save the elliott rainforest - Cascadia Wildlands

The Elliott is home to the highest carbon sinks in the world. (f eatherington)

SAVE THE ELLIOTT RAINFOREST

At 93,000 acres, or twice the size of Washington DC, the Elliott State Forest is the largest original Coast Range forest left in Oregon. This spectacular, publicly-owned rainforest is also the only place in the Pacific Northwest where vast tracts of virgin rainforest are still being razed.

Due to a 1995 "Habitat Conservation Plan" that reserved the western part of the Elliott, the worst damage has been contained to the eastern half. But this is about to change. Due to a new proposed Forest Management Plan, the rate of destruction could double. 1,000 acres of original rainforest could be leveled every year. For the first time in decades, clearcutting will be permitted in the western half of the Elliott. Forest management will consist of plowing roads across mountainsides, clearcutting the forest, spraying the cut-over lands with herbicides, killing forest critters like bears and beavers to protect fiber farms, and leaving a barren wasteland above salmon-bearing streams. Each year, clearcutting will release as much carbon (the primary culprit behind climate change) into the atmosphere as 45,000 cars on US highways.

October 11 is the date the State Land Board (Governor Kitzhaber, Secretary Brown and Treasurer Wheeler) will be making the final decision to nix the 1995 Habitat Conservation Plan, a 60-year commitment that was given in exchange for permission to kill 43 out of the 69 spotted owls that depended on the Elliott's big, old trees. After only 16 years all 43 spotted owls are dead. Now is not the time to drop the 60-year plan, including promises to not clearcut in the western part of the Forest and a promise to grow older trees in the eastern half, all of which will be discarded.

latest news

January 19, 2012: Lawsuit launched to protect marbled murrelets from clearcutting in Oregon State Forests.

October 11, 2011: The State Land Board approves the new Elliott FMP, claiming their mandate is to extract the maximum money possible from the Elliott, in spite of environmental problems.

September 10, 2011: Click here to comment on the Elliott's 10-year logging plan. This assumes the Governor approves the Forest Management Plan (FMP) and approves breaking the promises his own administration made in 1995 under the previous forest plan. After the FMP approval, the 10-year plan (called the Implementation Plan) specifically spells out how these promises will be broken. You have until October 11 to tell the Governor what you think. Download this for more info, issues, and commenting ideas.

September 1, 2011: Cascadia Wildlands comments on Elliott's 10-year logging plan. Download our comments here.

August 28, 2011: Cascadia Wildlands proposes to the State Land Board a new way forward on the Elliott.

August 15, 2011: ODF logs on high landslide hazard location above a family's land.

August 8, 2011: View a Cascadia Wildlands interview on Elliott's new proposed Forest Management Plan.

August 1, 2011: Cascadia Wildlands submits comments to the Oregon Department of Forestry, objecting to the proposed new Forest Management Plan for the Elliott. Download our comments here.

July 29-31, 2011: Citizens descend on the Elliott to protest clearcutting of primary rainforests. See news "Activists blockade Elliott State Forest in Coos County," and here.

June 14, 2011: Cascadia Wildlands testifies to the State Land Board (download testimony here), asking Governor Kitzhaber to help Oregon citizens protect the Elliott State Forest.

June 1, 2011: Cascadia Wildlands submits comments (download here) on Oregon Department of Forestry's (ODF) proposals to log in the Elliott in FY 2012 (which begins July 1st, 2011). ODF wants to clearcut 517 acres of nesting habitat for the northern spotted owl and marbled murrelet, two federally listed species in western Oregon. ODF typically traps and kills upwards of 3,000 native mountain beavers each year, as the large forest-dwelling rodent competes with the agency by feeding on the recently planted saplings after clearcutting. You can continue to tell ODF what you think about this.

May 1, 2011: Oregon Department of Forestry asks for public comments on the 2012 Annual Operation Plan. This one-year logging plan is for timber sales from July 1, 2011 through June 30, 2012.

