The Final Month Has Begun: Why the Blue Mountains Forest Plan Revision Should Be Withdrawn and Restarted

The public comment period for the Blue Mountains Forest Plan Revision DEIS closes on September 30, 2026.

Forest Access For All believes the current DEIS should be withdrawn, corrected, and restarted with a complete public-review record.

This is not simply about whether someone supports Alternative 2 or Alternative 3. The deeper problem is that the public is being asked to comment on a forest plan that does not provide a fair, complete, and understandable record for Eastern Oregon communities.

1. The Errata and Missing Support-Record Problem

The DEIS pointed the public to supplemental information. The Forest Service later posted errata saying those supplemental-information documents were not published with the Draft EIS.

That is not a minor paperwork issue.

If the agency relied on supplemental information, appendices, specialist reports, analysis files, GIS layers, public-comment coding, alternatives-development records, or other

materials, the public should be able to review those materials during the comment period.

The public cannot meaningfully comment if the agency’s position is simply: “The DEIS is enough. Trust our conclusions.”

2. The Plan Is Not Clearly Revising the 1990 Forest Plans

The stated purpose of this process is to revise the existing 1990 forest plans. But the DEIS does not clearly show the public what is changing from the 1990 plan baseline.

Alternative 2 is often presented as an increase from current reduced management levels. That is not the same thing as showing whether Alternative 2 increases, decreases, or changes the direction in the 1990 plans being revised.

The public deserves a clear comparison: 1990 plans, current/recent implementation, Alternative 2, and Alternative 3.

3. Local Household and Subsistence Economics Are Not Meaningfully Analyzed

The DEIS talks about recreation and broad county-level economics, but it does not adequately analyze how the plan affects local household use of the forest.

For many Eastern Oregon families, forest access is tied to firewood, hunting, food gathering, camping, grazing, emergency access, minerals and materials access, family access, elderly and disabled access, and small-community survival.

Those are not just recreation preferences. They are part of the rural economy and way of life.

4. Access Was Pushed Outside the Plan While Access Sideboards Are Still Being Adopted

The Forest Service says access and Travel Management are outside this forest plan revision. But the plan still adopts Recreation Opportunity Spectrum settings, management areas, transportation direction, wildlife direction, riparian standards, scenic direction, roadless assumptions, and monitoring language that can guide or constrain future access decisions.

The agency may defer route-by-route Travel Management under Subpart B. But that does not mean it can avoid analyzing how this forest plan affects practical public access.

5. 2018 Planning Material Was Reused Without a Clear Public Crosswalk

The prior Blue Mountains planning effort was withdrawn after years of controversy. If the Forest Service reused material from that withdrawn effort, the public deserves to know what was reused, what was changed, what was dropped, and what was fixed.

Without a readable crosswalk, the public cannot tell whether the agency corrected the earlier problems or simply repackaged them.

6. BIC, Wallowa Resources, EOU, and Pre-Public Review Questions Need Full Disclosure

The record raises serious questions about the role of the Blues Intergovernmental Council, Wallowa Resources, REV, EOU, and other participants in early alternative development.

If draft materials were shared with BIC participants, or if Alternative 2 was shaped by BIC recommendations before the general public had the same opportunity, the agency needs to disclose exactly who received what, under what authority, and how that input was used.

That is especially important where the Forest Service has referred to a “BIC MOU,” while the MOU reviewed by FAFA appears to be a cooperating-agency agreement with specific signatory governments, not a blanket agreement with every BIC participant.

What FAFA Is Asking For

Forest Access For All believes the Forest Service should withdraw the current DEIS, provide the full relied-upon support record, disclose how access was scoped out of meaningful plan-level analysis, explain the role of the BIC and other pre-public processes, provide clear baseline comparisons to the 1990 plans, analyze household and local-use impacts, and restart the public comment period with a complete and usable package.

Eastern Oregon deserves a forest plan that is clear, honest, and durable.

We do not need another withdrawn plan wrapped in softer language.

We need a plan that protects working forests, practical access, grazing, timber, firewood, hunting, emergency response, rural households, and the communities that depend on these forests.

For tomorrow morning, I’d lead with the Facebook post, link to the blog, and keep repeating this line over the next month:

This is not about liking or disliking an alternative. It is about whether the public was given a fair process and enough information to comment meaningfully.