Western Oregon notes

Except for a year spent in Bellingham, WA, I've lived my whole life in western Oregon. It rains here a fair bit of the time, although there are usually at least three dry months in the summer. The winters are mild. Although the forests of western Oregon are the most heavily logged ecosystem in the entire world, there are still some fine examples of classic old-growth Douglas fir and western hemlock forest, especially on public lands like the Mt. Hood, Willamette, Siuslaw, Umpqua, and Rogue-Siskiyou National Forests, the Salem, Eugene, Roseburg, Coos Bay and Medford Bureau of Land Management Districts, Crater Lake National Park, the Elliot and Tillamook State Forests, eleven wildlife refuges and a few national monuments.

The old growth logging programs of most of these public land management agencies have declined dramatically or stopped all together. The important exception are the Roseburg, Coos Bay and Medford BLM districts, which regularly auction off hundreds of acres of 400+ year old trees to be clearcut. The Cascadia Wildlands Project and the Klamath Siskiyou Wildlands Center are the two groups working to stop old growth logging in these areas that I support.

The photographs here were taken on the Willamette, Siuslaw and Umpqua National Forests, on the W. Finley National Wildlife Refuge in the central Willamette Valley, and this fellow's farm in the southern Willamette Valley.