Murrelets Halt Oregon Logging

In late June, a U.S. District Court judge in Oregon issued a ruling preventing Scott Timber from clearcutting a tract of old-growth forest that was previously part of the Elliott State Forest. The court found that logging the parcel would harm and harass threatened marbled murrelets, violating the federal Endangered Species Act.

The ruling stems from a 2016 lawsuit that sought to block Scott Timber from clearcutting 49 acres of a 355-acre parcel because of potential murrelet impacts. According to news reports, murrelets were documented in the 49 acre parcel more than 200 times by activist groups and Scott Timber’s own contractors.

Marbled murrelets are listed as “threatened” under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Yet in July 2021, state wildlife officials uplisted the murrelet’s state protected status from threatened to endangered under Oregon’s Endangered Species Act. Currently, the Oregon Board of Forestry is developing rules to protect murrelet habitat on state and private timber lands.

Related Articles

Spotted Owl Back In Court

Latest News

Purdue Grant Focuses On Forest Development

Purdue Grant Focuses On Forest Development

U.S. Dept. of Agriculture has awarded a $10 million grant to Purdue University to help landowners and stakeholders better adapt their forests to increasingly complicated economic and climate conditions in the Eastern U.S. About 5 million small, private landowners control just over half the acreage of forests in the Eastern U.S. This contrasts with Western U.S. forests, which are mostly publicly owned. Purdue and its project partners—the University of Georgia, the University of Maine and the U.S. Forest Service—aim to improve the management of 15 million acres of those forests, an area nearly as large as…

read more
OLC 2023 Products

OLC 2023 Products

EUGENE, Oregon – Nothing draws a crowd of loggers like lots of shiny new equipment and the latest in timber harvesting technology and innovations. Here’s a quick look at just some of the many products on display at this year’s Oregon Logging Conference at the Lane Events Center in Eugene, Oregon on February 23-25…

read more

WANT MORE CONTENT?

Spanning seven decades since its inception in 1952, Timber Harvesting highlights innovative and successful logging operations across the U.S. and around the world. Timber Harvesting also emphasizes new technology and provides the best marketing vehicle for the industry’s suppliers to reach the largest number of loggers in North America and beyond.

Call Us: 800.669.5613