With Governor Brown’s signature, salmon earn new protections across 10 million acres of private forestland in Oregon.
Yesterday at the World Forestry Center in Portland, Governor Kate Brown signed the Private Forest Accord into law. The comprehensive bill package, passed by bipartisan votes in the Legislature in March, marks the crowning moment of our decades-long campaign to modernize Oregon’s outdated private forest practices—long the weakest on the West Coast.
The result of two years of work between 13 timber industry representatives and 13 conservation and fishing groups including Wild Salmon Center, the Accord updates logging practices to better protect salmon across 60,000 miles of Oregon rivers and streams.
Among many other changes, the bill expands minimum streamside forest buffers while also improving logging practices on steep slopes and management of logging roads—both key factors in keeping streams clean and cold in the face of climate change.
Negotiators from both the conservation/fishing team and the timber industry joined Gov. Brown at the signing. Read Gov. Brown’s remarks here and WSC Oregon Policy Director Bob Van Dyk’s remarks here. A video of the event is here and some photos are below.
