Eastside Screens Lawsuit

Sierra Club and Five Other Organizations File Lawsuit Challenging Forest Service Change to Eastside Screens 21" Logging Rule

Update: Federal District Judge affirms Ruling

On March 29, 2024, U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken issued a decision that reinstated the 21-inch rule and ordered the Forest Service to go back to the drawing board, complete a full public process and take a hard look at the environmental impacts of their proposed actions. In her decision, Judge Aiken adopted Magistrate Hallman’s findings in August 2023 that the Forest Service broke several federal laws when repealing the 21-inch rule, and must prepare an Environmental Impact Statement before moving forward.

This is a shared victory among conservation allies, Tribes, scientists, and community advocates who all fought to restore these protections for large trees. For now, and as always, Crag and our clients will continue to fight for strong protections for forests, Tribal cultural values, wildlife, rivers, and our climate.

Great News! Judge rules Forest Service violated the law in rolling back Eastside Screens! - August 2023

On August 31, 2023, a federal judge made a sweeping recommendation to set aside an illegal Forest Service rule change made under the Trump administration. Conservation groups, with support from the Nez Perce Tribe, challenged a change to the Eastside Screens, a longstanding set of rules to protect old growth on six national forests in Eastern Oregon and Washington.

A U.S. Magistrate Judge in Pendleton, Oregon, found that the Forest Service should be required to prepare a full environmental impact statement: “The highly uncertain effects of this project, when considered in light of its massive scope and setting, raise substantial questions about whether this project will have a significant effect” on the environment, including endangered aquatic species.

The court recommended that the plaintiff groups prevail on all three of their claims, finding that the Forest Service violated the National Environmental Policy Act, the National Forest Management Act, and the Endangered Species Act, and recommended that Forest Service’s decision be vacated and the Service be required to prepare a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).

Read the Press Release below:

Click below to read the entire Magistrate Summary Judgment.

About the Lawsuit

Who Filed the Lawsuit?

The Sierra Club in collaboration with Central Oregon LandWatch, Great Old Broads for Wilderness, Greater Hells Canyon Council, Oregon Wild, and WildEarth Guardians has entered into a lawsuit to stop the US Forest Service (FS) from harvesting large trees in Oregon’s Eastside forests. The CRAG Law Center is providing legal services for this lawsuit.

What are the Eastside Screens?

The Eastside Screens codified the wildlife standard to protect and create the unique wildlife habitat and ecosystem created by large trees. This affected all national forests (your public land) East of the Cascade Mountain Range in FS Region 6, the Pacific Northwest Region, which is Oregon and Washington. This agreement was reached in 1994 and revised in 1995 as part of an overall agreement between Region 6 and several environmental organizations, including the Sierra Club. These were intended to be temporary protections, but Oregon’s national forests have never completed the work required to create a replacement management plan.

Here’s what changed and why the change was a bad idea.

Between December 2019 and January 2021, the Trump administration pushed through a load of bad environmental policies. This was a last-ditch effort to leave as much pro-big business, anti-environment legacy as that administration could. One of these policies was to change the long-standing (over 25 years) Eastside Screens wildlife rule that prevented harvesting any tree of a size with a 21-inch or greater diameter at breast height (DBH).

As of January 2021, the new policy, which we have nicknamed the “Trump Screens,” changed the 21-inch rule to a guideline, which leaves it up to each national forest to decide whether or not to harvest large trees. Not all tree species have been removed from protection; the beloved Ponderosa Pine has been excluded. And all trees over 30-inch DBH are also protected. (Coincidentally, this is about the maximum log size most lumber mills can process.)

Why should the 21-inch rule be reinstated?

Large trees provide unique wildlife habitat. Large trees affect wind, moisture, and sunlight in their own microclimates. Large trees provide sources of food, shelter and structure for many species of fungi, insects, birds and other wildlife in ways that smaller trees cannot.

Large trees store/sequester large amounts of carbon: Nature’s grand benefit reducing the destabilizing effects of climate change. Even in death as standing snags or downed logs, trees sequester carbon. Below the surface, the extensive root systems of large trees store yet more carbon.

Our forests are now severely lacking in large trees, even when compared to the Historic Range of Variability (HRV) that the Forest Service uses for management and logging decisions. Large trees are more resistant to wildfire than small trees. They act as mother trees, helping young trees get started. Large trees protect, share nutrients, and pass on their genetic heritages that enabled them to survive droughts and fires. There are many scientific reasons to not cut large trees, but perhaps it only takes observing their beauty to find reason enough.

