A group of activists are claiming victory after they say the Bureau of Land Management agreed to remove a section of old-growth forest that they were fighting to protect from an already approved Oregon logging project.
The mostly local protesters, who have camped out at the base of numerous trees and sat 100 feet high on the branch of a ponderosa pine tree in an effort to block the Poor Windy Forest Management Project, pointed to a revised logging contract between BLM and Boise Cascade Wood Products.
The modified contract, signed Monday by Heidi Lowery, manager of BLM’s Grants Pass Field Office, and representatives of the company removes authorization of a temporary access road that could have impacted large-diameter trees and places restrictions on a second access road designed to “ensure the avoidance and disturbance of the large-diameter trees” near that road.
The temporary spur roads needed to allow loggers access to the forested area would have resulted in harvesting of the old-growth trees that activists were aiming to protect, said Sam Shields, a community organizer and one of the leaders of the blockage.
