A plan crafted three decades ago to protect the Pacific Northwest’s ancient forests still shapes how the federal government manages those lands today.
In two recent rulings, federal judges in Oregon halted timber projects after concluding that the Bureau of Land Management had not met key requirements of the Northwest Forest Plan. Adopted in 1994, the NWFP was designed to balance timber production with conservation goals. Still in effect, the NWFP is, in the words of one federal appellate judge, “a comprehensive response to a long and bitter legal battle over the scope of logging in old-growth forests.”
Covering nearly 25 million acres across western Oregon, western Washington, and northern California, the NWFP sought to protect old-growth ecosystems and species, including the threatened northern spotted owl. It was the first regional plan to pull together mandates from the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act. Northern spotted owls are nocturnal and spend their lives beneath the canopies of old-growth forests, where they roost among the trees and find protection from the elements and predators. To survive, the northern spotted owl needs a complex and varied forest cover. Specifically, according to the National Park Service, the birds “need large trees with existing nest structure in them. They prefer many layers of branch cover so that they can drop silently down upon their prey.”
In both cases, U.S. District Judges Ann Aiken and Mustafa Kasubhai found the BLM had approved timber projects without fully examining how they would affect old-growth habitat, as the NWFP requires.
In an order issued March 31, Judge Aiken adopted findings by a federal magistrate last May that upheld challenges to the BLM’s Integrated Vegetation Management for Resilient Lands project in southwestern Oregon. The project authorized up to 4,000 acres of commercial harvest each year, including inside protected Late-Successional Reserves. The LSRs are, according to a 2007 ruling by a San Francisco-based federal appeals court, intended to “protect and enhance conditions o f late-successional and old-growth forest ecosystems, which serve as habitat for late-successional and old-growth related species including the northern spotted owl.”
Environmental groups argued that BLM did not comply with a 2016 Land Management Plan and therefore violated FLPMA. U.S. Magistrate Mark D. Clarke decided that the proposed timber extraction could not be reconciled with BLM’s 2016 RMP. The RMP, he concluded, “explicitly provides that LSRs are to be managed for two objectives: maintaining and promoting habitat.” That objective is paramount even if there are no northern spotted owls in the available public land habitat for them. “In stands that are not northern spotted owl nesting-roosting habitat,” a “20-year standard” obligates BLM to engage only in activities that “speed the development or improve the quality of [northern spotted owl] habitat,” the magistrate judge found. “The agency must avoid any logging that could “preclude or delay by 20 years or more the development of habitat.”
BLM argued that, since its proposed logging was intended to advance “resilience to disturbance,” the 20-year standard was inapplicable. Judge Clarke rejected that claim. “BLM’s argument, at its core, is that because its actions are not intended to aid the development of habitat, its actions do not need to comply with the standard that requires BLM’s actions aid the development of habitat,” he wrote. “That reasoning is circular.” Moreover, Judge Clarke continued, “BLM’s interpretation of the standard is undermined by the plain language of the 2016 RMP. That language provides no indication that the applicability of the 20-year standard should be limited to only logging treatments with the stated intent of developing habitat.”
The magistrate judge also ruled that BLM erred by failing to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement in connection with its planned logging in the southwestern Oregon LSRs. “Plaintiffs have adequately presented evidence that casts serious doubt upon the reasonableness of BLM’s conclusions and therefore raised a substantial dispute sufficient to show that the [logging] [p]rogram is highly controversial,” Judge Clarke wrote. Moreover, he said, “the Court cannot conclude that the impacts contemplated here are anything but highly uncertain.”
Judge Clarke also ruled that an EIS was required because the nature and purpose of the proposed logging was novel. “BLM’s approval of the IVM Program failed to consider the degree to which its actions may establish a precedent with significant effects in two ways,” he wrote. “First,” Judge Clarke ruled, “the interpretation ofthe 20-year standard upon which BLM hangs its approval of the Program’s commercial components would have sweeping impacts.” Second, the magistrate judge ruled, BLM’s argument that it could rely on a previous, larger-scale EIS to show compliance with NEPA was unavailing. That position, he said, “effectively allows the agency to avoid completing any site-specific analysis under the guise of passing it off as already considered.”
