Protecting Public Lands

Forests are home to a diversity of plants and animal species, many of which are rare, sensitive, or threatened with extinction. The GPNF is no exception. However, decades of unsustainable logging and excessive road building on the GPNF have fragmented forest habitats and muddied creeks and rivers- playing a major role in pushing species such as the spotted owl and salmon toward extinction. Although the tide is shifting in the Northwest toward restoration there is still a need to continue to monitor activities on the forest.

The Gifford Pinchot Task Force works to protect Old Growth in the Pacific Northwest. In 2008 this old growth area was saved from a potential mining lease near Mount St. Helens.

Federal agencies estimate that of the 2.3 million acres covered by the Northwest Forest Plan, less than 35 percent are comprised of mature and ancient forest. Much of the rest is heavily fragmented by roads and clear cuts. With so little of the original ancient forest habitat remaining, species such as the northern spotted owl and marbled murrlet are threatened with extinction. Remaining ancient forest stands on the GPNF and other forests are therefore of great ecological importance and should be excluded from logging, road building, and other harmful activities.

 Unprotected mature and ancient forest can often be found in roadless areas, but this is only one of the many ecological benefits of roadless areas. Roadless areas serve as important refuges for plant and wildlife species and provide a source of clean, cool water for fish and municipal water supplies. Additionally roads can be extremely destructive to forest ecosystems by fragmenting forest habitat, acting as a barrier to migrating fish and wildlife, delivering large amounts of sediment to streams and facilitating human activity such as off-road vehicle use that can disturb wildlife, introduce invasive species and start wildfires. Remaining roadless areas deserve to be protected and no new roads, temporary or otherwise, should be built in roadless areas or in other sensitive habitat in our public forests.

Our Forest Watch program is designed to maintain an active presence in the project planning phases through commenting, litigating projects when necessary, and maintaining a professional working relationship with Forest Service personnel, Department of Fish and Wildlife, federal and state legislators, rural communities, and many other organizations and people. We continue to advocate for a focus on restoration rather than extraction, limiting destructive grazing and mining, and limiting road building. We continue to improve our programs to create innovative projects to help us better enforce our laws and regulations and protect important habitat from destruction.