Forest Bridges: The O&C Forest Habitat Project,

Founded on the basis of trust in 2015, FOREST BRIDGES: THE O&C FOREST HABITAT PROJECT, INC. is a charitable non-profit collaborative that brings together people of different perspectives on forest management to foster sustainable forests and habitats through active conservation management and restoration solutions exclusively on the 2.9 million acres of O&C Lands in western Oregon. The organization, which became a 501(c)(3) in 2019, sees itself as ‘attempting to fill a void’ as the only all-inclusive, consensus-based grassroots collaborative working to shift the management paradigm on the whole of the western Oregon O&C Lands and move beyond decades of polarization, an entrenched culture of litigation, and land allocations that have impinged the scale of active management and restoration efforts needed to address more than 100 years of fire suppression. These and other issues have contributed to exacerbating detrimental conditions on the O&C Lands, especially on overstocked dry forests, which face increasing high-severity wildfire; increased climate change-driven drought and invasive species; protracted seasonal wildfire smoke impacting public health; declining rural economies; and reduced public access for recreation. Over the years, the Forest Bridges collaborative has risen to the challenge of developing management principles and approaches that are constructive and viewed as reasonable from the perspective of all our partners and interest areas: Tribal Nations, ecological and climate resilience, legacy forests, plant, wildlife and other biological habitats, timber and wood products production, county revenue expectations, recreation and other material and non-material values important to the community at large. We have prepared several "living" policy papers based on our principles and strategies and submitted proposed management alternatives to Bureau of Land Management & USDA Forest Service planning processes in the last year, which have been well-received.