March 28, 2011: Oregon Department of Forestry responds to our comments to the proposed new Forest Management Plan (FMP) for the Elliott State Forest. Unfortunately, ODF ignored most of our comments. They do state that another draft of the FMP, along with a 10-year implementation plan (disclosing harvest volumes and conservation areas) will be released May 2 for public comments. Two public meetings will also be scheduled. Meanwhile, you can continue to tell ODF what you think now.

December 30, 2010: Cascadia Wildlands submits comments on Oregon Department of Forestry's (ODF) new logging proposal for the Elliott. The new plan would increase logging from 28 to 45 mmbf a year, reduce older forests from a goal of 64% down to 30%, and log in what are now considered reserves. The state is ignoring the recommendations of federal scientists with regard to riparian protections.

October 29, 2010: Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF) announces they will ditch the 1995 Habitat Conservation Plan, and asks for public comments on a different method to log in and around endangered species on the Elliott. The new plan fails to mention the IMST finding that ODF's plan harms salmon. For more background information, see below.

October 15, 2010: An independent multidisciplinary science (IMST) team released their findings on the adequacy of the new proposed HCP to protect endangered salmon species on the Elliott. They found the proposed new plan to log more could harm fish because it would result in increased stream temperatures, decreased in-stream structure (like logs), and increased landslides from clearcutting above streams.

September 30, 2010: Cascadia Wildlands receives a Memorandum from the Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF) concerning their carbon footprint for their activities on the Elliott in FY 2011. ODF claims that clearcutting 644 acres of mature forests in one year on the Elliott, would release only 78,000 metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere. Clearcutting the richest carbon sink in the world means that even ODF’s low estimation of carbon released still contributes significantly to global warming. 78,000 metric tons of carbon is equivalent to 21,050 people driving their cars 10,000 miles.

May 12, 2010: Cascadia Wildlands reviews ODF’s 2011 plans to clearcut another 644 acres of mature, older forests in the Elliott. Our analysis determined the Oregon Department of Forestry would release 154,000 metric tons of global warming carbon into the atmosphere in this one-year’s logging. Our review also found that ODF was not fully protecting endangered species, including marbled murrelets, spotted owls, and salmon.

who makes the decisions on the Elliott?: the state land board
Governor Kitzhaber
160 State Capitol, Salem, OR 97301-4047
Link to Email: http://governor.oregon.gov/Gov/contact.shtml

Kate Brown, Oregon Secretary of State
136 State Capitol, Salem, OR 97301
Phone: (503) 986-1523 Fax: (503) 986-1616. Email: oregon.sos@state.or.us

Ted Wheeler, Oregon State Treasurer
159 State Capitol, 900 Court Street NE, Salem, OR 97301
Phone: (503) 378-4329. Email: oregon.treasurer@state.or.us

Louise Solliday, Director Department of State Lands
775 Summer St. NE, Salem, OR 97301-1279
Email: louise.c.solliday@dsl.state.or.us

background
The Elliott State Forest is a 93,000-acre publicly owned forest located just inland from the mouth of the Umpqua River. This coastal rainforest offers some of the finest remaining habitat in the Oregon Coast Range for a host of threatened and endangered species, including coho salmon, marbled murrelet and the northern spotted owl.

Surrounded by massive swaths of privately owned industrial tree farms, the public forests of the Elliott offer rare, native habitat that has never been logged. Much of the Elliott burned in the settler-started 1868 Coos Bay fire which burned across nearly 300,000 acres from Scottsburg south to Coos Bay. The forest has grown back naturally since the fire with the forest nearing 150 years of age today. Residual pockets of old-growth that survived the fire, some up to 350 years old, can also be found. Currently, this forest is in jeopardy. The Oregon Department of Forestry, the state agency in charge of our Elliott State Forest, continues to auction off the rights to clearcut nearly 500 acres of native forest to the highest bidder each year.

