Public lands logging bill could undesignate Wildernesses in Oregon!

In late June, the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources approved the so-called “Resilient Federal Forests Act of 2017” (H.R. 2936) with a party line vote.

The text of H.R. 2936 essentially reads like a timber industry wish list, and it’s no wonder given the fact that the lead sponsor of the bill, U.S. House Representative Bruce Westerman (R-Arkansas), has received more campaign contributions from the timber industry than any other industry.  

The bill would gut endangered species protections, the Roadless Area Conservation Rule and the National Forest Management Act in order to dramatically increase industrial logging across all of America’s 155 National Forests, as well as federal public forests administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

As if all this wasn’t bad enough, quietly slipped into the back pages of the legislation is language that wilderness opponents will no doubt argue effectively undesignates parts of the Table Rock Wilderness and the Soda Mountain Wilderness areas found on BLM land in Oregon.

The language also targets portions of the Sandy, Rogue, Salmon, North Umpqua and Elkhorn Creek Wild and Scenic Rivers that flow through BLM lands in southwestern Oregon.

H.R. 2936 is just the latest in long-line of bills introduced in the current session of Congress that attack America’s public lands and Wilderness legacy by undermining protections for endangered species, limiting citizen input and gutting our nation’s bedrock environmental laws.