Conservation Lands Foundation Thanks Bureau of Land Management For Advancing Management Plan for Cascade-Siskiyou Monument Expansion

Denver, CO - Today, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) released its final management plan for the 113,500 acres of public lands in southwestern Oregon’s Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument. Designated in 2000 and expanded in 2017, the monument was created to safeguard its ecological wonders and biological diversity. This region serves as an important habitat connectivity corridor, ensuring ecological resilience for wildlife amid increasing threats and large-scale disturbances that are exacerbated by climate change, such as wildfires and droughts. This plan represents a necessary upgrade to the outdated resource management plans that were previously governing management of this landscape, and we applaud the BLM for advancing it.

The BLM’s proposed plan offers a flexible approach to managing the monument, with a moderate focus on the protection, maintenance and restoration of its resources. The plan identifies wilderness character on eight new units, offers additional interim management protections for unprotected sensitive aquatic and riparian habitats and begins the process of decommissioning unused roads. However, the proposed level of management falls short in centering conservation in this national monument designated for its ecological and biological values, and addressing the urgency of the ongoing climate and biodiversity crises. The plan doesn’t go far enough to address impacts from grazing and places a low-elevation population of pika, an indicator species for climate change, in conflict with unnecessary recreational disturbances through the establishment of a new Extensive Recreation Management Area.

The Conservation Lands Foundation’s mission is to protect public lands managed by the BLM and the following is a statement from Kara Matsumoto, Public Lands Policy Director at Conservation Lands Foundation:

“We appreciate the Bureau of Land Management's efforts to finalize this important management plan, especially with a lack of appropriate funding from Congress to do the job, but we remain concerned that conservation is not prioritized as strongly as it should be for a unit of the National Conservation Lands. While we understand the challenges at play here, we believe more could have been done to elevate the protection and restoration of the resources, objects and values for which the area was designated, including utilizing tools such as Areas of Critical Environmental Concern. We look forward to working with the BLM to ensure that management of this extraordinary landscape aligns with the legal mandates of the National Conservation Lands and current BLM policies and addresses the escalating challenges posed by the climate crisis.”

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About Conservation Lands Foundation

Conservation Lands Foundation leads the national movement of community-based advocates to protect, restore and expand National Conservation Lands. CLF is headquartered in Durango, Colorado with field offices throughout the West and in Washington, D.C. For more information, visit conservationlands.org.