numerous sightings by the citizens of bear, cougar, rare butterflies, spotted owls, pileated woodpeckers and many small mammals. The hills surrounding the timber sale are spotted with clearcuts which is a sad reminder of the imminent danger that this brilliant ecosystem faces. The tree- sitters say they plan on staying at Blodgett until this forest is permanently saved.

The Blodgett timber sale encompasses about 200 acres of mostly old-growth and mature forest and will cut 1.76 million board feet of timber if the sale is not stopped. The community of Cottage Grove and CFD demand the Forest Service does the right thing and protect the native forest in this sale.

The Cascadia Forest Defenders is a group of volunteer forest advocates dedicated to stopping forest destruction through a variety of direct action tactics. The group has been actively protesting several other sales in the Cascadia bio-region for several years. Current tree-sits have been on-going at the Clark (Fall Creek) and North Winberry timber sales for four years. Local citizens decided to step-up their efforts when the Cottage Grove Ranger District was not responding to pubic outcry. There are thousands of acres of old-growth trees on the chopping block all over Cascadia and the community vows to do all they can to protect these old-growth ecosystems from the chainsaws. ##

-- Cascadia Forest Defenders PO Box 11122 Eugene, OR 97440 (541) 684-8977 www.ecoecho.org

A new tree-sit has gone up in the Willamette National Forest in the past few days. It is located in the Winberry watershed in unit 3 of the Berrypatch timber sale. Logging crews arrived at around 7 am this morning to find new residents living in the treetops. Much of the timber sale has already been cut, but forest defenders are protecting the remaining trees, and continuing to call attention to the continuing destruction of ancient and native forests on public lands. Much of the Winberry watershed has already been heavily impacted by commercial logging already. These are some of the largest trees left in Oregon and are easy for the public to access as they are within 45 minutes of Eugene. This is a prime recreational area and the US Forest Service made a real mistake selling these heritage trees for monetary gain, which is actually a loss to the public as most timber sales are sold below market value as a subsidy to the timber industry. This new sit brings the total of timber sales occupied by Cascadia forest Defenders to 4. Fall Creek(Clark Timber Sale), N. Winberry, Blodgett in the Umpqua, and now Berrypatch. We will post more news from the forest as it comes in.

Here is a piece on the vole nest surveys used to stop logging in places like the Clark Timber sale at Fall Creek:

Vole Zones Locating red tree vole nests helps save old forests.
BY ORNA IZAKSON

If you've heard of the red tree vole at all, it's probably because of environmental activists climbing trees and looking for it. The rare mammal, which builds its nests 75 to 200 feet up in old-growth trees, has developed quite a following in the southern Willamette Valley. Under the Northwest Forest Plan, finding an active red tree vole nest can put ancient forests off limits to logging, 10 acres at a time.

The red tree vole is one of approximately 300 old-growth-dependent species that the landmark 1994 forest plan requires the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to consider before — or sometimes after — logging. The idea was to find out what critters and plants, fungi and lichen require old forests to live, and manage logging to keep them off the endangered species list.

As of June 21, however, that list of species has shrunk. The red tree vole, whose nests have massively reduced the extent of several local timber sales, will not require surveys before logging in many areas, including portions of the Siuslaw and Umpqua national forests and the BLM's Eugene, Roseburg, Coos Bay and Medford districts. The requirements will remain in place on the Willamette National Forest.

Under the Northwest Forest Plan, when the agencies find certain of the rare species in proposed timber sales, they're supposed to create buffers to protect them. Most of the species only command buffers of a couple hundred feet, and sometimes logging is still allowed as long as not all the trees around the species are taken. But the red tree vole, the only mammal on the list, requires buffers of 10 acres. So finding active red tree vole nests can reduce a timber sale fast.

It's been a powerful tool for grassroots activists. At the Clark timber sale along Fall Creek, site of the longest-running anti-logging tree-sit in history, nearly two thirds of the original acreage is now off limits to logging because of the voles. The sale initially was slated to cover 96 acres; now only 29 acres remain legally open to logging.

"Doing surveys is one way people can be involved in the process," says activist Carly Deicher of the Oregon Forest Research and Education Group, which climbs trees looking for voles. "It's like a legal direct action that people can take, and a way that people can keep the Forest Service and the BLM in check. And taking that away (Protection for the red tree vole) is bullshit."

Activists have found between 40 and 50 red tree vole nests inside timber sales in the forests near Eugene. Patti Rodgers, a spokeswoman for the Willamette National Forest, says staffers there go out to double check the activists' findings and estimates that "approximately 95 percent were as represented."

That's a help, she says, since the agency doesn't have the budget to go beyond the required survey protocols, which don't require climbing every tree.

"We're grateful to have additional information brought to us," she says. "Why would we go beyond the protocol? That's a scientifically based methodology… It's not that we're shirking our responsibility. We are in fact redeeming our responsibility. What they have done is to increase our knowledge base and in so doing, allowed for greater protection of the species."

But climbing each tree is exactly what the activists do in their determination to prevent old-growth logging. And they claim to have found twice as many red tree vole nests as the Forest Service officials who were paid to look.

"Their protocol was pretty much walk into the forest 100 feet and look up into the canopy and see if they could see a suitable habitat or something that looked like a red tree vole nest," says OFREG's Deicher. "A red tree vole nest can look like anything in a forest. It can be a little clump of fir needles on a branch way up in the canopy, not even visible from the ground."

Friday's changes were part of an annual review of the species on the so-called "survey and manage" list. Activists note that the process does not include public comment, and that the determination was made without good science. The Oregon Natural Resources Council, one of the groups that forced the Forest Service to do surveys after years of recalcitrance, is planning to sue.

"Survey and manage is one of the safety nets that keeps (those species) from becoming threatened and endangered," says ONRC's Doug Heiken. "We're basically taking away part of the safety net that protects some of these species."

The move is part of a "recurring broken promise," he says. "They promised to do everything as carefully as possible, and here we're getting rid of the protections we have for old-growth species … Here we're making it easier to cut what little remains when we should be stopping old-growth logging altogether."

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