Susan Jane M. Brown

The 1994 Northwest Forest Plan was heralded as the truce in the Timber Wars and was intended to bring peace to the war in the woods in the Pacific Northwest, home to cathedral ancient forests and the much-maligned northern spotted owl.  In some ways the Northwest Forest Plan succeeded, and in other ways it failed; but it unquestionably brought to the nation’s attention the plight of old growth forests everywhere.  Today, the Forest Service is proposing to amend all national forest plans across the country to conserve these forests, and at the same time is proposing a climate-smart forestry amendment to the Northwest Forest Plan.  How does each amendment stack up against one another, and will either lead to a lasting détente to the Timber Wars, or is this just the latest salvo?

Speaker Biography

Susan Jane Brown is Principal and Chief Legal Counsel of Silvix Resources, a nonprofit environmental law firm with more than 20 years of experience in federal forest law, policy, and collaboration with a mission of using those tools to advance the conservation, restoration, and stewardship of western public lands.  Her primary focus of litigation is federal public lands forest management, but her practice includes cases involving the Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act, National Forest Management Act, Oregon and California Lands Act, and other land management statutes. Ms. Brown is a former Co-Chair of the National Advisory Committee for Implementation of the National Forest System Land Management Planning Rule, has served on the Federal Advisory Committee for the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program, and is currently Co-Chair of the Northwest Forest Plan Area Advisory Committee. She teaches Forest Law & Policy to upper division law students at Lewis and Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon and is heavily engaged in collaborative forest restoration in the Upper John Day Basin in eastern Oregon.