What-a-Gas is anything but

Please help the forest creatures east of Sutherlin that live in what the BLM calls the "What-a-Gas" timber sale. What do you think of your old-growth forests east of Sutherlin being converted to young tree plantations so they can become permanent industrial tree farms? The official comment period is now over, but you can always email the BLM your thoughts on this issue.

Gassy Creek is a tributary to Calapooya Creek (the same Calapooya Creek where the city of Sutherlin gets their household drinking water.) Virtually all of the native forests in this watershed have already been logged and converted to industrial tree-farms. You only own 8% of the Calapooya watershed (managed by BLM), and over half of those native forests have already been sold for clearcutting.

That doesn't leave much room for the two pairs of Northern Spotted Owls that continue to try to eke out a life in some of the remaining old-growth forests that the BLM now wants to cut down. The BLM says that the owls should live in the owl reserves set aside for them under the Northwest Forest Plan, not in the What-a-Gas timber sale, which is in the "matrix" where industrial logging is allowed. However, the Norris and Field Creek owls already live in forests with fewer acres of old-growth then they need for healthy living and reproduction. They can't go to their owl reserves either because, in the Calapooya Creek watershed, over two-thirds of the owl reserves were clearcut before they were set-aside as reserves, and won't provide owl habitat again for over 70 years.

The Norris and Field Creek owl pairs can't write to the BLM themselves. They are depending on you to speak for them. Please ask the BLM to put off logging in the matrix until the owl reserves have recovered. It is just not fair to give the owls a home they can't live in, and cut the one they do live in today.

Also ask the BLM to consider the effects of logging on clean drinking water to the city of Sutherlin. Finally, remind the BLM that converting mature and old growth forests to young tree plantations increases the fire threat to the local rural community. Old forests reduce the speed of wildland fires while young forests, with their canopy so close to the ground, increase wildland fire speed and intensity.

Thank you for writing a letter to help wildlife, preserve clean water, and reduce the impacts of logging to rural communities east of Sutherlin.