Blue Mountains Forest Plan
Revising the Blue Mountains Forest Plan
What is the Blue Mountains Forest Plan?
The Blue Mountains Forest Plan is the management plan for the Wallowa-Whitman, Umatilla, and Malheur National Forests spanning nearly 5 million acres in Northeast Oregon and Southeast Washington. The current plans date to 1992, and they guide how the Forest Service oversees all activities across these forests.
​
Updating these plans is important. These forests have changed, our understanding of how to manage them has changed, and the communities that depend on them have changed. But we have a problem: the current political landscape isn’t exactly primed for having thoughtful and nuanced conversations about those things.​​
The Blue Mountains Forest Planning process determines how nearly 5 million acres across the Wallowa-Whitman, Umatilla and Malheur National Forests (with the exception of the Hells Canyon National Recreation Area) will be managed for the next several decades. These lands collectively cover a large swath of NE Oregon and a small portion of SE Washington.
What's Being Proposed in the Revised Blue Mountains Forest Plan?
On July 2, 2026, the U.S. Forest Service released its Draft Environmental Impact Statement (also known as the DEIS) that offers various alternatives for the revised Blue Mountains Forest Plans. With its release, it starts a 90-day public comment period that will be open until September 30, 2026.
​
Since the start of the forest planning process, GHCC alongside members of our community have advocated for strong and enforceable language protecting habitat connectivity, roadless lands, and mature and old forests. In today's climate and biodiversity crises, supporting and improving the ecological function of these National Forests will have a real impact on the ground. Enforceable standards hold the Forest Service accountable for managing these public lands for more than just extractive interests.
​​
Unfortunately, the Forest Service's preferred alternative ("Alternative 2") goes in the exact opposite direction. Instead of focusing on holistic climate adaptation, protections for wildlife like elk and salmon, and following the science to maintain the ecological complexities of our forests, this alternative calls for doubling (or in some cases, almost quadrupling) logging, increasing mining and grazing, and doing away with the roadless rule and protections for old growth trees.
​
The Draft Environmental Impact Statement includes two other alternatives. The first ("no action") calls for keeping the plan as is. While making no changes to the Blue Mountains Forest Plan would be a HUGE missed opportunity to improve the way the Forest Service manages these lands for climate, wildlife, recreation, and our local communities who rely on intact forests, it's currently looking like best alternative on the table. Alternative 3 is still bad, albeit slightly better than the preferred alternative: a 200% increase in logging, retaining some elements of the roadless rule, guidelines (but not mandatory standards) for maintaining trees over 21" diameter and grand fir over 30" diameter, and recommending 35,000 acres of lands to be added by Congress to the National Wilderness Preservation System.
Under the USFS's preferred alternative, over 600,000 acres of currently protected roadless lands would be opened for commercial logging and new road building.
Trees over 21" in diameter are fire-resistant climate champions. They store 42% of the above-ground carbon in the Blues while making up only 3% of the forests. Maintaining protections for large and mature trees is critically important for the region.
What We Lose if the Forest Service's Preferred Alternative is Adopted
Wildlife and Habitat Connectivity
The Blue Mountains are home to some of the most robust elk herds in the West, as well as salmon, steelhead, mule deer, wolverines, and a remarkable diversity of plant and animal species that most people don't associate with Eastern Oregon.
These forests straddle an important wildlife corridor at the nexus of the Rockies, Cascades, Great Basin and Columbia Plateau. The three national forests in this planning area represent a rare opportunity to think about connectivity not just within each forest, but across all three of them; an opportunity that the proposed alternatives squander.
These forests are already some of the most roaded in the country, and more roads mean more fragmented habitat. With nearly 26,000 miles of road in the Blue Mountain Ecoregion, there are enough roads to drive around the entire planet. The Forest Service can't maintain the roads it already has; adding more is unconscionable.
Clean Water
These forests contain the headwaters of our region’s most important rivers. The streams and rivers that flow out of the Wallowa-Whitman, Umatilla, and Malheur don't just support salmon and steelhead; they supply drinking water to cities like Walla Walla, Baker City, and La Grande. The mature forests in these watersheds filter and store water in ways that roads and logged-over hillsides simply cannot support. When those forests are opened to intensive management, the forest's natural filtering function is compromised.
Old and Mature Trees
The 21-inch rule prohibits logging trees over that size diameter. It has been a meaningful safeguard for the largest 3% of trees across Eastern Oregon's National Forests. Eliminating this rule entirely removes one of the few legal protections that currently exist for the trees that store the most carbon, provide the most complex habitat, and are the most fire-resistant. Large and mature trees didn't get that way by accident, and they can't be replaced on any timeline that's meaningful to us.
Submit your comments on the Blue Mountains Forest Plan
​The 90-Day Public Comment Period for the Blue Mountains Forest Plan Draft Environmental Impact Statement opened on July 2, 2026 and will run until September 30, 2026. This public comment period will be one of the final opportunities to share your feedback on the Blue Mountains Forest Plan.
Ready to comment?:
-
If you only have one minute, you can personalize and submit a pre-written comment here.
-
If you have five minutes, please submit a unique comment at the Forest Service’s comment portal here. We have talking points for reference below.
Want some additional resources before you comment?:
-
Check out our most recent blog about the public comment period.​​
-
You can review the full draft Blue Mountains Forest Plan here.
Some talking points for your consideration:
-
I urge you to restore enforceable protections for large trees. Please reject Alternative 2’s maximum flexibility and instead include mandatory standards to protect all trees over 21 inches DBH. These trees represent just 3% of our forest but store 42% of its aboveground carbon and provide essential habitat for at-risk species like the American marten.
-
I want these plans to integrate habitat connectivity at multiple levels throughout the plan. The Blue Mountains are a connectivity corridor of continental importance, and planning for connectivity at the project level is insufficient. I ask that you establish a specific management area for habitat connectivity and include standards for connectivity across all relevant plan areas.
-
I ask that you reinstate open road density standards for elk. I oppose the shift to a nutrition-based approach that lacks any enforceable limits on motorized access in sensitive habitats. You must restore quantitative road density standards (such as 1.5 miles per square mile) to provide the habitat security necessary to keep elk and deer on our public lands.
-
The agency must maintain mandatory riparian protections. I strongly oppose replacing the quantitative PACFISH and INFISH standards with flexible guidelines that use vague language like "when feasible". The plans must include mandatory standards for aquatic and riparian habitats to protect the systems that support over 80% of forest wildlife.
-
I request lasting, forest-level protection for all roadless areas and a harder look at potential Wilderness quality lands. Please create a management area similar to 2A – Roadless Area in Alternative 3 that will provide permanent safeguards for our 722,000 acres of roadless lands. These plan components should mirror the 2001 Roadless Rule to ensure these landscapes are protected from logging and roadbuilding even if national regulations are rescinded.
​Once you submit your comments to the U.S. Forest Service, we invite you to send us an email with a copy of your feedback. This will give us insight into the issues that are most important to our community and allow us to better advocate for our collective interests. Thank you!