For eight long years, the Bush administration attempted to systematically undermine protections for our national forests and public lands. Earthjustice fought the previous administration at every turn, and so far we have succeeded in protecting our public lands from the worst of the devastation that threatened them.

President Obama and Interior Secretary Salazar have pledged to restore scientific integrity and ethical responsibility to public lands management, but there are Bush-era rules still in place that leave our public lands susceptible to unchecked logging and development. One of the worst of these lingering Bush-era plans is the Western Oregon Plan Revisions or "WOPR."

WOPR allows the timber industry to nearly double its logging on public lands in western Oregon, despite numerous scientific studies concluding that these dramatic increases in logging will harm clean water and healthy streams, contribute to global warming, push fish and wildlife toward extinction, and destroy much of Oregon's remaining mature and old-growth forests.

In the next few weeks, Interior Secretary Salazar will decide whether to defend the WOPR in court or to do the right thing and withdraw the decision. Please take a moment to urge Secretary Salazar to withdraw the WOPR and restore scientific protections to the mature and old-growth forests of western Oregon.

Until the very last day of 2008, Oregon's mature and old-growth forests were governed by the Northwest Forest Plan, a comprehensive forest management plan developed in 1994. In replacing the Northwest Forest Plan, the Bush administration ignored highly critical scientific reviews that found the WOPR was based on insufficient evidence, incomplete modeling, and would not safeguard fish and wildlife habitat. The administration even ignored criticisms from scientists at other federal agencies. In fact, the Bush administration violated the law and bypassed mandatory consultation with federal wildlife agencies to avoid confronting WOPR's harmful effects on endangered species.

Take a stand today for wild forests—urge Secretary Salazar to withdraw Bush's WOPR and protect Oregon's forests.

— Earthjustice
Because the earth needs a good lawyer