Steven Cole documents old growth forests saved by Umpqua Watersheds

Conservation Today

Steve Cole is a cartographer and photographer of old growth forests. He has been documenting public land timber sales on the Umpqua, mostly sales stopped by Umpqua Watersheds in the late 90's and early 2000's. Steve has a remarkable website documenting this work: umpquaLSOGproject.org. Steve's site is a celebration of what good work we all did back then, including the brave activists that sat in trees to protect them. I recently rode with Steve as he visited two of those sales, the Snog sale (1999, on the Diamond Lake RD), and the White Castle sale (2014, Roseburg BLM). We also visited BLM's Sugar Pine sale (1997, near Tiller), and a newer project where we failed to save the old growth: Lone Rock Timber's new road through a BLM forest near Susan Creek. I recorded Steve's impressions as we drove, so there is a different sound to this interview. Steve also details how he uses a drone to take videos and other photographic techniques, as well as how he made the carbon maps on his web site. The website where it is all at is: umpquaLSOGproject.org. Until Steve gets it all up on his website, other pictures of the timber sales we visited are here: Snog: https://flic.kr/s/aHskeBcu3e White Castle:https://flic.kr/s/aHsmqZvGNJ Lone Rock Timber logging BLM old growth: https://flic.kr/s/aHskvJ7H4Q Older footage of the White Castle tree sit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VukPXLzSACg