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Portland, OR – Today the Bureau of Land Management made a decision to move forward with a 30-day public protest period related to the recent release of the Final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the Western Oregon Plan Revisions. The 30-day protest period will commence once a notice has been published in the Federal Register.“Throughout this process we’ve been open and transparent with the public and we wanted to make sure that this extended to the protest period as well,” said Ed Shepard, BLM State Director in Oregon. “We extended the public comment period to five months, we posted the public’s comments online for all to see, and we held over 170 public meetings on this planning effort. Ensuring that the public had a protest opportunity seemed entirely consistent with our efforts to date,” continued Shepard.“This issue continues to be of significant importance to Oregon and we want to make sure that we bring this process to close in a timely manner. Allowing for a 30-day protest period will still allow us to meet the timelines established under the settlement agreement,” continued Shepard.The BLM entered into a settlement agreement over a court challenge by the American Forest Resource Council that alleged that the BLM was violating the O&C Lands Act of 1937. That settlement agreement stipulated that the BLM would revise the existing plans by December 2008.A protest period is not a comment period. Valid protests address only those issues which were submitted for the record during the planning process and contain

• Statement of the issue or issues being protested;
• Statement of the part or parts of the plan or amendment being protested;
• Copy of all documents addressing the issue or issues that were submitted during the planning process by the protesting party or an indication of the date the issue or issues were discussed
• for the record; and
• Concise statement explaining why the State Director’s decision is believed to be wrong.

Any person who participated in the planning process and has an interest which is or may be adversely affected by the approval or amendment of a resource management plan may protest such approval or amendment.A copy of the announcement for the 30-day protest period, along with the rules for filing a protest, is available online at: blm.gov/or/plans/wopr/index.phpAbout the Western Oregon Final EIS: The plan would make approximately 994,000 acres, or 45 percent of the planning area, available for future timber harvest. Consistent with the recovery plans for the northern spotted owl and marbled murrelet, the plan will designate 566,000 acres as Late-Successsional Management Areas to be managed for older forest characteristics. In addition, BLM will defer from harvest, for 15 years, nearly 178,000 acres of older more structurally-complex forests while a strategy is developed to address the threat of barred owls to northern spotted owls. The plan’s direction includes provisions to protect approximately 242,000 acres of habitat along rivers and streams to maintain water quality and support conservation of aquatic species. BLM will use uneven-aged management forestry techniques on approximately 157,000 acres of drier, fire-prone forests in southern Oregon to improve fire resiliency.