2024: A Year In Review

For many years Applegate Siskiyou Alliance has worked to protect our public lands from the immediate threats facing our region. Day in and day out, we monitor public land management activities and advocate for the protection of our beloved wildlands. Our work includes thousands of hours on the ground reviewing federal land management projects, writing detailed public comments and objections, and if necessary, preparing for litigation. It also includes organizing local communities, leading public campaigns, hosting educational opportunities, leading hikes, engaging elected officials, and increasing awareness for both the threats to this spectacular region and its incredible biological values.

Throughout the Applegate and Siskiyou Crest region, we have become a strong, grassroots voice for public land conservation, and we are working to support a vision for the future that sustains wild landscapes, maintains biodiversity, and increases habitat connectivity.

In 2024, we built our capacity, stopped multiple timber sales, secured numerous illegal off-road vehicle closures, began campaigns to stop newly emerging threats, built the Tallowbox Trail, and organized the highly successful Siskiyou Crest Conifer Field Trip Series. Below are a few of our campaigns and other major projects undertaken by Applegate Siskiyou Alliance in 2024.

Protecting Habitat

IVM/Late Mungers Timber Sale

For the past four years, we have been working to oppose the BLM’s massive IVM Project which would have logged up to 20,000 acres and built up to 90 miles of new road per decade on Medford District BLM lands throughout southwestern Oregon. To make matters worse, this proposal focused on logging Late Successional Reserve (LSR) forests designated to protect old forest habitat for the northern spotted owl. The BLM also proposed to begin implementation of this damaging timber sale program in the Williams area with the Late Mungers and Penn Butte Timber Sales.

In 2023, we filed suit against this project, challenging the entire IVM Project and both the Late Mungers and Penn Butte Timber Sales, and in April of 2024, after a year of legal filings and preparation, we successfully took BLM to court along with conservation allies.

A month later, Magistrate Judge Clarke released his findings and recommendations declaring the IVM Project unlawful. Finding that the agency was “sacrificing habitat for timber production,” Judge Clarke found that the IVM Project was inconsistent with the public involvement and scientific analysis requirements in NEPA and violated standards that limit logging in LSR forests.

After four years of consistent effort and advocacy, we saved thousands of acres of forests across SW Oregon by challenging the IVM Project, and along with our conservation allies, saved the Williams Creek watershed from the Late Mungers and Penn Butte Timber Sales.

Cedar Flat Timber Sale

In June 2024, the Medford District BLM, Grants Pass Resource Area proposed the 3,222-acre Cedar Flat Timber Sale on the flank of Grayback Mountain, along the Grayback Mountain Trail, in the upper Williams Creek watershed and on the eastern slope of Holcomb Peak. The project targeted some of the last old-growth forests remaining in the Williams Creek watershed with heavy industrial logging prescriptions, including large tree logging to 36″ diameter, removal of significant canopy cover, and group selection clearcut logging.

Applegate Siskiyou Alliance responded by immediately monitoring all of the timber sale units across the entire timber sale area, and we publicized our findings on the Applegate Siskiyou Alliance blog. By fall of 2024, the BLM had canceled the Cedar Flat Timber Sale; however, we expect the agency to repackage, and propose the timber sale again some time in the New Year, and we have begun advocating to remove all mature, old-growth and primary forest habitats from any potential timber sale proposed in the future. We will continue working in 2025, to protect the forests of upper Williams Creek and in the former Cedar Flat Timber Sale area.

Siskiyou Mountain Fuel Break Project

In the fall of 2023, the Forest Service proposed a massive fuel break project targeting multiple beloved hiking trails and some of the most intact wildlands in the Siskiyou Crest region. The project included fuel breaks along the Stein Butte/Elliott Ridge Trail in the Elliott Ridge Roadless Area, along the Sevenmile Ridge Trail in the Big Red Mountain Roadless Area, and along the Split Rock Trail in the McDonald Peak Inventoried Roadless Areas, as well as what they are calling the O’Brien Creek Fuel Break, along the road systems connecting Star Gulch to Carberry Creek (1010 Road) and O’Brien Ceek Road (1005 Road).

