fake_meows

@fake_meows@sopuli.xyz

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Trump administration moves to allow logging in pristine national forests.⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Interesting story of a roadless area in Oregon.

  eugeneweekly.com/2026/08/06/learn-from-the-burn/

  Back in the 1990s, they slipped a “salvage” clause into a completely unrelated bill about the Oklahoma City bombing. This allowed roadless areas that were burned to be “salvage logged” even when they would not have otherwise been allowed to be logged. It didn’t matter if the fire was accidental or intentional under this law.

  After this, a specific roadless area burned in a fire that many people considered to be probably an act of arson by loggers. This then allowed the land to be logged and they sold the rights to go in and remove the usable timber. I think typically they only pay pennies on the dollar for “salvage” versus what the timber sale would ordinarily cost.

  This kicks off a year long protest occupation and it was a counter operation to prevent the salvage logging. A bunch of activists camped in the old growth and physically occupied the land and blocked travel until the plan was finally abandoned.

  There was even a fire bombing of the local ranger station and some activists went to jail for life.

  hcn.org/…/forest-service-building-is-torched-by-n…

  Ironically, after all this happened, the original “arson” area burned again some years later, from a naturally sparked wildfire. In the immediate area there have been absolutely massive burns again and again and today the salvage logging operations are now at a scale that now makes what happened in the 1990s (and the reaction to it) seem tiny and downright quaint. When they run salvage logging today they have living human guards on the road checkpoints in and out of the burn areas and they have 24/7 remote surveillance to keep people from entering. If you know the mountains well there are some difficult to reach vantage points where you can get a distant look at the scale of the logging but it’s otherwise off limits and doesn’t seem to be on the radar for the public at all.

  A lot of these were coastal old growth areas had no natural fire cycle but that is all gone and they are burning multiple times in 20 years now. As soon as the fuel levels come back up they burn again. And again.