Conservationists Applaud Approval, Which Safeguards Imperiled Species and Old-growth Forests
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 28, 2025
Contact: Josh Laughlin, Executive Director, Cascadia Wildlands, 541.434.1463 / jlaughlin@cascwild.org
Today, the US Fish and Wildlife Service announced it has issued a required permit to the Oregon Department of State Lands in order for the recently created Elliott State Research Forest to become operational. Approval ensures Endangered Species Act (ESA)-listed terrestrial wildlife found on the 83,000-acre public forest located northeast of Coos Bay are adequately protected for the next 80 years through a Habitat Conservation Plan. A similar required permit from the National Marine Fisheries Service covering ESA-listed salmon on the forest has yet to be issued.
After over six years of advocacy and negotiation to establish the Elliott State Research Forest, conservationists welcome this next step towards implementation.
“There are hard-fought protection measures built into the Elliott’s Habitat Conservation Plan to ensure critically imperiled species, like the marbled murrelet and northern spotted owl, are given the necessary safeguards to persist into the future,” says Josh Laughlin, Executive Director of Cascadia Wildlands. “The issuance of the permit today is one of the final steps toward this plan becoming a reality.”
The Habitat Conservation Plan establishes a 34,000-acre protected area on the Elliott’s west side, where remining older forests will be protected and young, plantation forests will be restored to help create more complex forest structure in the future to benefit imperiled species. Smaller protected areas are strategically designated throughout the rest of the forest as well.
Public controversy around cutting the Elliott’s remining mature and old-growth forests and short-sighted privatization efforts marred this outstanding public forest for decades. The public and conservation organizations have repeatedly pushed back against these schemes, and a new paradigm for the forest has emerged in recent years.
“Not long ago, Oregonians successfully fought off a privatization scheme that would have resulted in the forest being clearcut and the public being locked out,” says Laughlin. “Now, we have an enduring plan in place that keeps the forest in public ownership and embraces the conservation values that Oregonians hold closely.”
Under the newly created Elliott State Research Forest’s 80-year plan, logging will primarily be focused in young plantations forests, and a major emphasis will be placed on salmon and wildlife habitat protection, cutting-edge forest and watershed research, Tribal knowledge and involvement, recreation, education, and carbon storage to help blunt the climate crisis.
####
Additional background:
Cascadia Wildlands and partners have successfully confronted efforts in the past to privatize the Elliott, including securing an Oregon Supreme Court victory in 2019 halting the sale of the 788-acre East Hakki Ridge parcel to the timber industry. This privatization scheme was in direct response to a successful 2012 lawsuit brought by Cascadia Wildlands and legal partners. That case halted dozens of old-growth timber sales on the Elliott, Clatsop and Tillamook state forests, where threatened marbled murrelets were nesting.
Additionally, the State Land Board, which oversees the Elliott, advanced a plan to privatize the entire forest beginning in 2015, but that decision was reversed in 2017 after significant public opposition. Instead, the forest was maintained in public ownership after the Oregon legislature appropriated $221 million to buy-out the forest’s obligation to the Common School Fund.
Eugene-based Cascadia Wildlands defends and restores Cascadia’s wild ecosystems in the forests, in the courts, and in the streets. The organization envisions vast old-growth forests, rivers full of wild salmon, wolves howling in the backcountry, a stable climate, and vibrant communities sustained by the unique landscapes of the Cascadia bioregion. www.cascwild.org