The East Applegate Ridge Trail (East ART) has been a labor of love and represents a broad-based community effort to create appreciation for the mountains of the Applegate River watershed and leave a legacy for future generations to enjoy. Applegate Valley community members, along with other folks from throughout southwestern Oregon, spent over a decade working to build the East ART Trail, and since its opening in 2017, it has quickly become one of the most popular non-motorized trails in southwestern Oregon, and the pride of the Applegate Valley.
Many in the region have a deep love and appreciation for this place, and a deep personal connection to the East ART Trail. For those who love this place, who helped build the trail, and today help maintain the trail, the logging authorized in the Holcomb Hollow Timber Sale represents a clear and unforgivable betrayal by the BLM. Instead of stewarding these lands, working with those who have invested in these lands, and managing this small sliver of public land for the public’s enjoyment, the BLM is exploiting the trail’s timber for industry profits, sacrificing its scenic and recreational value, undermining the area’s biological integrity, and degrading the legacy and vision so many have worked so hard to build, maintain, and support.
Last weekend ASA was out monitoring unlogged portions of the SOS Project in the Holcomb Hollow Timber Sale adjacent to the East Applegate Ridge Trail. The goal is to create a record of what is there now and compare that with what is left after the logging occurs.
The Holcomb Hollow Timber Sale is currently being logged by Parker Excavation and Logging, and when we were out doing forest monitoring, logging operations were taking place in the forests just a few hundred yards from the East ART Trail. In the not too distant future, logging will begin along the trail, on both sides of the trail, and within the trail’s renowned viewshed. This logging will degrade the East ART Trail, its scenery and its recreational experience, while “giving the finger” to those who worked so hard to build this incredible community asset and renowned non-motorized trail.
After conducting detailed, plot-based monitoring of unlogged timber sale units, we took some time to witness the destruction of forests in the Holcomb Hollow Timber Sale, and get a preview of the destruction soon to take place along our beloved East ART Trail.
With heavy hearts we walked through the travesty BLM calls the Holcomb Hollow Timber Sale, unit 13-3. In this logging unit, the canopy has been devastated through the removal of large diameter conifers and mature hardwood trees. What remains is not a forest, but instead a scattering of pine trees, a few standing snags, and a handful of tree-form hardwoods that happened to survive the tractor logging and tree felling operations.
Exposed to the elements, these formerly forested stands are now extremely vulnerable to windthrow, drought stress, high heat loads, beetle mortality, and “accelerated overstory mortality.” In short, now that these trees have been so incredibly exposed, they are unlikely to survive, or thrive on these hot, droughty, denuded slopes.
In the preceding years, these stands will also fill in with dense understory growth, thick brush, regenerating trees, logging slash, and a large flush of highly flammable non-native grasses and noxious weeds. This will increase fire risks on the slopes above our communities and make these stands far less resilient to future wildfires and disturbance events.
The soil in these logged areas has been churned into mud and is now littered in logging slash. The forest floor, renowned along the East ART Trail for its beautiful wildflower displays, has been denuded of vegetation and rutted with tractor treads. New roads, skid roads, and “tractor skid” roads have been cut into the gentle slopes, and in most places the entire ecosystem has been converted by Parker Excavation and Logging into an industrialized wasteland.
The logging is also extremely detrimental to wildlife who use these forests as shelter from extreme heat and harsh cold. The living trees and forest canopy, along with the dead standing snags are important wildlife habitats, utilized by deer, elk, black bear, great gray owls, northern spotted owls, raptors, woodpeckers, Pacific fisher, and a myriad of other species.
After years of building relationships with these mountains, after sweating and toiling to build trail, working diligently to maintain trail, and after excitedly hiking the East ART Trail over and over again, it stings to think of the disrespect of our public land managers, and the greed of the timber purchasers who will forever alter and degrade this shared natural legacy.
The East Applegate Ridge Trail serves a significant public purpose and is cherished by local residents, visitors to the region, and all who explore its diverse habitats, spectacular wildflowers, mature forests, and incredible views. The experience of trail users, the natural environment, and the incredible viewshed will all be heavily degraded by logging off some of the trail’s only cool, shaded forest habitat, and by converting these mature forests into ugly, logged-over stumpfields.
BLM has sacrificed these forests, this vital community asset, this cherished non-motorized trail, and the enjoyment of these forests by future generations for short-term timber industry profits and low value timber hardly worth hauling out of the woods. Sold at a loss to the taxpayer, we are literally paying to be betrayed by the BLM, to have our cherished forests and recreation areas abused, and our quality of life degraded.
The grief and loss for the East Applegate Ridge Trail and its beautiful forests is very real for those of us who love the area, and the scars will last for generations. The logging of the East Applegate Ridge Trail should be a call to action for local communities, to our elected officials, and to those who love these public lands.
The Medford District BLM knows no bounds, has no humility, and would gladly sell off every forest in its ownership for pennies on the dollar. They are a rogue government agency that simply cannot be trusted with our public lands, no longer serves the public interest, is unaccountable to the people, and must be stopped. We only hope that we can turn our collective grief into outrage, and that outrage can be leveraged into change.
If BLM logging continues unabated in the Applegate Valley, our last intact native forests will be lost and our wildlife and watersheds will suffer. ASA will not stand by and watch while our future is thrown away by the Medford District BLM. We will fight, we will witness, we will document, and we will organize. Please join us! We have a lot be proud of in southwestern Oregon, a lot still to lose, and a lot to gain by standing up to BLM.
For more information check out this photo gallery created by local forest activist and Applegate Valley resident Vincent Dawans. We want to thank Vincent for his work with Save Applegate Forests for Everyone, and for his skills that have helped develop the app-based forest monitoring program. Thanks Vincent!
Contact your local BLM officials and let them know what you think of logging off the East Applegate Ridge Trail and its incredible viewshed.
Medford District BLM Area Manager, Elizabeth Burghard: eburghar@blm.gov
Ashland Resource Area Field Manager, Lauren Brown: lpbrown@blm.gove
Also contact your elected officials and express your outrage that BLM is logging off the East Applegate Ridge Trail. Let them know we expect them to fight for our public forest lands and quality of life here in Oregon.