In a separate case, Cascadia Wildlands v. BLM, Judge Kasubhai vacated BLM’s Siuslaw Landscape Plan. The SLP had approved logging within a “sustained yield unit” in one USDA Forest Service district based on a NEPA Finding of No Significant Impact. The Forest Service had adopted an EIS in 2016 for its Regional Management Plan and the Siuslaw Plan was intended to assure that the Eugene District contributed to the “Allowable Sale Quantity” of timber. It would have authorized logging for two decades west of the city of Eugene and allowed that activity across 1,404-2,305 acres during each of those two decades.
The plaintiffs argued that BLM failed to comply with NEPA and asked the court to order the preparation of an EIS on the Siuslaw Plan. They maintained that BLM could not rely on its 2016 RMP EIS instead of doing a site-specific study of environmental consequences that would flow from logging, including soil impacts, invasion of weeds, and impacts on array of wildlife, including bald eagles, fringed myotis, golden eagles, Oregon red tree voles, pallid bats, Townsend’s big-eared bats, water fleas, buffleheads, coastal greenish blue butterflies, Haddock’s Rhyacophilan caddisflies, Johnson’s hairstreak butterflies, monarch butterflies, Oregon coast coho salmon, Oregon coast spring chinook salmon, pacific lamprey, and Oregon coast steelhead trout.
After rejecting BLM arguments that tiering to the 2016 RMP EIS was sufficient to address the soil and weed issues, Judge Kasubhai also held that the agency needed to examine, on a site-specific basis, the possible wildlife impacts of logging. “The BLM’s repeated statements in the Siuslaw Plan EA that the Siuslaw Plan would not cause a trend towards listing are conclusory, speculative, and devoid of any site-specific analysis,,” he wrote. “Site-specific analysis is a critical inquiry that the Ninth Circuit has determined NEPA requires.” Judge Kasubhail also ruled that BLM failed to consider cumulative impacts that could result from both the Siuslaw Plan and the N126 Project, another nearby logging endeavor.
The rulings arrive during a pivotal time for federal forest policy. In November 2024, the Forest Service released a Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement proposing an update to the NWFP. The draft proposes changes intended to better address wildfire risks, climate change, and Tribal treaty rights.
Among the proposals is an allowance for more “ecological thinning,” or selective logging, in some older forests inside LSRs. The Draft SEIS also recommends shifting the focus of the NWFP’s Aquatic Conservation Strategy’s from site-specific protections to broader watershed health.
“The purpose of this amendment is to update the Northwest Forest Plan to address changed conditions, integrate new scientific information, and better support ecological resilience,” the Forest Service wrote in the Federal Register.
The proposed changes have drawn mixed reactions. Conservation groups such as Oregon Wild and Earthjustice have warned that relaxing LSR and Riparian Reserve protections could jeopardize old-growth forests.
“The Forest Service’s proposals would fundamentally undermine protections that have kept old-growth forests and imperiled species from disappearing entirely,” Oregon Wild stated in a December 2024 analysis.
Groups representing timber and hunting interests, including the Blue Ribbon Coalition and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, have generally supported the shift toward more active forest management, although they have also suggested that further revisions may be needed.
Scientific research continues to provide important context. Studies published in PNAS and Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment highlight the critical roles old-growth forests play in biodiversity, carbon storage, and climate stability. Researchers including Franklin, Johnson, Gordon, and Thomas found that the NWFP slowed the loss of late-successional forests after decades of heavy logging.
As wildfire frequency and intensity have risen, the Forest Service has cited the need for adaptive management. Some ecologists support targeted interventions to help forests adjust to hotter, drier conditions, while others warn that loosening protections could increase the risk of further ecological decline.
Meanwhile, Native American leaders and advocates have emphasized the importance of incorporating Traditional Ecological Knowledge into federal land management. The draft amendment identifies this as a priority.
Even if not amended under the Forest Service process initiated during the Biden administration, the resilience of the NWFP may soon face new tests. President Donald Trump, who recently signed an executive order promoting increased timber harvests on federal lands, has signaled a shift away from conservation-first approaches. Although the Oregon court rulings confirmed that agencies must still follow the NWFP’s protections, a more aggressive push for logging on the public lands could spur efforts to weaken or bypass key safeguards.
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