Over the summer, the Mt. Hood National Forest Service proposed cutting trees along over 200 miles of roads within the 2020 Riverside Fire area. Bark, a community organization who has trained hundreds of volunteers about the basics of forest policy and saved tens of thousands of acres of forest from logging and roadbuilding, submitted recommendations to reshape the Forest Service's proposal that would have allowed aggressive logging activities in a sensitive, post-fire ecosystem. After months of hard work and collaboration, the Forest Service is taking Bark’s advice.
On this episode of Locus Focus we talk with Michael Kochta, Bark’s Forest Watch Coordinator, who has been keeping a close eye on what’s been going on in the Mt. Hood National Forest since the fires raged last year.
Michael Kochta, as a dedicated volunteer with Bark, helped kick-off Bark’s fledgling post-logging monitoring program, BMP2. His committment to protecting healthy ecosystems in perpetuity has played itself out in a number of ways, from field checking timber sales for the Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project to working each spring to document the Portland area’s native turtle populations. Michael firmly believes that meaningful participation in public land management starts with getting out to the woods and enjoying oneself.
- KBOO