ASA provided detailed comments, conducted extensive field work and met with Forest Service officials about this project, including field trips. Throughout the process we expressed our concerns with fuel break development in such intact roadless watersheds, and this past summer the Forest Service withdrew the most controversial portions of this project. The agency approved only non-commercial thinning on the O’Brien Creek Fuel Break, which follows existing roads rather than damaging roadless watersheds. This was a victory for the wildlands of the Applegate, but the Forest Service has now proposed the Yellowjacket Project which encompasses most of the Forest Service lands from the Little Applegate River to Applegate Dam.

Yellowjacket Project

The Yellowjacket Project sprawls across much of the Forest Service land in the Applegate, extending from the headwaters of the Little Applegate River to Applegate Dam. This project includes numerous important wildlands we would like to see permanently protected and would allow for both commercial and non-commercial thinning. Very little information has been released about this project so far, but we have been out on the ground with the Forest Service looking at potential “treatment areas” in the southwestern portion of the project area.

We are hopeful that the Forest Service will propose a reasonable and environmentally balanced project and we will continue encouraging them to do so. We will advocate for the protection and retention of mature, late successional and old-growth forests, roadless areas, biodiversity, and wildlife habitat. We also see very little, if any, benefit from commercial logging within this planning area.

ASA will be tracking this project in 2025 and working to ensure that project activities are sufficiently focused on the protection and restoration of important biological values and wildland habitats.

BLM “Salvage” Logging

This past spring the Medford District BLM clearcut large swaths of habitat, including both dead standing and living, green trees in the Lickety Split Salvage Timber Sale in the upper portions of the Little Applegate River. ASA worked to document and publicize the environmental impacts of these clearcuts, while generating both local and national media stories that highlighted our concerns with the BLM’s damaging approach.

This past summer the BLM also approved the Boaz Salvage Timber Sale on Cinnabar Ridge despite insufficient and inaccurate scientific analysis and a total lack of public involvement. The project proposes to log 250 acres of mostly living, green forest that was unaffected by the recent beetle mortality event. Additionally, in stands with significant mortality, the BLM proposes to log the majority of the living, resilient trees. The proposal calls for logging stands to 3.3 trees per acre, on average, across the entire timber sale, and will have devastating consequences for the forests at the lower end of both the Little Applegate and Upper Applegate Valleys.

In October ASA led a field trip for local residents to see the Boaz Timber Sale units. We led a caravan of cars and used walkie talkies between the cars to point out the timber sale units as we drove up the Boaz Gulch Road. Field trip participants got to see that the majority of the timber sale units in the Boaz Timber Sale are living, green trees, and not “dead and dying” as the BLM claims.

Finally, just this past month the BLM proposed the SOS Project — a massive, programmatic project that would allow up to 15,000 acres of logging and 20 miles of new road construction every five years. This project would allow heavy industrial logging, significant canopy removal, and virtual clearcut logging in stands that sustained as little as 10% mortality (i.e. if 10% of a stand is dead, it can be clearcut!). The project includes an over 840,000-acre planning area and a proposed 254,000-acre potential treatment area. If approved, the BLM could log anywhere it chooses within this vast landscape without adequate scientific review or public involvement opportunities.

ASA will be opposing these damaging, dishonest, and inappropriate logging operations throughout the Applegate and beyond. We have been visiting proposed units, including units directly adjacent to two of ASA’s board member’s properties.

Off-Road Vehicle Closures

For over a decade ASA has taken the lead in monitoring illegal off-road vehicle activity in the Applegate River watershed and across the Siskiyou Crest. We have been documenting the impact of illegal or inappropriate off-road vehicle use in our Siskiyou Crest OHV Monitoring Reports, and have been advocating for more effective protections. On Forest Service lands, we have focused heavily on protecting Botanical Areas from off-road vehicle abuse and have engaged both the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest and Klamath National Forest.

After over a decade of hard work, our detailed off-road vehicle monitoring reports, and our consistent, non-stop advocacy has begun to bear fruit! In the past few years, and in response to our advocacy, the Forest Service has approved multiple projects across the Siskiyou Crest closing illegal off-road vehicle tracks, and we are actively encouraging the Forest Service to do more to protect the vital botanical values, the scenic wildlands of the Siskiyou Crest, and the backcountry values of the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT).

