Last Chance old-growth timber sale outside of Wolf Creek, OR

*Image taken at the Medford District BLM’s Last Chance timber sale auction. Credit: Roman Battaglia, Jefferson Public Radio.*

Update from George Sexton, KS Wild Conservation Director:

In an attempt to attend the Last Chance auction at the Medford Interagency Office, the Medford BLM shut out the public and the press to secretly sell off the "Take a Chance" old-growth timber sale to timber corporations behind locked doors.

As part of my job to represent the public interest as KS Wild's Conservation Director, I have been attending the public timber sales of forests located on public lands in public federal buildings for over 20 years. By attending the auctions, I am able to confirm that the BLM notifies timber bidders of pending appeals and legal challenges for the sales they may buy.

Now the BLM is refusing to let conservation organizations, the public, or the press observe what goes on behind closed doors, all while selling off old-growth forests that belong to all Americans to select timber industry representatives.

We believe that democracy requires government transparency and accountability. KS Wild is going to stand against the ongoing slide into government secrecy, authoritarianism, and corporate rule. The fate of public forests and public governance are fundamentally intertwined.

You can read the full story as reported by JPR by clicking here.

read the jpr coverage

Local BLM timber planners like to contend that they don't log old-growth anymore. Unfortunately that claim is simply false. While some old-growth trees are designated for retention in some BLM logging units, it is common practice for the BLM to fell old-growth trees to facilitate logging road construction, landing establishment and yarding corridors. Additionally, while the BLM retains some old-growth trees in some logging units, the agency nevertheless often removes the forest canopy and structure that defines an old-growth forest. These logging prescriptions involve the "downgrading" or "removal" of so much old-growth forest canopy that the logging units no longer support the habitat needs of spotted owls and other wildlife species that depend on ancient forest habitat.

Check out the Medford BLM's latest old-growth timber sale called "Last Chance" on this page, and read KS Wild's "scoping" comments.

See KS Wild’s filed appeal here.

See the BLM’s revised Environmental Assessment here.

See KS Wild’s revised Environmental Assessment comments from March 2025.

Read our Notice of Intent to sue the BLM under the Endangered Species Act here.

Last Chance timber sale fast facts:

1,297 acres of riparian reserve logging- including trees in the "secondary shade zone"

2,590 acres of cable yarding
5,080 acres of ground based yarding
570 acre of helicopter yarding
Page 59 of the revised EA: "The 787 acres of variable retention harvest would convert the mature structure to early successional stand establishment, delaying promotion of large fire-resilient trees”
The proposal to modify nearly half of western pond turtle overwintering habitat in the project area is likely a death sentence for the local population and may contribute to the already established need to list the species under the Endangered Species Act of the western pond turtle.

BLM states the proposed 4-acre "gap" clearcuts throughout the logging units will not improve fire behavior and will increase wind speeds

252 acre of logging in Late Successional Reserves
Building a logging road through coho critical habitat in Bull Run Creek
Includes waivers to allow for logging road construction through botanical buffer sites
29 miles of new logging road construction
3,420 acres of NSO Nesting, Roosting and Foraging habitat removal