Pacific Northwest Electronic Warfare Range Environmental Assessment

Last fall, we shared information on the Navy's proposed use of Olympic National Forest Service land for training electronic warfare range mobile emitters through our Conservation Currents email list. 

"The Olympic Peninsula is home to two iconic public lands - Olympic National Forest and Olympic National Park - where thousands of outdoor recreationists, including hikers, skiers, photographers, kayakers and climbers, head to adventure each year. An issue that many Washington recreationists have expressed concern about is the Navy's proposed use of Forest Service land."

Olympic National Forest described the issue as:

"The Navy is proposing training electronic warfare (EW) range consisting of the movement and operation of EW mobile emitters. Several sites are on Forest Service Roads."

There has been lots of coverage on this issue, from both the Navy and Olympic National Forest. We encourage you to read up on the different sides of the issue, and submit your comments here. The comment period ends soon: this Friday, November 28th.

We also submitted comments as an organization during the comment period last fall. You can read them here.

After we highlighted the issue in our Conservation Currents e-newsletter, which goes out to over 22,000 emails, We could see that 50% of everyone who read that e-newsletter clicked on the link to comment on the issue. It is great to know our voice was a large part of the 4,000+ comments the Forest Service received.

The Associated Press reports that “the U.S. Forest Service says a flood of public comments is delaying its decision on whether to grant the Navy a permit for expanded electronic-warfare training on the Olympic Peninsula.”

The Forest Service does not expect to make a decision before early next year.