The Klamath National Forest closed numerous damaging off-road tracks near Bearground Spring and along the PCT, not far from the Condrey Mountain Inventoried Roadless Area. This past summer both the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest and Klamath National Forest worked to secure an important closure at the Klamath Meridan Overlook, a recreation site near the PCT in the Mt. Ashland/Siskiyou Peak Botanical Area. This project consisted of building pole fencing to block access to an illegal off-road vehicle route and dispersed vehicle campsite that has been impacting the Botanical Area, killing off native vegetation, compacting soils, and degrading scenic values. This illegal motorized route has now been physically closed and ASA will keep monitoring to ensure it stays that way!

We have also worked for many years to encourage other closures along the PCT in the Siskiyou Crest region, including the physical closure of illegal off-road vehicle routes that were crossing Sheep Camp Springs and the PCT, degrading habitat values at a key PCT campsite and water source. Off-road vehicle users had turned an important PCT backcountry camp into a large parking area, but this summer, the Forest Service physically closed the illegal route with a boulder closure that will begin the process of restoration for Sheep Camp Springs.

Additionally, a physical closure has been built using large boulders to block off illegal off-road vehicle routes crossing the PCT and impacting Mud Springs, a beautiful wet meadow and sphagnum bog at the headwaters of Dog Fork Elliott Creek. Located at the edge of the Condrey Mountain Inventoried Roadless Area, this wet meadow system contains numerous rare byrophytes, unusual plant communities, and provides an important water source and campsite for PCT hikers.

The Forest Service has also approved a significant new off-road vehicle closure on Big Red Mountain. We have been promoting this closure for many years due to the damage it has caused to bunchgrass meadows and serpentine rock gardens with rare plants in the Big Red Mountain Botanical Area

We are pleased the Forest Service has begun addressing these issues and will continue our monitoring efforts to support these closures and others in the region. Out goal is see the closure of all illegal off-road vehicle routes on the Siskiyou Crest, and we will continue advocating for these closures in 2025.

Building pride in place

Siskiyou Crest Conifer Field Trip Series

This past summer ASA led an exciting series of field trips to visit all 25 conifers found in the Siskiyou Crest region. These hikes and field trips led us to some of the wildest habitats in our area and into some of the region’s most spectacular backcountry. They also included some of the best botanists and ecologists in the region.

The series was an enormous success with 118 field trip participants on eight trips, including trips to Little Grayback/Acorn Women Peak, Left Fork Sucker Creek, Anderson Butte, Sundew Lake, Whisky Peak, Big Red Mountain, Dutchman Peak, Tamarack Meadows, Miller Lake and Mt. Ashland. Thanks to all who participated! We had a great time, enjoyed some incredible scenery, and some exceptional biodiversity. Huge gratitude goes to all our guest ecologists and botanists that accompanied us on our trips. This includes Wayne Rolle, Romain Cooper, Richard Callagan, Julie Spelletich, Scott Loring, Barb Mumblo, Matt Dybala, & Julie Kierstead.

Tallowbox Trail

In 2023 and 2024 ASA worked to build the Tallowbox Trail, a new 4.2 mile hiking trail on BLM lands in the Burton-Ninemile Lands With Wilderness Characteristics (LWC) in the Applegate.

The trail traverses open clearings high on the slopes of Tallowbox Mountain, beautiful oak woodlands, chaparral, and live oak stands, as well as mixed conifer forests in the Ladybug Gulch drainage. We are excited to open the trail to the public and encourage others to explore this beautiful area. Get out and enjoy the Tallowbox Trail — the views are incredible, spring and early summer wildflowers can be spectacular, and fall color a wonderful accent to the tawny grass and green forests of the Applegate.

Upcoming Threats

The biggest threat to our public lands nationwide, and here in the Applegate Valley, will be the Trump Administration and its corporate-industrial agenda. We anticipate a significant emphasis on logging, mining, grazing and other forms of resource extraction on federal lands during the upcoming Trump Administration. We also anticipate new attacks on existing environmental protections throughout our region, and across the country.

Yet, it is not just the threat of the Trump Administration and its new focus on public lands we must oppose. We also have very tangible and immediate threats that must be addressed, including the SOS Project, the Boaz Salvage Timber Sale, the new reiteration of the Cedar Flat Timber Sale and the Forest Service’s Yellowjacket Project.

