Malheur, Umatilla, and Wallowa-Whitman National Forests

Adobe® PDF Files

Many of the documents on this website are in Adobe PDF format and require the free Adobe Reader® software to be viewed. If you are unfamiliar with Adobe Acrobat, visit our Acrobat help page. If you just need to download the software, use the following link: Get Acrobat Reader

Malheur NF
P.O. Box 909
431 Patterson Bridge Rd
John Day, OR 97845
(541) 575-3000

Umatilla NF
2517 S.W. Hailey Ave
Pendleton, OR 97801
541-278-3716

Wallowa-Whitman NF
P.O. Box 907
1550 Dewey
Baker City, OR 97814
(541) 523-6391

Background

Introduction

The National Forests of the Blue Mountains in northeast Oregon encompass about 5.3 million acres of National Forest System land. The three National Forests are the Malheur National Forest (1.5 million acres), Umatilla National Forest (1.4 million acres), and the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest (2.4 million acres including portions of Hells Canyon National Recreation Area (NRA) in Idaho administered by the Wallowa-Whitman). The Malheur National Forest manages a 240,000-acre portion of the adjacent Ochoco National Forest; this area will be included in the Blue Mountains Forest Plan Revision.

The majority of acreage is in Oregon with about 136,000 acres in Idaho to the east, and about 311,000 acres to the north in Washington. The Records of Decision for the Malheur, Umatilla, Ochoco, and Wallowa-Whitman Land and Resource Management Plans (Forest Plans) were signed on May 25, 1990, June 11, 1990, August 1, 1989, and April 23, 1990 respectively. Each Forest Plan has been modified through various amendments signed since that time.

Guiding Principles for Land Management Plan Revision

The following principles will govern the Plan revision process in the Blue Mountains.

• We will work with our local communities and others interested in the revision process using collaboration and other public participation approaches.
• The revision effort will produce three separate Land and Resource Management Plans and their associated documents.
• The revised Plans will focus on outcomes, not outputs.
• The starting points for the revision are the current Forest Plans. This will not be a zero-based planning effort. The revision effort will be directed by a “Need for Change” approach. The need for change will be identified using a variety of sources including, but not limited to, Forest Plan monitoring, science from the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project (ICBEMP), and existing watershed assessments.
• We will make every effort to take advantage of existing work. This includes, but is not limited to, protocols developed in other Regions, ICBEMP, combining work efforts with Bureau of Land Management (BLM) planning where appropriate, using the 1998 Blue Mountain Plan Revision Information Needs Analysis where appropriate, and work done for existing Forest Plans.
• Each revised Plan will be built from common elements (building blocks). For example we intend to retain the Management Area concept, although application will be modified from that seen in existing Forest Plans.