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Mission 12 · Malheur National Forest, OR

Blue Mountains plan revision

Malheur National Forest

The agency files it as “Blue Mountains Forest Plan Revision”

Timing

The agency stopped taking comments on September 30. What you find still counts: it backs the formal objections from people who did comment, it goes to the lawyers on the fight, and it is the story.

The sentence we think is wrong

“Under alternatives 1 and 3, more than 720,000 acres would retain protections similar to those provided by the Roadless Rule.”

The agency wrote that in its own document, under Substantive Issue 5: Inventoried Roadless Areas. Nobody has been out to check it. A dated photograph either backs it up or ends it.

How you settle it

Go to the Glacier Mountain roadless area on the Malheur National Forest and walk or drive in from the boundary, looking for drivable roads, old landings, or fresh tire tracks inside it. A photo of a drivable road, landing, or vehicle tracks clearly inside the area boundary, or open country with no road where one is claimed.

The decision

The U.S. Forest Service is revising the Land Management Plans for the Malheur, Umatilla, and Wallowa-Whitman National Forests, covering roughly 4.9 million acres of public lands in the Blue Mountains region. This revision will set the management direction for these forests for decades to come, making it one of the most consequential planning decisions for the area. Comments are open through Septem

Read the whole thing, and write to the agency about it

How to record it so it counts

  1. 01Find where the road is supposed to start. Photograph it from the junction, with anything that identifies the spot (a sign, a gate, a milepost).
  2. 02Walk it. Photograph the surface every few hundred meters and at anything that would stop a vehicle: a washout, a slide, a fallen tree, a stream with no crossing, trees growing in the road.
  3. 03Photograph the far end the same way.
  4. 04Let your phone record a GPS track if it can (any tracking app). A screenshot of the track is fine.
  5. 05Write down whether a pickup could drive it today, and why or why not.
What would count
  • Start, middle and end, with the track. A single photo of brush isn’t a road that doesn’t exist.
  • The reason a vehicle could not pass, in a photo.
  • The date. Roads change with a season.
All of it, with the phone settings, in the field guide
Are you going?

Say yes or no. It tells the next person whether anyone has this ground covered, and it is the only way we know a request was answered rather than just read. You can change your mind any time, and nobody follows up.

Join, then say you’re going

Nobody has answered yet

Before you go
  1. Public land only. Plenty of land inside a national forest or park boundary is privately owned, and that is not yours to walk on. A gate or a closure sign means stop. Check the rules for the specific place you are going, because they differ.
  2. Don’t touch survey stakes, flagging, equipment or anything a crew left. Photograph it; leave it.
  3. Don’t approach crews, contractors or agency staff about the project. Don’t interfere with any operation.
  4. Wildlife at a distance. No drones in wilderness or anywhere they’re prohibited. Stay off closed roads and trails.
  5. If you’re not sure, don’t. Weather, terrain, water, fire and people are your call, and yours alone.

More Than Just Parks doesn’t direct where you go or what you do. Terms.