FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Monday, March 4, 1996
Contact: Jim Flynn @ (541) 741-9191

Cascadia Forest Defenders, angry over green old-growth "salvage sales," will display their outrage by publicly redressing their grievances at the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) office in Roseburg on Monday, March 4, 1996 at 11 a.m.

Roseburg BLM and the Umpqua National Forest lead the nation in clearcutting critical old-growth habitat under the Salvage Logging Rider. By destroying the last remaining ancient forest fragments in the Umpqua watershed with no environmental protections, sensitive populations of fish species are in imminent danger.

"The Roseburg BLM is the primary perpetrator of criminal clearcutting of vital habitat for the endangered cutthroat trout and the coho salmon," stated Shannon Wilson. "Under the savage logging without laws rider the Roseburg BLM has executed nine egregious green old-growth sales totaling approximately 1100 acres. This is an outrage! The BLM should feel remorse and shame for the blood on their hands from these genocidal acts."

One very recently executed timber sale, the Olalla Wildcat, will destroy 280 acres of Old Growth LSR that would never have been released without the suspension of environmental protections mandated by the salvage rider. There are no stream buffers on over 15,000 feet of streams, some of which are probably salmonid bearing. Ten miles of new and reconstructed roads will be built over riparian reserves and unstable slopes. The sale heavily impacts Spotted Owls, and also involves building a rock quarry within an intermittent stream. It is in Marbled Murrelet habitat, and no Marbled Murrelet surveys have been done.

Because the Salvage Logging Rider prevents legal citizens appeals, BLM can flagrantly break the law even on new Option 9 clearcuts like the Four Gates timber sale. The decision was made on February 27 to reduce the legal stream buffers by 50% on most of the intermittent streams within the Four Gates Clearcuts. This is in the heavily degraded McGee watershed near Elkton, Oregon.

After protesting at the Roseburg BLM office, the activists plan to visit the Umpqua National Forest office.

In the Tiller District of the Umpqua National Forest, five of the most egregious sales resurrected from the late 1980s and released by the rider are in key watersheds and roadless designated Ecologically Significant Old Growth. Representing the last intact stands on the Tiller Ranger District, all impact spawning grounds for the coho salmon, cutthroat trout and/or winter steelhead. Together, the five will account for 921 acres of clearcuts an estimated 36.8 million board feet of ancient forest.