The U.S. Forest Service has closed 32,565 acres — over 50 square miles — of public land southeast of Bend, Oregon, and just extended the closure for a second year, through at least April 30, 2027.  All access is banned: hiking, cycling, horseback riding, cave exploration, hunting, and even walking your dog. Violators face up to $5,000 in fines or six months in jail.

We support the work. We do not support the approach.

The Cabin Butte Vegetation Management Project is critical. Fuels reduction in the wildland-urban interface protects Bend from wildfire. Since the closure began in May 2025, crews have removed over 255,000 pounds of trash, 448 propane tanks, 170 tires, and dozens of abandoned vehicles — the result of years of illegal camping and dumping that went unenforced. This cleanup matters and should be completed.

But a two-year blanket closure of this scale for vegetation management is without precedent on National Forest System lands. Standard practice is to close active work units — typically a few hundred to a few thousand acres — while keeping adjacent trails and recreation sites open. The Forest Service's own announcement acknowledges this principle by reopening completed areas west of Highway 97, yet the remaining closure is still far broader than active operations require.

More importantly, nothing in the current plan addresses what happens when the closure ends. The conditions that created the mess — uncontrolled vehicular access to dispersed areas and years of unenforced camping limits — remain unchanged. Without gates or physical barriers on secondary forest roads, the same cycle of illegal encampments, dumping, and environmental damage will repeat within months of reopening, leading to another multi-year closure and another six-figure taxpayer-funded cleanup.

We are asking the Forest Service and our elected representatives to take four specific actions:

1. Install gates on secondary forest roads before reopening. Gates that block motorized access while allowing foot, bicycle, and equestrian traffic prevent encampments while preserving the recreational access the public is entitled to. This is standard practice on national forests across the country.
2. Reopen completed areas now. Trails, trailheads, and recreation sites not adjacent to active work zones should be reopened on a rolling basis as units are completed — not held closed for the duration of the entire project.
3. Publish a reopening plan with milestones. The public deserves a timeline — not an open-ended "through at least April 2027" with no assurance a third extension won't follow.
4. Address staffing shortfalls directly. If this closure is being extended because the Forest Service lacks the personnel to safely manage concurrent operations, that is a resourcing problem — not a reason to lock the public out of their own land indefinitely.

This is not a request to stop the restoration. It is a demand that the Forest Service do the work, protect public safety in active zones, and plan for permanent solutions that prevent recurrence - rather than closing everything, extending indefinitely, and reopening with no structural changes.

50 square miles of your public land.

Two years and counting.

No end date.

No long-term plan.

Sign this petition and tell the Forest Service and our representatives: do the work, gate the roads, and give us back our forest.

#RestoreCabinButte