Background
Introduction
The National Forests of the Blue Mountains in
northeast Oregon encompass about 5.3 million acres of National
Forest System land. The three National Forests are the Malheur
National Forest (1.5 million acres), Umatilla National Forest
(1.4 million acres), and the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest (2.4
million acres including portions of Hells Canyon National Recreation
Area (NRA) in Idaho administered by the Wallowa-Whitman). The
Malheur National Forest manages a 240,000-acre portion of the
adjacent Ochoco National Forest; this area will be included in
the Blue Mountains Forest Plan Revision.
The majority of acreage is in Oregon with about
136,000 acres in Idaho to the east, and about 311,000 acres to
the north in Washington. The Records of Decision for the Malheur,
Umatilla, Ochoco, and Wallowa-Whitman Land and Resource Management
Plans (Forest Plans) were signed on May 25, 1990, June 11, 1990,
August 1, 1989, and April 23, 1990 respectively. Each Forest Plan
has been modified through various amendments signed since that
time.
Guiding Principles for Land Management Plan Revision
The following principles will govern the Plan
revision process in the Blue Mountains.
- We will work with our local communities and
others interested in the revision process using collaboration
and other public participation approaches.
- The revision effort will produce three separate
Land and Resource Management Plans and their associated documents.
- The revised Plans will focus on outcomes, not
outputs.
- The starting points for the revision are the
current Forest Plans. This will not be a zero-based planning effort.
The revision effort will be directed by a “Need for Change”
approach. The need for change will be identified using a variety
of sources including, but not limited to, Forest Plan monitoring,
science from the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management
Project (ICBEMP), and existing watershed assessments.
- We will make every effort to take advantage
of existing work. This includes, but is not limited to, protocols
developed in other Regions, ICBEMP, combining work efforts with
Bureau of Land Management (BLM) planning where appropriate, using
the 1998 Blue Mountain Plan Revision Information Needs Analysis
where appropriate, and work done for existing Forest Plans.
- Each revised Plan will be built from common
elements (building blocks). For example we intend to retain the
Management Area concept, although application will be modified
from that seen in existing Forest Plans.
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