Wilderness Watch protests BLM’s proposed logging in Soda Mountain Wilderness

By Kevin Proescholdt

With a long-standing drought throughout the American West, exacerbated by climate change, some wilderness managers have come under pressure to try to prevent future wildfires in Wilderness from burning, or from burning so hotly. That pressure pushes wilderness managers to consider “presuppression” activities—like tree cutting—in Wilderness, in the mistaken belief that such actions prevent or diminish wildfire and its effects.

Those pressures seem to have reached the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in its recent new management plan for the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument in southwestern Oregon, which contains the Soda Mountain Wilderness. And that is why Wilderness Watch filed a formal Protest with the BLM over the language in that new plan allowing so-called presuppression tree cutting in the Soda Mountain Wilderness in violation of the 1964 Wilderness Act.

The Soda Mountain Wilderness, which covers 24,707 acres and was designated by Congress in 2009, is an ecological mosaic where Oregon’s eastern desert meets towering fir forests. The Wilderness is home to a spectacular variety of rare species of plants and animals, including Roosevelt elk, cougars, black bears, golden and bald eagles, goshawks, and falcons. The Wilderness lies entirely within the boundaries of the 114,000-acre Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, which President Clinton established in 2000 and President Obama expanded in 2017.

The new management plan’s overly-permissive language in question states:
• Limit vegetation management actions in Wilderness Areas to only occur for the purposes of removing non-native vegetation or to reduce wildfire risk to life, property, or wilderness character.

This language goes far beyond what the 1964 Wilderness Act permits. Our Protest seeks to change this language to authorize only activities that the Wilderness Act allows. The specific points of our Protest include:

1. Cutting and thinning for vegetation management are not allowed within the Soda Mountain Wilderness, especially with chainsaws and other motorized equipment. The language envisions allowing vegetation management activities within the Soda Mountain Wilderness “for the purposes of removing non-native vegetation or to reduce wildfire risk to life, property, or wilderness character.” This would most likely be done with chainsaws and other motorized equipment. Such authorizations would violate the Wilderness Act.

2. Language in BLM’s policy guidance cannot override the statutory language of the Wilderness Act. The language that we are protesting mirrors language from the BLM’s Manual:

Fuel treatment is not allowed in wilderness, except in rare circumstances. Due to the controversial nature of fuel treatments and the complexities of analyzing the effects of these on the totality of wilderness character, when they are to be used as a replacement for wildland fire they may require analysis through an EIS. Fuel treatments may be permitted:
A. To remove non-native vegetation (see also section 1.6.C.15); or
B. When prescribed fire without pretreatment in the wilderness will inevitably cause unacceptable risks to life, property, or wilderness character (including cultural resources, as outlined in 1.6.C.5.f); or
C. When any wildland fire will inevitably cause unacceptable risks to life, property, or wilderness character.

BLM Manual 6340(1.6)(C)(7)(d), emphases added

This policy language is far more permissive than the statutory language from the Wilderness Act. There is no language in the Wilderness Act authorizing a suspension of the Act’s protections to deal with “non-native vegetation,” for example. Nor is there any language in the Wilderness Act authorizing “pretreatment in the wilderness.” This overly-permissive agency policy language cannot override or supersede the statutory language of the Wilderness Act.

3. Section 4(d)(1) of the Wilderness Act—a special provision for the control of fire, insects, and disease—does NOT permit pre-suppression landscape manipulations. This section of the Wilderness Act states:
In addition, such measures may be taken as may be necessary in the control of fire, insects, and diseases, subject to such conditions as the Secretary deems desirable.

The special provision on fire, insects, and disease at § 4(d)(1) cannot be applied so broadly that it renders the statute, its terms, and its overarching mandate meaningless. Accordingly, the fire, insects, and disease special provision requires some actual need, such as responding to an existing fire, and some finality so that fire control does not become an ongoing, landscape-scale ecological manipulation project that completely overrides the purpose and goals of the Wilderness Act.

4. The Soda Mountain Wilderness statutory designation does NOT include any special provision for presuppression activities. Congress recognized the differences between suppression of actively burning fires (as authorized by section 4[d][1] of the Wilderness Act), and presuppression activities that actively manipulate landscape conditions in an attempt to ward off potential future fires. In a couple of instances in California, Congress has specifically allowed presuppression activities in individual Wildernesses. Congress did NOT do so for the Soda Mountain Wilderness.

From a wilderness perspective, it is far better to allow natural, lightning-caused fire to play its role in Wilderness, rather than to invade Wilderness to cut down “undesirable” trees and attempt to create conditions based on human wishes and desires, rather than what nature is creating.

The BLM has recently ruled against our Protest. The language we have protested could set a troubling precedent for the entire National Wilderness Preservation System, and we hope to eventually succeed with our Protest to both protect the wilderness character of the Soda Mountain Wilderness and avoid that precedent. We and our allies are considering our options.

Click here to read Wilderness Watch’s full Protest.