NEWS UPDATES
February 9. 2010: The State Land Board proceeds with the new Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) for the Elliott State Forest that the Oregon Department of Forestry has been working on for nearly eight years. The new HCP will ramp up annual clearcutting on the Elliott and will open up the western half of the Elliott (currently protected) to logging. The board sets a deadline of December 31, 2011 to have the HCP completed. In the interim, the ODF will operate under the 1995 HCP which covers only federally listed northern spotted owl. Take avoidance will be utilized for federally listed coho salmon and marbled murrelet.
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.
ARTICLES AND DOCUMENTS
1. 60-day Notice of Intent to Sue the US Fish and Wildlife Service
2. Press Release on Filing 60-day Notice
3. Slideshow of Clearcut and Threatened Areas on the Elliott by Francis Eatherington
4. Complaint to Protect Owl on Elliott State Forest (8.12.08)
5. The Elliott State Forest as a Carbon Reserve? (CW op-ed in the Register-Guard)
6. Oregon Department of Forestry's Elliott State Forest Webpage