ASA is the only conservation organization focused specifically on defending the wildlands of the Applegate, from the mouth of the river, up to the headwater basins on the Siskiyou Crest. We are also among the most passionate, knowledgeable, and dedicated advocates in the region. We need your help in 2025 to keep this region wild, to maintain the region’s world class biodiversity, and to build a grassroots movement for its long-term protection. Please consider supporting our organization with a generous year end donation!

Siskiyou Crest Coalition

Applegate Siskiyou Alliance continues to be the fiscal sponsor for the Siskiyou Crest Coalition (SCC), working to secure permanent protections for the Siskiyou Crest region. We are tired of fighting endless timber sales and damaging projects, and we envision a future where the Applegate and the Siskiyou Crest region are protected for their high ecological values. The Siskiyou Crest Coalition is growing, and more organizations, businesses and individuals continue to sign on in support of protecting the Siskiyou Crest. As a coalition we are stronger, and we plan to have a viable campaign to protect the Siskiyou Crest, with a strong coalition, as soon as a more favorable administration is back in place. Until then, ASA will continue to work with SCC to build momentum for the future.

Make a generous year-end donation!

In recent years southwestern Oregon has experienced uncharacteristically intense heat and extreme temperatures with prolonged periods of drought. Throughout interior southwestern Oregon and the Applegate River watershed these specific drought events and “heat domes” have in turn triggered eruptive flatheaded fir borer mortality outbreaks.

In 2022 and 2023, the outbreak affected Douglas fir populations at lower elevations, predominantly on sunbaked south and west facing slopes, in areas where shallow, unproductive soils favor chaparral or oak woodland, and in areas with relatively low precipitation levels adjacent to the valley floor or on exposed foothill slopes. Ironically, mortality has often also been concentrated in conifer forests subjected to BLM “forest health” commercial thinning (i.e. logging) operations over the past 30 years.

Unlike 2022 and 2023, the spring, summer and late fall of 2024 brought very little conifer mortality, demonstrating that the eruptive beetle outbreak has subsided. Even the casual observer can drive Highway 238 through the center of the Applegate Valley today, and see very little conifer mortality; whereas, in 2022 and 2023, the hills were streaked in “red stage” beetle mortality. The abundant fall rain this past month continues to mitigate the concerns of beetle proliferation and significant tree mortality; however, BLM is ignoring that the eruptive outbreak has passed and assumes that there will be elevated mortality rates in the next few years, despite dramatically changed circumstances.

Unfortunately, BLM has responded to this tree mortality event with post-disturbance “salvage” logging in stands either affected by recent beetle mortality or in living, green stands that survived the outbreak, an approach the BLM recently implemented in the Lickety Split Timber Sale, with devastating impacts. In the Lickety Split Timber Sale whole slopes of both living and dead trees were cleared above the Little Applegate River, and its tributary Lick Gulch, in large clearcuts and industrial logging operations.

Recently, this approach was taken a step further when the BLM approved the Boaz Salvage Timber Sale on the ridgeline dividing the Upper Applegate and Little Applegate Valleys. In the Boaz Timber Sale, both stands with significant mortality and whole stands of living, green Douglas fir trees are proposed for clearcut logging. According to BLM’s own data, the Boaz Salvage Timber Sale would retain, on average, only 3.3 trees per acre, while logging many thousands of mature trees that survived the beetle outbreak.

The BLM is now also proposing the so-called Strategic Operations for Safety (SOS) Programmatic EA, which would allow the BLM to log virtually at will, without any meaningful scientific analysis or public comment, across approximately 840,000 acres of Medford District BLM lands. The project area was designed to encompass the more arid, lower elevation habitats in interior southwestern Oregon, and it therefore surrounds many local communities, including Eagle Point, Shady Cove, Gold Hill, Rogue River,Grants Pass and communities throughout the Applegate Valley. It also includes a total of approximately 254,000 acres of “eligible treatment areas” that could be logged.

Alternative 2 of the SOS Project proposes to log up to 15,000 acres and build up to 20 miles of new “temporary” road every five years. The prescriptions allow for the removal of both live and dead standing trees in all age and diameter classes, and in virtually all Land Use Allocations. This includes Late Successional Reserve forest set aside to protect Northern spotted owl populations and their old forest habitat. It also proposes significant logging in Riparian Reserves designated to protect water quality and riparian habitats, as well as in Areas of Critical Environmental Concern meant to protect some of the Medford District BLM’s most important, diverse, and intact habitats.

