Key Accomplishments

BMBP strives to succeed on a variety of fronts, fighting to protect biodiversity, restore damaged habitats and extirpated species, promoting alternative ways of thinking, bringing people to experience wild nature, and giving activist trainings and workshops.

Our litigation has resulted in precedent-setting legal victories, protecting essential wildlife habitat and creating beneficial environmental case law for use by activists across the U.S. Among our many accomplishments are:

• In 2014, with co-plaintiff Hell’s Canyon Preservation Council, we won our District Court appeal on the Snow Basin timber sale. This decision upheld the argument that the Forest Service cannot move forward with their plans to violate existing standards (such as those protecting large trees), as their analysis and consideration of important ecological conditions was inadequate. This ruling also set important precedent for other timber sales using Forest Plan amendments, and saved over 10,000 large trees.
• Also in 2014, we won our Ninth Circuit appeal supporting our legal claim that the USFS needs to better analyze potential impacts and protect riparian areas from toxic herbicide spraying on the Wallowa Whitman National Forest. We plan to apply this precedent-setting victory to improve other invasive plant management plans
• Set legal precedent on post-fire logging in sales such as the Big Tower Fire in the Umatilla National Forest.
• BMBP stopped tens of thousands of acres of logging in four National Forests.
• We protected Aldrich roadless area, a rare ancient forest which has never been logged, in the JOBS timber sale.
• We have also protected the integrity of roadless areas that provide pristine headwaters for fish species and refugia for rare and far-ranging wildlife. We helped achieve protections for the M&O, Aldrich Mountain, Dixie Butte, Egley, and Fox roadless areas.
• In 2012 we reduced herbicide use on the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest from 11,000 to 1,000 acres through litigation. This win also resulted in strengthening case law for cumulative impacts analysis
• In 2002, we shut down biocide spraying against a native Tussock Moth species in up to six million acres, across six National Forests in Oregon and Washington. This case set legal precedent on Clean Water Act law involving point sources of pollution. If this spraying had been allowed, it would have killed all species of moths and butterflies in their larval stages at the time of spraying.
• Also in 2002, we stopped the use of dangerous herbicides on public forest lands in Malheur National Forest for over a decade, and stimulated Region 6 to revise their regional Invasive Plant Management Plan to emphasize prevention of exotic invasive plants.
• Under threat of litigation from Natural Resources Defense Council, BMBP, and other allies, the agency adopted more protective standards into agency forest management plans across numerous National Forests in eastern Washington and Oregon. As a result, Forest Plan standards now include additional protections regarding increased buffers on fish-bearing streams, goals for monitoring and restoration for streams and fish habitat, and some protections for Northern goshawk nest and post-fledging areas. Until recently, they also included the preservation of trees over 21” in diameter. However, the protections for large trees that were won in the mid-90s were severely weakened in the final days of the Trump Administration.
• We have significantly modified many more thousands of acres and gotten ecologically sensitive areas dropped from logging projects- such as those in moist mixed conifer forests, roadless areas, and critical wildlife habitat.

These are just a few of our many legal victories on behalf of wild lands. Many other destructive projects have been prevented or significantly modified through appeals, public exposure, and negotiation. In addition, we continue to challenge ecologically harmful post-fire logging and bring needed public attention to the overwhelmingly negative ecological impacts of post-fire logging projects. We have also prevented excessive road building, and stopped the re-opening of closed roads through our negotiation efforts.

We also have worked on ending corporate dominance over ecosystems and communities, with successes including:

• The organization of an “End Corporate Dominance” conference in Portland, Oregon that persisted for three years, attracting 800 to 1,000 people each time.
• Publishing a people’s guide to institutions leveraging corporate power, “The Elite Consensus,” by George Draffan.
• Assisting with the organization of Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment, a labor-environmental alliance.

Public outreach and training workings include:

• The training of over 500 volunteer interns during our summer internship program. Interns are trained in forest ecology, wildlife and plant identification, map and compass orienteering, understanding of environmental law and the functioning of government agencies, and other activist skills.
• Reaching thousands of people with our speaking presentations, workshops, activist skills training, and media interviews.
• Working with a variety of forest management collaborative groups, forging relationships, and bringing an informed and experienced environmental position to the table.

We are working to protect biodiversity, restore our wild lands, and create environmental, sociopolitical, economic, and cultural change.  Read our Get Involved! page to see how you can help!