designate your own park on threatened lands

sign maker, 19.11.2007 23:57

Check out this great idea to throw another wrench into the BLMs WOPR plans. Plus it has a great media hook. Declare every tract and grove, especially those threatened, as a memorial for community members or deceased loved ones and/or children or grandchildren.

Do a little wood working and install signs where people can see them and drive by them. TELL THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA -- Don't let our ancient forests suffer in silence! This could become a take the land back movement in Cascadia!!

While the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is working hard to triple logging levels on public forestlands throughout western Oregon, citizens are likewise busily designating some of these important low elevation forests as memorial groves for deceased community members, forest activists and loved ones.

For example, twenty miles southwest of Eugene, just outside of Lowpass on hwy 36, a beautiful stand of huge old trees threatened by the BLM’s Western Oregon Planning Revision (WOPR) process has come into public focus. That’s because Fergus McLean took matters into his own hands and installed a homemade wooden sign to a tree in a visible location that reads: “Jeffrey Mentzer Old Growth Park”.

The sign is in honor of a tree planter who died a few years back. Seeing Mentzer memorialized with this grassroots public park designation is making people in that community smile, though the BLM is not as pleased.

BLM spokesman Alan Hoffmeister said while he appreciated McLean’s motives, posting signs on BLM land requires a permit. “You just can’t put up a sign up on public lands,” he said.

A lovely sign designating the “Joan Norman Memorial Grove” is scheduled for a public unveiling soon; named for the legendary forest activist who made her home in Cave Junction, Oregon and helped lead Biscuit actions in 2005 before she died later that year.
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From the Eugene register guard - this works! 20.11.2007 - 00:01 TAKING A STAND FOR A PRESERVE By Susan Palmer Published: Saturday, November 3, 2007 - Register-Guard, Eugene LOW PASS — Fergus McLean isn’t bothering with whatever bureaucratic process it takes to create a public park. He’s just gone ahead and declared one in an expansive stand of huge old trees on federal land in the Coast Range. He nailed a sign — black paint on white board — to a tree about a half mile northwest of the gas station at Low Pass on Highway 36 in honor of a fellow tree planter who died a couple of years ago and who loved the woods. It reads Jeffrey Mentzer Old Growth Park. The thought of a park — even an impromptu one — honoring Mentzer was a little overwhelming for his brother Fred Mentzer, who helped McLean with the sign on Friday. “He loved the woods. We loved the woods,” said Menzter, also a long-time tree planter. The trees in question rise up on hills on either side of the highway, halfway between Mapleton and Junction City, and they are some of the tallest McLean has ever measured in more than two decades of working in the woods planting trees and surveying. At first, McLean thought he’d come upon a Douglas fir 314 feet tall, a number approaching the current record — a 329 foot Doug fir northeast of Sitkum. But subsequent measuring with the tools of the trade, a relascope and a range finder, showed the tree was more like 285 feet McLean said. He estimated its age at 500 years. It was one of many big trees on the U.S. Bureau of Land Management tract that skirts the highway through the Coast Range. McLean is making his unofficial park designation as the BLM considers tripling logging on its Oregon forests. The logging plan, prompted by a lawsuit from the timber industry, is opposed by many environmental groups. The agency is taking public comment through January. The stand of trees that McLean treasures is off limits to logging under BLM rules, part of the network of federal forests reserved under the Northwest Forest Plan for the northern spotted owl. But under the BLM’s new proposal, the trees would become part of BLM’s loggable harvest base, in which trees would be clear-cut on an 80- to 100-year cycle. Besides the big sign visible from Highway 36, McLean also posted smaller signs. One points with an arrow to a narrow trail east of the highway, with the words “deep woods experience.” Another sign, on the west side of the highway, points the way to the huge tree. Standing among the massive trunks and draping sword ferns, McLean said he posted the signs because the trees are stunning and they’re at risk if the BLM gets its way. The stands of trees are important in part because they’re easy to get to from a public road, he said. BLM forests are a checkerboard pattern of one-mile squares mixed in with private property, so that much BLM land is inaccessible behind gates. “Pretty soon, it’s all going to be gone and people won’t know what was here,” McLean said. But a BLM spokesman said it’s too soon to assume these particular trees will be cut. The BLM has drafted three options calling for different logging levels. The BLM’s preferred option would open the trees up for logging. The public has through Jan. 11 to comment. “This is the time to have those discussions, because no decisions have been made yet,” said BLM spokesman Alan Hoffmeister. While Hoffmeister said he appreciated McLean’s motives, posting signs on BLM land requires a permit. “You just can’t put up a sign up on public lands,” he said. elfin>