Protect What’s Left
As communities rebuild after the wildfires, we need to treat Oregon’s sensitive burned forests with care. In the Santiam Canyon, along the McKenzie and Umpqua Rivers, we are seeing green trees being logged, and extensive cutting on sensitive burned lands. We have already lost so much, let’s protect what’s left and bring back our beloved recreation areas.
Tell Oregon’s leaders to protect our naturally recovering public lands, recreation areas from excessive post-fire cutting!
Thriving with Fire
Fires are a Natural Part of our Forests
The forests of the Pacific Northwest were all born from fire. After a fire, we see charred trees and blackened landscapes, yet soon after the fire goes out we see the green sprouts of new life return. For centuries, native peoples of the Pacific Northwest worked with fire, not against it, in order to thrive in this region.
Umpqua River
Without public input or oversight, forest managers are authorizing extensive cutting along in and around popular recreation areas, scenic areas and campgrounds in the Umpqua River. In the Columbia River Gorge, the landscape was left to come back naturally, with limited cutting and today the Gorge is green and full of life again. Doesn’t the rest of Oregon deserve the same care?
The Columbia River Gorge
This time lapse clip shows Angel’s Rest, an area that was burned by the Eagle Creek Fire in 2017, as it emerges green and full of life again.
Post-fire logging hurts forest recovery
Post-Fire Logging Threatens Our Drinking Water Supplies
While wildfire impacts the soils and forests in our drinking watersheds, logging compounds and increases the impact many times over.
Top experts at Oregon State University have documented how post-fire logging can magnify and compound the impact by 28 times, dirtying the water and increasing treatment costs.
Post-fire logging can increase sedimentation in watersheds by 2,800%, harming fish and increasing costs to purify drinking water.
Fire, Climate & Carbon Balance
Most of the carbon biomass in a forest is stored in the trunks of large trees and organic soil, and wildfire mostly burns up the needles and smaller material. Experts at Oregon State University compared a burned and logged forest to a burned and unlogged forests and found that logging releases an additional 40% of the carbon. On the other hand, a burned and unlogged forest recovers the carbon it had pre-fire within 15-20 years, stores more water and provides homes for wildlife.