In October 1991, after just moving into Eugene after resigning my spotted owl survey position with the Umpqua National Forest, I began hearing news about the Warner Creek arson fire.
Soon thereafter I discovered dedicated and tenacious wildlands defenders like Wendell Wood of Oregon Wild and Roy Keene of Our Forests, who inspired me to throw every spare hour outside of my marbled murrelet survey work for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to protect the last wild ancient forests stands in Oregon.
In 1995, President Bill Clinton signed a supplemental bill that included the “logging without laws rider,” opening up tens of thousands of acres of ancient forest formerly protected by federal court decisions across the Pacific Northwest and beyond to clear-cut logging. This policy also reversed protections for the 9,000-acre Warner Creek arson burn from lawsuits, thus opening it to post-fire logging…