Dear John,

After decades of fighting egregious forest management on our state forests, OLCV and our partners, along with the support of Oregon’s people like you managed to pass the historic Private Forest Accords (PFA) legislation. This legislation was over a decade in the making, involving years of negotiations, and its passage finally set Oregon on track for more sustainable and responsible state forest management policies that safeguards threatened species and ecosystems.

You may recall taking action on this transformative legislation during the 2022 short legislative session. Well, now the state is in the midst of enacting this legislation through a rule-making process and we need your help to ensure that new protective rules for our forests are as strong as they can possibly be. The most direct and effective way you can support this process to shield our state’s iconic forests from destructive logging practices is by submitting public comment to the Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF) and the Oregon Board of Forestry.

The new rules released by the ODF are substantial––including protection of waterways with large buffers to better preserve aquatic habitat and drinking water sources, and includes restrictions on roadbuilding––reducing chemical runoff and further fragmentation of forest ecosystems. If enacted as law, these rules for the timber industry would be instrumental in conserving countless forest ecosystems in Oregon, so we need you to send a comment to the ODF voicing your support for firm implementation of the new PFA agreement rules.

As much as these rules for big timber will better protect Oregon’s forests and vibrant communities of wildlife within them, we still need to let the Board of Forestry know that while these rules are crucial for the survival of our state’s endangered species, they do not offer adequate solutions to many of the tolls that industrial logging corporations wreak on our climate and ecosystems. That said, the PFA is a huge step forward from previously loose restrictions on logging, even though we have a ways to go before the logging on Oregon’s state lands is truly sustainable. 

We need to keep up the fight to justly defend threatened wildlife and vulnerable communities from the climate consequences of industrial logging, but the new PFA rules are meaningful progress towards  conservation of our forests and the aquatic ecosystems within them, so we must make our voices heard to the ODF and Board of Forestry by asking them to officially implement these rules.

Thank you for supporting the natural preservation of our state,

Julia DeGraw

Coalition Director, OLCV