The SOS Project specifically allows the BLM to target stands with as little as 10% cumulative mortality, claiming these habitats have been heavily affected by beetle mortality. Alternative 2 would allow the BLM to both log adjacent to “linear features,” like roads and ridgelines, within one mile of homes, and as “area” treatments focused on commercial timber production. Either way, the timber sales implemented under the SOS Project would heavily log mature stands with living, green forest canopy down to as low as 20 square feet of basal area.

This translates to clearcut logging with a handful of “seed” trees per acre. For example, a 30″ diameter tree is approximately 5 square feet of basal area and retaining 20 square feet of basal area means retaining only four, 30″ diameter trees per acre. Conversely, a 20″ diameter tree is about 2.2 square feet of basal area, so retaining 20 square feet of basal area means retaining only nine, 20″ diameter trees per acre. (source: USDA Basal Area/Tree Per Acre guide)

The BLM claims this logging must occur to support public safety and reduce fire risks; however, many of the trees identified as “dead and dying” are living trees which do not pose public safety risks, and logging these trees to the levels proposed will actually dramatically increase fire risks.

The SOS Project also claims these trees must be logged to capture economic value from “dead and dying” trees subjected to flatheaded fir borer infestation and imminent mortality — but many of the trees targeted for logging include living, green trees without signs of beetle infestation.

Scientific research has shown that trees surviving large scale beetle outbreaks often contain unique genetic traits that may make them more resilient to drought, intense heat and future beetle outbreaks. This makes their retention particularly important for climate adaptation, for forest regeneration and for the retention of existing mature stands. (Six. 2018) Yet, thousands of acres of these forests would be logged in the BLM’s SOS Project, all without scientific review or meaningful public involvement.

Scientific studies conducted throughout the West have shown that beetle mortality patches, even at a relatively large scale, do not increase fire risks or fire severity, and may, in fact, reduce them. (Hart 2015., Meigs, 2016, Harvey etal. 2014, Donato. 2013) At the same time, research conducted on Medford District BLM lands has shown that the types of logging proposed tend to increase future fire risks through the loss of canopy cover, the removal of large fire resilient trees, the accumulation of logging slash, the regeneration of dense, even-aged, highly flammable vegetation, and by altering cool, moist micro-climate conditions. (Zald. 2018. Lesmeister. 2019)

The snags and downed logs that remain after relatively severe natural disturbance events, like beetle mortality outbreaks, are also important “biological legacies” and become a “requisite for maintaining long term forest growth.” Research shows that “in the Klamath Mountains conifer seedling performance can depend on the ability of the soil to retain moisture and support nitrogen fixing and ectomycorhizal organisms. Removal of large amounts of organic material may result in difficult reforestation of these thin, droughty, and infertile sites. (Amaranthus.1989)

The snags provide structural diversity, important wildlife habitats, shade for forest regeneration, and create continuity between the forest conditions before and after a beetle mortality event. Additionally, as these snags fall to the forest floor they become downed logs, which are also important for structural complexity and wildlife habitat, while also creating microclimates that are important for forest regeneration, as water retention reservoirs holding up to 25 times more water than adjacent forest soils, and as habitat for the mycorrhizal fungi required by many native conifer species. (Amaranthus. 1989).

Logging these biological legacies (e.g. snags and live trees) would have lasting consequences, and very few benefits to surrounding communities. In fact, the snags or dead standing trees removed will be done at an economic loss, or as, at best, break even timber sales, and that’s why the BLM has padded the economics of these sales by including abundant living, green trees, which are sold at low value salvage prices for the economic benefit of the timber industry.

The logging of these green trees under a so-called “salvage” sale is not only dishonest and inappropriate, but it will compound the impacts following the recent beetle events and the loss of mature forest cover already occurring in the region.

To make matters worse, the BLM has proposed to start this damaging project in the Applegate Valley with the first timber sale called “SOS Project 1,” which includes extensive logging on Thompson Creek, around Ruch, on Sterling Creek, in the forests along and adjacent to the East Applegate Ridge Trail, and in the Wellington Wildlands, a cherished wildland and 7,500-acre roadless area located between Ruch and Humbug Creek, at the heart of the Applegate Valley.

