Nearly every fall for more than a decade, I’ve found myself on an eastward migration from my home in Bend to the Blue Mountains for a chance to hunt elk with my bow. During these hunts, I’ve explored many of the more than 5 million acres of public lands managed by the Umatilla, Wallowa-Whitman, and Malheur National Forests, collectively known as the Blue Mountain National Forests. This vast, forested stretch of public lands provides habitat, and important migration corridors, for countless species, including the bulk of Oregon’s population of Rocky Mountain elk.

Throughout the years I’ve been hunting elk here each fall, the U.S. Forest Service has been working on completing the “Blue Mountains Forest Plan Revision.” This overarching management plan encompasses the Blue Mountain National Forests, which make up 1/3 of all Oregon’s national forest land.

Forest plans describe the social, economic and ecological goals for these public lands and guide all decisions made by the Forest Service for the next 15 years or more. This includes key issues such as timber harvest, motorized access, elk security areas, grazing, forest health, recreation, restoration and more. The current Forest Plans for each of the Blue Mountains National Forests are from 1990, and significant changes have occurred since that time. It goes without saying that when completed, this management plan will have far reaching effects for fish and wildlife, local communities, and all Oregonians alike who enjoy and rely on the abundant natural resources found in the Blue Mountains.

The planning process for the Blue Mountains Forest Plan has been a long and arduous path that formally began in 2004 and continues today. In 2014, the first draft plan was completed, but it received so much backlash that the Forest Service largely revised it, creating new alternatives based on public input. In 2018, a new final draft was released. Again, the plan received widespread objections which lead the Forest Service to withdraw the plans entirely.

Then in 2019, the Forest Service announced that a new group had been formed called the “Blues Intergovernmental Council” or BIC. The BIC is comprised of eastern Oregon county commissioners, Forest Service staff, tribal representatives, and other invited stakeholders. The purpose of the BIC is to “serve as an overarching entity for planning and guidance around land management issues related to the Blue Mountain Forests, including but not limited to the forest plan revisions.” Portland State University’s National Policy Consensus Center has facilitated the group meetings for the past two years. Recently, the BIC finalized a consensus driven set of “desired conditions” for the forest plans on three key issues related to livestock grazing and riparian health, access, and forest health.

As a member of the public, I have followed along and provided input during public comment periods in many of the BIC meetings. I appreciate the work of all the members of the BIC and the facilitators who continued to engage via virtual meetings throughout COVID and for their hard work to achieve consensus on many difficult and complex issues regarding forest management. The agreed upon principles from the BIC on these issues will help inform future management decisions by the Forest Service. With these desired conditions completed, now is a great time for the Forest Service to re-initiate the planning process and allow the broader public the opportunity to provide valuable input through the development of a preliminary draft plan.

The Blue Mountains contain some of the best fish and wildlife habitat that can be found anywhere in the country, and it will be critical that members of the public who enjoy hunting, fishing, and watching wildlife re-engage in the planning process when it is resumed.

Climate change related impacts to the blue mountain’s such as invasive weeds, wildfires, and drought are having negative impacts to this forest ecosystem and a new plan is urgently needed to guide the management using the best available, up to date science.

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