Dave Eisler is a private land owner whose 80 acres lie in the valley bottom of the coast range of the Siuslaw National Forest between Eugene and Florence. His neighbor is the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), an arm of the US Department of the Interior, which owns 2.5-million forested acres mixed like a checkerboard into the area between the Willamette and Rogue Valleys and the Cascade and Coast Ranges. Eisler’s property is sandwiched between two BLM late successional reserves—a mixture of old growth trees and multi-age tree stands that have been preserved to cultivate old growth habitat.
However, the old growth stands that flank Eisler’s property are in serious jeopardy. In August, 2007, the BLM proposed a revision to their longstanding forest management plan. Their current plan takes its mandate from the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) which was adopted to protect local economies dependant on timber dollars and wildlife dependant on old growth habitat that were threatened by heavy logging.
Filed under: Essay, Trees | Leave a Comment »