Many of the forests proposed for logging have not been significantly affected by beetle mortality and are being mischaracterized as “salvage” logging. Weaponizing the public’s fear of climate change, fire and beetle mortality, the BLM has initiated a campaign of Orwellian misinformation claiming they must clearcut or virtually clearcut living, green stands to save them from future mortality — but the only certainty of mass tree mortality is the authorization of the BLM’s SOS Project and the green tree logging it would unleash.

Like many of the projects recently proposed by the Medford District BLM—and shut down in the courts—the agency is once again attempting to eliminate any meaningful scientific review, site specific, project level analysis, and public comment opportunities that would otherwise encourage accountability and/or some level of scientific rigor. The SOS Project should be opposed and all post-disturbance logging should be limited to true hazard trees: truly dead standing trees along regularly used BLM roads.

The BLM is currently taking public comments on both the SOS Project and SOS Project 1. Use the information in this post and below in the talking points to provide public comment for these damaging logging projects.

SOS Project Talking Points:

-No living, green trees should be logged in the SOS Project. The vast majority of these trees are not infested with flatheaded fir borer beetles and do not meet the criteria for “dead and dying” trees.

-Current mortality rates have dramatically declined since 2022 and 2023 due to the eruptive nature of beetle mortality events and shifts in regional weather patterns. This means that the potential for tree mortality has dramatically decreased and the assumptions surrounding imminent mortality are unfounded. Current analysis in the SOS Project erroneously ignores that the recent eruptive mortality event has subsided.

-The removal of living tree canopy will only increase fire risks by opening up stands to increased wind and solar exposure, while encouraging dense, highly flammable even-aged regeneration of brush, hardwoods and conifer species. This understory response or increase in young, even-aged growth, along with artificial tree planting, has been shown to dramatically increase fire risks in affected stands.

-Removing living, green trees that survived the recent beetle mortality events will reduce forest cover and remove genetically resistant trees that have an increased ability to survive beetle outbreaks. These same trees also aid in the regeneration of affected habitats with genetically adapted and highly resilient trees.

-Logging beetle mortality patches will disrupt forest succession, damage forest regeneration, impact soils, spread noxious weeds, remove important wildlife habitats, and degrade complex early seral plant communities supporting incredible biodiversity.

-2024 Aerial Detection Surveys have not been disclosed or made publicly available, and were not included in the SOS analysis. This is important because these surveys would show a dramatic decline in Douglas fir mortality across the region in 2024, yet the agency is refusing to provide information or publish the results of its publicly funded survey. These surveys must be completed, made public, be included in both project analysis, and available to inform public comment before project approval. Withholding this information from the current analysis is irresponsible and inappropriate.

-The recent mortality in southwestern Oregon and climate trends going forward show that the productivity of many forests are not sufficient to justify the designation of “Timber Harvest Land Base,” and the entire planning area should be removed from this land use designation. Sustained yield logging is inappropriate, timber yields and growth rates cannot be reliably sustained, and other public land values cannot be maintained if timber is being unsustainably harvested.

Follow this link and click on the “participate now” button to comment. Make your comments by January 6, 2025

SOS Project 1 Talking Points:

-Repeat the same talking points as above for the SOS Project and include the specific concerns below for the SOS Project 1 proposal.

-The units proposed for logging in the Wellington Wildlands are highly controversial and should be canceled from further consideration in the SOS Project 1. They are also located on the proposed trail corridor for the Center Applegate Ridge Trail, which has been promoted by the Applegate community for over a decade and would be damaged by industrial logging activities.

-The units along the highly popular East Applegate Ridge Trail will impact scenic, biological, and recreational values and are incompatible with the East Applegate Ridge Extensive Recreation Management Area. All units adjacent to or surrounding the East Applegate Ridge Trail should be canceled.

-The Woodrat Mountain and Woodrat Mountain Gliding Site’s Special Recreation Management Area contain unique recreational opportunities, world-class hang gliding opportunities, and highly scenic values which would be impacted by the types of logging proposed. Units surrounding Woodrat Mountain should be canceled.

