Bark Summer Campaign

In a matter of days the Forest Service will release its final decision on the Jazz Timber Sale and 2,000 acres of Mt. Hood National Forest will get logged this summer… unless we stop it. Worst of all, the Forest Service calls the logging “restoration.”

Bark's tenacious volunteers have spent over 600 hours collecting data from the field that contradict the Forest Service's "restoration" claims. Your donation today will enable Bark staff to legally challenge the Jazz Timber Sale and organize political opposition to it.

Bark is prepared to expose this scam, but we can’t do it without your support.

Sincerely,
Alex P. Brown, Executive Director

PS- Bark believes that information is power. So I've included details below on how the Forest Service tries to manipulate its message by using the word restoration when it means logging, and why logging can't repair the forest that it destroyed.


What is the Jazz Timber Sale?

First it helps to know where the Jazz Timber Sale is. The logging is proposed in the Collawash River watershed, a tributary of the Clackamas River best known for being home to Bagby Hot Springs. But the Collawash River is also special because it is home to threatened species including what the Forest Service calls the "last viable wild late run winter coho salmon.”

The Jazz Timber Sale is the most recent project from the timber program of the Forest Service: 2,000 acres of trees that will be auctioned to the highest bidder. Jazz would result in 6,000 log trucks taking trees from our forest.

Your donation today will help us stop the Jazz Timber Sale. 

Most people don’t know that the Forest Service auctions off the rights to log our National Forests. In 2006, the Forest Service auctioned a similar timber sale in this area for just over $3 per tree.


How the Forest Service wants to "restore" our watersheds with logging

The Forest Service admits that past logging destroyed wildlife habitat, muddied our rivers, and left us with a patchwork of clearcuts where old growth forests once stood. Pacific Northwest watersheds are struggling to recover from the last 100 years of abuse. Since our founding, Bark has fought sneaky attempts by the Forest Service to reverse the recovery, and the latest double-cross is called "thinning."

Please donate to Bark today to stop this latest attack on our forests.

The Forest Service claims that thinning, or removing 40%-60% of the trees (see "2007 Thin Timber Sale" pictured right) from watersheds recovering from past clearcuts, will restore them by allowing the remaining trees to grow faster. While it's true that thinning will grow trees faster, the Forest Service's assertion that this will restore the Collawash River watershed is absurd. 

Watershed scientists agree that the best way to restore sensitive watersheds like the Collawash is not to keep logging the forest, but to remove old roads that are now crumbling into our streams, choking salmon and smothering their spawning beds.

A 1999 Forest Service study determined that 51% of Mt. Hood National Forest's 4,000 miles of roads are no longer needed for recreation or other access and are suitable for removal.


What precedent will the Jazz Timber Sale set?

In 2010, Bark and our allies finally secured funding for the Forest Service to begin real restoration in the Collawash River Watershed. Bark was thrilled by the Forest Service's initial plan to remove roads.

But then in 2011, the Forest Service revoked much of its proposal. Bark soon discovered that these roads were instead being kept for the Forest Service's new "restoration" logging proposal — the Jazz Timber Sale.

Even more disturbing — the Jazz Timber Sale includes rebuilding 11 miles of old roads that were decommissioned as recently as two years ago.

This makes the Jazz Timber Sale one of the strongest examples in the Pacific Northwest of ecological and financial waste by the Forest Service. And it sets a horrible precedent, in which the timber goals of the Forest Service are allowed to trump all others — even reversing past restoration work paid for with taxpayer dollars.


How will Bark stop the Jazz Timber Sale?

Have you ever tried to hike off-trail through a forest thick with trees, Oregon grape, ferns, and vine maples? Well, Bark’s tenacious volunteers spent over 600 field-hours surveying all 2,000 acres of proposed logging and we now have accurate data on every aspect of the proposal.

Your donation will support Bark staff as we prepare an appeal and potential legal challenge based on our volunteers’ groundtruthing data.

Your support will also enable Bark staff to use the story of the Jazz Timber Sale to convince our elected leaders that the Forest Service must change how it manages Mt. Hood National Forest.

As soon as the final Jazz decision comes out, we will provide you additional details. Until then, thanks for your support.

Sincerely,
Alex P. Brown, Executive Director

PS- When the final decision is released, Bark only has 45 days to file an administrative appeal. Donations today will help us prepare.