What can you do?

• Contact Senator Wyden, Senator Merkley, and the White House and ask that the Trump Screens be reversed and that the Eastside Screen 21-inch rule be reinstated. Tell them why our forests are important to you. Here are sample letters to the Senators and White House.
• Write to the Forest Service and let them know how much you take pleasure in the forest and the large, beautiful trees.
• Make a donation to the Sierra Club or other environmental organization and tell them you appreciate the work they are doing to protect large trees.
• Tell others what is happening.
• Get out and respectfully enjoy your forest!

Protect the Owyhee Canyonlands

Note: Senate Bill S4860 died at the end of the last Congress. Senator Wyden has introduced a new Bill S1890. You can read it here: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/1890, and you can also see the current progress of the bill through Congress. The Sierra Club is evaluating this new bill, along with our partners including ONDA, and we will have a position on it soon. (August 25, 2023)

Juniper Group Endorses Wyden's Senate Bill S4860

By Kelly Smith, Juniper Group Outings Chair

We need your help to protect one of Oregon’s wild country gems.

The midterm election is over and the time has arrived to get a wilderness bill through Congress with the leadership of Senators Wyden and Merkley before the membership of the House of Representatives changes in January from being led by Democrats to being organized by Republicans.

When you first arrive in the depths of the Owyhee Canyonlands, the raw wildness of the landscape is so stunning it takes your breath away even before you begin exploring the canyons, the river, and the rocky desert ridgelines surrounding you. Located in the far reaches of southeast Oregon, the Owyhee Canyonlands is a threatened realm of amazing wild country needing protection from mining and other destructive activities.

Oregon’s Senator Wyden was just re-elected. He has a strong interest in creating a conservation legacy by submitting to Congress Senate Bill 4860 that has the short title of “Malheur Community Empowerment for the Owyhee Act”. Senator Wyden and his staff have long worked with stakeholders interested in the future of the Owyhee country including conservation groups, ranchers, regional politicians, tribal leaders, and a host of other interested recreationists. Senator Merkley also is committed to getting this legislation before the Congress.

The bill would address many local concerns of both ranchers and the Burns Paiute and Fort McDermott Tribes in creating an advisory group to the Bureau of Land Management providing feedback on grazing issues along with protecting sacred cultural sites important to indigenous peoples who have lived on these lands for thousands of years.

The bill also designates over one million acres of new Wilderness Areas including the Owyhee River canyons, the lava flows of Jordan Craters, the cliffs and hollows of the Honeycombs, and thousands of acres of habitat critical for sage grouse, bighorn sheep, and nesting raptors. The area to be protected is national park quality, but the protection provided in S.4860 will insure that key wildlands in this region will exist in a natural state for decades to come. Grazing activities will continue to be permitted in these lands as will power boat activities on the Owyhee Reservoir, but the landscape will be protected from most destructive actions.

The Juniper Group of the Sierra Club needs your help. Senators Wyden and Merkley need letters and phone calls from our members in support of protecting the Owyhee Canyonlands as detailed in S.4860. They need our encouragement and support for preserving key wild lands in getting this landmark legislation through Congress. Specifically, we need to request our Oregon Senators to:

1. Protect 1,133,000 acres as Wilderness in the Owyhee Canyonlands as proposed in S.4860.
2. Protect additional acreage in Malheur County identified by the Bureau of Land Management as Areas of Critical Environmental Concern including Cedar Mountain.
3. Include ecological monitoring land stewardship requirements to protect critical wildlife species including sage grouse, bighorn sheep, and raptor habitat.
4. Honor the interests of the Burns Paiute and Fort McDermott Tribes by protectings their sacred lands within Malheur County.

Kelly Smith, the Juniper Group’s Outing Coordinator and ExComm member, first traveled into the Owyhee Canyon years ago on a backpacking trip with college students and he has since returned a dozen times for whitewater rafting and kayaking adventures, canoe tours and exploration hikes along the Owyhee Reservoir, and for hot spring soaks under a sky adorned with twinkling stars in the heavens. The vistas, the wildlife encounters, the sighting of birds in this incredible habitat, and the majestic geology of the area is entrancing! This area is a world class natural area. Please join us to help protect this wonderful landscape.

Oregon’s senators use their office portals for email communication. The links to their offices are included below along with their telephone numbers:

Senator Ron Wyden
https://www.wyden.senate.gov/contact/email-ron
(202) 224-5244

Senator Jeff Merkley
https://www.merkley.senate.gov/contact
(202) 224-3753

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