June Update
The vast majority of us Oregonians get our drinking water from forested watersheds. Join me to stay aware of what’s happening with private & state forests, at the legislature, and among other public agencies. Then together, let’s take action to protect our own forest watersheds and others across Oregon. If you find this helpful, share it with a friend!
Action Alert: Forests managed for us by the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service are home to mature forests and old trees that filter and cold drinking water, shelter fish streams from the sun, and store carbon that would otherwise trap heat in our air. President Biden directed the agencies to draft rules protecting mature and old forests from commercial logging. Over 132,000 comments have been submitted so far, and there’s still time to share your perspective on protecting old growth for water. For background: https://www.oregonwild.org/about/blog/nows-time-protect-mature-and-old-growth-forests Direct link to comment: https://oregonwild.org/president-biden-protect-our-forests-and-climate
Private Forest Accord: If you have not signed up for the Forest Activity Electronic Reporting and Notification System (FERNS), do it today https://yourforestwatershed.org/getting-started-with-ferns ! What might you learn by signing up for notifications? You can be alerted to pesticide applications and clearcuts near you. To see the most recent applications and logging in the Coast Range and Cascades, check out this map from our friends at the Coast Range Association: https://clausa.app.carto.com/map/11102e37-6bd6-4fa5-b4d3-789cbff53241?fbclid=IwAR08NSzFXltPGV0Cl7UNh52ORvxPNic7eAA-sY7IG5z8P7yyADjDfRp0s7k. You can learn more and read their newsletters at coastrange.org.
State Forests: Do you want to go hiking or biking in the Tillamook and Clatsop State Forests but don’t know where to get started? Tune in Wednesday July 19th for an Oregon Wild webcast on hiking the State Forests of Western Oregon! We’ll cover the basics of where to go, what to bring, and how to do it all safely, so that you can hike with confidence, and join us for a guided hike September 15th. More details on the webcast and hike at OregonWild.org.
Legislature: The record-long walkout by Senate Republicans is over and the Legislature is racing to vote on bills that moved through committees and had funding approved. What a roller coaster! To be efficient, House and Senate leadership has combined dozens of related bills into packages. Both the climate resilience package (including the natural climate solutions bill, SB 530) and the water security package (including funding for watershed protection/purchase) passed the House June 21 and will likely be voted upon June 23 in the Senate. Whew! Because planning for the next session begins as soon as the session ends, what law, rule, or fund would you like to see change next year?
Other agencies: This month, we’re highlighting the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Community of Oregon, one of the federally recognized tribes whose ancestral and treaty lands overlap with Oregon. Grand Ronde manages about 11,000 acres of forest in the Coast Range for timber production, cultural values for tribal members like hunting, and clean water. The forest land is on an eighty-year rotation and has limited herbicides applied, which means that the land has time to be a forest. Grand Ronde is currently working with Congress to reopen the consent decree that limited their off-reservation hunting and fishing on ancestral land.
