The U.S. Forest Service is proposing a revision to its landmark Northwest Forest Plan of 1994, saying it wants to focus on wildfire and climate change issues, among others. The public has until Feb. 2 to comment.

Conservation groups are already weighing in.

A key feature of the 1994 plan was the creation of reserves that generally prohibited logging on forests more than 80 years old, thus allowing those areas to recover from past logging. The regionwide plan has been held up as a model.

“While the plan has guided important progress over the past three decades, changed ecological and social conditions are challenging the effectiveness of this plan,” the Forest Service stated in a written statement issued Dec. 15.

The 1994 plan covers 24.5 million acres of federally managed lands in Western Oregon and Washington and Northwestern California, including the Umpqua, Klamath and Rogue River-Siskiyou national forests. It was established to address threats to threatened and endangered species.

The Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center in Ashland celebrated the pending changes.

“This is HUGE news because much has changed over the last 30 years, but the management of crucial forestland across the [Pacific Northwest] has remained the same — now outdated,” the organization stated in a social media post on Wednesday.

Oregon Wild, a Portland-based organization, termed parts of the plan “dangerously vague.”

The Forest Service stated that the revisions will focus on five key areas: “wildfire resilience, climate change adaptation, tribal inclusion, sustainable communities, and conservation of old growth ecosystems and related biodiversity.”

More information is available online, at https://bit.ly/478uqpw.