The Most Important Comment Period for Blues Forest Planning is Live

If you hike, hunt, camp, or love the Blue Mountains, it’s time to get involved.

The most important comment period of the Blue Mountain Forest Planning process has launched, and whatever results from it will shape the future of nearly 5 million acres of public land across this region for the next several decades.

Over the next three months, we will dive into various aspects of the plan so you can be more informed about what's being proposed for our public lands. This blog is meant to serve as an overview for an ongoing conversation.

What is a Forest Plan?

Forest plans are the rulebooks for how the Forest Service manages our National Forests, and they are supposed to be updated every 15 years. These plans lay the foundation for all management actions and answer questions like:

• How much logging/mining/grazing/road building/development should occur, and where can it happen?
  

• Should we protect any areas for quiet recreation and backcountry experiences?
  

• Should fish, wildlife, and clean water be prioritized in relation to other uses? If so, where?
  

The Wallowa-Whitman, Umatilla, and Malheur National Forests are all operating under plans that were written in the 1990s: plans that predate a lot of what we now know about old-growth forests, wildlife connectivity, riparian habitat health, and climate change.

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 thoughtful and nuanced conversations about those things.

At the time of writing, we have serious concerns about the direction this revision process is heading. The public process has been weird at best, and folks across the board seem to be pretty unhappy with how it’s unfolding. We’re afraid that the current moment’s fixation on prioritizing industry over all other “uses” and “users” will leave us stuck with plans that harm the public for decades to come.

Where Things Stand

The Forest Service released the Draft Environmental Impact Statement, or DEIS, on July 2nd, 2026, and with it, the formal 90-day public comment period is now open. This is a moment the law carves out specifically for public participation. Before finalizing a forest plan, the Forest Service is required to showcase several options, analyze the differences, and accept written comments from anyone who wants to weigh in. Every comment submitted becomes part of the official record that the agency is legally required to consider. This is your most meaningful opportunity to shape the future of these forests.

Normally, this comment period is associated with a series of public meetings after the public has time to review the draft plans. This time, the meetings happened before the draft was released, before the public had a chance to review it or ask meaningful questions.

Some folks did get a sneak peek, though. It’s been deeply concerning to learn that county commissioners, through a group called the Blues Intergovernmental Council, or BIC, received the DEIS in advance of its public release. In fact, they likely received multiple drafts throughout the spring and early summer and provided advanced input more than once. This is problematic for multiple reasons. In theory, the BIC claims to represent a broad range of stakeholders: tribes, conservationists, federal and state fish and wildlife agencies, agriculture, and recreation interests. In practice, it’s mostly just County Commissioners representing a few specific interests.

This matters because Alternative 2, the Forest Service's preferred alternative to the current management plan, seems to be heavily based on the BIC’s requests and feedback. Public lands belong to all of us, and management plans should be guided by feedback from everyone – not just those with advanced political access. If the BIC actually represented the full diversity of people who care about these forests, that kind of collaboration would be a boon to the process. But substituting this backroom process for genuine public engagement does not represent public interest, and it's worth naming that directly.

What Is Being Proposed?

The agency is considering three alternatives.

Alternative 1 is the “no action” alternative: this is standard procedure in any document of this size and scope. It contains no changes to the existing Forest Plan. Existing roadless protections are retained, the current rule limiting logging of trees over 21 inches in diameter is kept in place, and timber harvest levels would stay roughly where they are now.

Alternative 2 is the Forest Service's preferred alternative and seems heavily based on the desires of industry. It would recategorize currently protected Roadless Areas under the "general forest" designation, which is the broadest and least-protected management category available. It would eliminate protections for old-growth trees entirely, meaning there would be no size or species restrictions on which trees can be logged. It would replace current riparian protections with an "active management" emphasis, and would remove all road density standards protecting elk and their habitat. It would also increase logging by three to four times over the current baseline.

Alternative 3 still focuses on logging, but throws the public a few (small) bones. It would still double the current amount of logging and remove rules limiting old-growth logging and roadbuilding. It would also expand logging in sensitive riparian areas. As a small bright spot, it does claim to maintain “elements” of the roadless rule (it’s still unclear what this means), and recommends 35,000 acres for future Wilderness protections (should Congress choose to do so). The agency states that those acres may be removed from the final plan by the Chief of the Forest Service, the Secretary of Agriculture, or even the President of the United States.

Doubling, tripling, or even quadrupling proposed logging acreages is not a modest adjustment; it's a fundamental shift in what these forests are used for. While GHCC is not fundamentally opposed to logging, we remain concerned that the current draft plans prioritize logging at the expense of all other resources and user groups.

Here's What We Stand to Lose

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 plants, amphibians, and invertebrates. The three National Forests in this planning area create a wildlife corridor of continental importance, connecting the Rockies to the Cascades. This planning process is 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 Mountains Ecoregion, there's already enough road to drive around the entire planet.

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 has been a meaningful safeguard for the largest 3% of trees across these forests. Eliminating it 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. Big, old trees didn't get that way by accident, and they can't be replaced on any timeline that's meaningful to us.

Recreational opportunity: Loss of Roadless Area protections and removal of thoughtful limitations on roadbuilding will fundamentally change the character of special places across this region. Elk hunters, backpackers, and backcountry enthusiasts of all stripes will suffer as road networks creep further into the last remote corners of these forests and elk flee to private lands.

How to Comment

We’ll continue to provide more in-depth information about the draft plan, but you can submit a comment as soon as you’re ready. The comment period opened on July 2nd, 2026 and will run until September 30th, 2026. Here are some resources for drafting your comments:

• You can find our detailed comment guidance here.

• 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 here.

• You can review the draft plan here and submit official comments here.
  

We Need Your Help — and Your Support

These ninety days will go by fast, and this process requires serious attention. Our staff reads the documents, attends the meetings, tracks the details, and translates all of it so that we can keep you informed and call on you to act, and this work takes time and resources. If you're able to support GHCC right now, this is a moment where it really counts.

Support our work on the Blue Mountains

When it comes to commenting, you don't need to be a policy expert. You don't need to know what NEPA stands for. You just need to care about these places, and if you're reading this, you probably already do. We'll share resources over the coming weeks to help you craft a meaningful comment.

In the Meantime… We've put together a short story collection form where you can tell us about your connection to the Wallowa-Whitman, Umatilla, and Malheur National Forests. We'd love to hear why these forests matter to you in your own words.

Share your Blue Mountains story