The Elliott became the first state forest in 1930. It is named after Francis Elliott, Oregon's first state forester, who worked for many years to create the forest by trading scattered state "school fund" lands for one large block of land. Today, the forest is being sacrificed in a "clearcuts for kids" scheme and has left the Elliott a fragmented landscape. Cascadia Wildlands has highlighted the Elliott's incomparable ability to store carbon as a possible funding source for school children. These old forests, when logged release extreme amounts of harmful carbon dioxide further exacerbating the global climate crisis. Cascadia also advocates for restoration thinning in the forest's dense tree farms to generate revenue for school children.

northern spotted owl
About 25 northern spotted owls (11 pairs) live on the Elliott State Forest today, far more per acre than any other Oregon state forest. However, in 1993, there were 69 spotted owls on the Elliott.

In 1995 the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) made a deal with Oregon. If the state of Oregon promised to protect 26 spotted owls through 2055 (by not clearcutting their nest sites), in exchange, Oregon could “take” (kill) 43 owls. This deal is known as the 1995 Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP), and is still being implemented today.

ODF got to work clearcutting spotted owl habitat, and by 1998 the owl population on the Elliott was down to 26 owls. The ODF had taken all the owls they were allowed to take over 60 years in just the first few years. Now, ODF would like to change that plan, threatening to break their promises to protect and grow older forests to year 60.

To make matters worse, some spotted owls are being displaced by barred owls. Unfortunately, the ODF refuses to follow the recommendations of the FWS service to leave enough habitat for both owls by not cutting down any nesting habitat. There is plenty of other logging needed on the Elliott, like thinning in the plantations they have already created.

In 2008 ODF released a new Habitat Conservation Plan that would log more, but the FWS felt it would harm owls and murrelets and the National Marine Fisheries Service felt it would harm salmon. The ODF hired a different science team, but they agreed the 2008 draft HCP was not based in science.

In 2010 ODF released yet another draft management plan, virtually identical to the 2008 plan that logged too much and that harmed wildlife.

marbled murrelet
The Elliott is an important nesting home for marbled murrelets, a remarkable bird that spends its entire life at sea, eating only fish. The murrelet depends on near-by old forests to nest and raise it’s young. 90% of the murrelet nest failures are due to corvids (like crows and jays) disturbing the nest. That’s why murrelets must nest in interior forests, where corvids can't go. Murrelet reserves are called Marbled Murrelet Management Areas, or MMMAs.

Because much of Oregon’s coast range has been previously clearcut, the Elliott is one of the best nesting habitats left near the ocean for the murrelet.

The Oregon Department of Forestry found: “... the Elliott is a murrelet-rich environment and murrelets are found even on about 25 percent of timber sales proposed in “poor” murrelet habitat.... Under the Elliott’s current “take-avoidance” strategy for murrelets, as more and more timber in “poor” murrelet habitat is reserved in MMMAs, the search for salable timber will move successively into “medium” and “good” murrelet habitat.”

ODF solved that problem. When a murrelet is found nesting in a timber sale that ODF wants to clearcut, the ODF carves off as little as possible for the poor bird, and then clearcuts all around it, leaving the murrelet open for nest predation.

salmon
The Elliott State Forest is home for a number of threatened and rare aquatic species in the Umpqua, Coos, and 10-mile Lakes watershed. Ten sensitive fish species are present, or likely present in the Elliott, including coho salmon, chinook salmon, chum salmon, steelhead trout, coastal cutthroat trout, umpqua chub, pacific lamprey, western brook lamprey, river lamprey, and the Millicoma longnose dace.

The current logging plan is insufficient to protect aquatic habitat from logging silt and warmed water. The current logging plan also steals the woody debris in steams that cleans and slows water, and provides nesting habitats. The new 2008 logging plan was also found inadequate by NMFS and the IMST, and the newest 2010 logging proposal is just as bad.

location
The Elliott State Forest lies immediately south of Devil's Staircase in the Oregon Coast Range.