Highlighting Oregon's WildLands (HOWL)

Spotlight
Summary

v0.9.2^Beta

About this site

Welcome to HOWL (Highlighting Oregon's WildLands), an interactive 3D/4D mapping and visualization tool for presenting information relevant to the protection of wilderness and wildlife in Oregon.

HOWL is a volunteer project made for Oregon Wild. HOWL is open source and uses open data.

Data sources

World Imagery basemap from Esri
OpenStreetMap basemap from OpenStreetMap
USA Topo Map basemap from Esri
Oregon state boundary from the United States Census Bureau
Historic wildfire data from Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS)
Oregon's Bureau of Land Management (BLM) old growth forests, clearcuts in Federal lands, current/potential wilderness areas, and OR7 journey route information from Oregon Wild
Oregon ecoregions data from the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
OR7 Expedition Story Map from the Wolf OR-7 Expedition Documentary Site (license)
Wolf model from Joshua Crown via OpenGameArt.org
Recent wildfires data & active wildfires layer from Geospatial Multi-Agency Coordination (GeoMAC)

Open source components

Cesium Javascript library for globe and 3D mapping
Bootstrap for mobile friendly navigation bar and dialogs
jQuery mobile-friendly Javascript utility library
Chart.js charting library
Masonry cascading grid layout library
Magnific Popup photos lightbox effect

This is a work in progress. Please report bugs and omissions. We are continually testing and enhancing this application over time. You are welcome to fork this open source project and contribute to its development.

To learn more about this project, head over to this blog.

Feedback and questions are greatly appreciated

Help

To pan the view in the map area

Left-click and drag, or
Command-click and drag, or
Single finger drag gesture

To zoom the view in the map area

Right-click and drag, or
Mouse wheel scroll, or
Two finger pinch gesture

To rotate the view in the map area

Middle-click and drag, or
Control-click and drag, or
Two finger rotate gesture

Use the right side HOWL view panel to

See view legend
Select display options
Control timeline animation playback when available

Animation playback keyboard control

Spacebar: toggle play/pause
Up/Down arrow: faster/slower
Left/Right arrow: start/end

Spotlight Summary

Oregon's Potential Forest Wilderness Areas by Ecoregion
(4,780 thousand acres total)

Data source: Oregon Wild, May 2017

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World Imagery OpenStreetMap USA Topo Maps

State Boundary

Forest Land

Landsat Live Old Growth Forests on BLM Lands State-wide Clearcuts Wilderness Areas Potential Forest Wilderness Areas

Data provided by:

Tiles © Esri — Source: Esri, i-cubed, USDA, USGS, AEX, GeoEye, Getmapping, Aerogrid, IGN, IGP, UPR-EGP, and the GIS User Community
Mapbox Landsat Live
Oregon Wild, BLM, USFS, Hansen/UMD/Google/USGS/NASA
Oregon Wild

Data attribution

Sep 6 2025 00:00:00 UTC

Sep 8 2025 00:00:00 UTC

Potential Forest Wilderness Areas

(Click on an ecoregion to view areas)

Ecoregions

Coast Range (237,723 Acres, 5%)
Columbia Plateau (0 Acres, 0%)
Blue Mountains (1,915,498 Acres, 40.1%)
Snake River Plain (0 Acres, 0%)
Willamette Valley (0 Acres, 0%)
Cascades (1,391,028 Acres, 29.1%)
Klamath Mountains (698,705 Acres, 14.6%)
Northern Basin and Range (7,741 Acres, 0.2%)
Eastern Cascades (529,070 Acres, 11.1%)

Wilderness Acreage

Less
More

Data Source: Oregon Wild