COTTAGE GROVE – Last week, Douglas County Commissioner Tim Freeman, President of the Association of O&C Counties (AOCC), hosted a quarterly meeting at Starfire Lumber in Cottage Grove, attended by AOCC board members and county commissioners. The meeting included a tour of Starfire Lumber’s new timber-built administration building and facilities.
The gathering followed pivotal federal actions affecting O&C timberlands. In January, Congress passed the FY26 Interior Appropriations Bill, reinstating O&C counties’ historical share of timber receipts, potentially increasing annual revenue by approximately 50%. Following this, the U.S. Department of the Interior issued a “Notice of Intent” to revise the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Resource Management Plan (RMP) governing 2.5 million acres of O&C timberlands.
Douglas County has again been invited to act as a cooperating agency in this revision process, a status it has held historically. The first RMP revision meeting occurred on March 18. At the AOCC meeting, the timber leaders recognized efforts to increase timber receipts and to foster collaboration with the BLM to achieve a more balanced management of O&C timberlands.
