Lawsuit Challenges Bureau of Land Management’s Post-Archie Creek Fire Logging Plan

Cascadia Wildlands, Oregon Wild, and the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center, all environmental organizations, filed a lawsuit on February 8, 2022, that challenges the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) post-Archie Creek Fire logging plans.

Nick Cady, Cascadia Wildlands Legal Director said on Tuesday that this is the BLM’s first major post-fire salvage logging operation under a relatively new resource management plan. That plan anticipated a small amount (about 2,000 acres) of salvage logging over 50 years.

Cady said that this process was incredibly rushed, and the BLM only considered the impact on two different values. One of them was the volume of timber that would be generated by logging and the other was the impact on soils.

“Everything else, impacts to recreation, scenic views, adjacent neighborhoods, future fire risk and hazard, all of that was just kind of brushed under the rug to get this out as quick as possible,” he said.

BLM spokesperson Cheyne Rossbach said the bureau doesn’t comment on pending or ongoing litigation.

The BLM’s Archie Creek Fire Salvage Harvest and Hazard Tree Removal Environmental Assessment, completed in August, discusses how the hazard tree removal would affect economic value from the harvest.