Activists sang and carried signs outside the Medford Bureau of Land Management office before a timber auction to protest the damage to sensitive species like the threatened northern spotted owl and northwestern pond turtle.
The timber sale is part of the BLM’s Last Chance timber project, which proposes commercial logging and wildfire reduction efforts across about 11,000 acres northeast of Grants Pass.
The project is the subject of a lawsuit filed by the environmental group KS Wild. A hearing was held last week on a proposed preliminary injunction that would halt current and future logging while the case proceeds.
Attorney Sydney Wilkins said the group is concerned the BLM incorrectly determined the project area was unoccupied by northern spotted owls.
“There were calls heard and recorded," she said. "And so there was a question about whether their unoccupied determination was arbitrary and capricious or inappropriate.”
Wilkins said the BLM called an owl biologist to testify at the hearing, an uncommon step for a preliminary injunction. The biologist defended the agency’s survey method, known as call-back surveys, in which humans imitate owl calls and listen for responses.
Wilkins argued that call-back surveys are less effective than passive acoustic monitoring devices, or PAM, which record sounds over time. She cited a 2023 study that found PAM more effective at identifying owl populations, particularly in areas with invasive barred owls, which can discourage northern spotted owls from responding to call-back surveys. She added that the biologist testified PAM is used in other northern spotted owl surveys.
The BLM declined to comment on the matter, citing pending litigation.
In court filings, Michael Asch, supervisor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Roseburg Field office, said the study was published five months before the USFWS signed its opinion on the project. Asch said the study provided only weak evidence that barred owls discourage northern spotted owls from responding to call-back surveys. The filings do not explain why the agency chose call-back surveys over PAM for this project.
This is the second lawsuit KS Wild has filed over the Last Chance project. The first was filed after the initial timber auction in late 2024 but was withdrawn in September 2025, in part due to changes to the National Environmental Policy Act under the Trump administration that affected the group’s legal arguments.
The Department of the Interior removed 80% of the existing NEPA regulations.
Wilkins said the BLM has reduced transparency and public input as it moves to increase logging.
"There was a court filing by Murphy Company alleging that they weren't starting operations until April," she said. "Then I drove up at the end of January, and then the day after I drove up to check, all of a sudden they said, 'Whoops, we actually already began.' So they filed another filing."
Julie Weis, an attorney for Murphy Company, which won the bid for the first timber sale in the project, said in an email that the company followed notification requirements.
"In August 2025, Murphy Company gave KS Wild counsel two weeks’ notice of the commencement of Paul’s Payoff operations, after which the attorney dismissed its Last Chance Project lawsuit," she said. "Different attorneys later filed the current lawsuit, when Murphy Company was in the midst of Paul’s Payoff operations."
Weis did not respond to questions about whether the company is blocking BLM roads near the logging operations, which KS Wild has documented.
Wilkins said a decision on the preliminary injunction is expected in the coming weeks.
