The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is giving Oregonians more time to protest on the recently released final environmental impact statement over how the agency intends to manage its Western Oregon lands.

People who want to submit protests will have until Dec. 8 to file those claims for the Western Oregon Plan Revisions.

A protest period is not a comment period.  Valid protests address only those issues that were submitted for the record during the planning process and contain a concise statement explaining why the decision to adopt the proposed plan would violate an applicable statute, regulation or BLM policy. Any person who participated in the planning process and has an interest, which is or may be adversely affected by the approval or amendment of a resource management plan, may protest such approval or amendment.

A copy of the announcement of the 30-day protest period, along with the rules for filing a protest, is available online at: http://www.blm.gov/or/plans/wopr/index.php.