-“Salvage” logging, especially when significant green tree removal is involved, will increase fire risks, impact nearby communities, degrade habitat values, damage scenic viewsheds, and impact the local outdoor recreation and amenities based economy of the Applegate Valley.

Follow this link and click on the “participate now” button to comment. Make your comments by January 6, 2025

References:

Amaranthus, M.P. & Parrish, D.S. & Perry, David. (1989). Decaying logs as moisture reservoirs after drought and wildfire in Stewardship of soil, air and water resources. Proceedings of Watershed 89. 191-194.

Donato, D.C., Harvey, Brian J., Romme, William H., Simard, Martin, Turner, Monica. 2013, Bark Beetle Effects on Fuel Profiles Across a Range of Stand Structures in Douglas-fir Forests of Greater Yellowstone. Ecological Applications, 23 (1), 2013 pp. 3-20

Hart, Sarah J. Schoennagel, Velden, Thomas T., Chapman, Teresa B. 2015. Area burned in the Western United States is Unaffected by Recent Mountain Pine Beetle Outbreaks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science UnitedStates of America. Vol. 112, No. 14, 4375–4380, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1424037112

Harvey, Brian J., Donato, Daniel C., Turner, Monica G., 2014. Recent Mountain Pine Outbreaks Wildfire Severity, and Postfire Tree Regeneration in the US Northern Rockies.Proc Natl Aca Sci USA. Oct 21, 2014 111 (42): 15120-15125

Lesmeister, Damon., Sovern, Stan., Davis, Raymond., Bell, David., Gregory, Matthew., &Vogeler, Jody. 2019. Mixed Severity Wildfire and Habitat of an Old Forest Obligate. Ecosphere Vol. 10, Issue 4, April 2019 https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.2696

Meigs, Garrett W., Zald., Harold S., Campbell, John L., Keeton, Williams S., Kennedy, Robert E., 2016. Do Insect Outbreaks Reduce the Severity of subsequent fires?Environmental Research Letters, 2016; 11 (4): 045008 DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/11/4/045008

Six, Diana L., Vergobbi, Clare., Cutter, Mitchell., 2018. Are survivors different? Genetic-based selection of trees by Mountain pine beetle during a climate change-drive outbreak in a high elevation forest. Frontiers in Plant Science. July 2018. Volume 9, Article 993 https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/plant-science/articles/10.3389/fpls.2018.00993/full

Zald, Harold S. & Dunn, Christopher J. (2018) Severe fire weather and intensive forest management increase fire severity in multi-ownership landscape. Ecological Applications 0(0), 2018. Pp 1-13

We recently hiked into the Upper Applegate Fire which burned this summer on Cinnabar Ridge in the Buncom Roadless Area, located between the Upper Applegate and Little Applegate Valleys. What we found was an extraordinary mixed severity fire mosaic with highly beneficial fire effects.

Although the fire was concerning for nearby communities and threatened the homes of our friends and neighbors around the Applegate Valley, now that the threat to communities is long gone, we can look at the actual effects of the fire, and we found those effects to be ecologically beneficial.

The mixed severity fire effects are characteristic for the region, and in the next few years the abundance of wildflowers and regrowth will be beautiful. All and all, the Upper Applegate Fire footprint has restored fire as a natural process to the Buncom Roadless Area, reduced fuels on a strategic ridgeline, and maintained high quality wildlife habitats.

We are sorry to those this fire affected in the human communities that surround the wildfire footprint and are grateful that no homes or structures were lost. At the same time, we see value in the process of fire on this landscape and are excited to see the beneficial effect of fire on the slopes of Cinnabar Ridge.

This was an accidental, human-caused fire, but now that folks surrounding it can feel safe and the winter rains have begun, we hope folks can watch the fire footprint the next few years, enjoy the beauty of the process, and appreciate the benefits that mixed severity fire can bring to these habitats. When we look at this fire objectively, we see short-term, but real impacts on our neighbors in the communities directly surrounding this fire, but we also see long-term benefits from a biological standpoint. It is both, and should be appreciated as such.

Upper Applegate Fire Effects

For the past number of months, ASA has been out on the ground monitoring proposed timber sale units in the BLM’s Cedar Flat Timber Sale in the upper Williams Creek watershed. The sale proposed to log 3,222 acres, including 2,493 acres in Late Succcessional Reserve forest designated to protect habitat for the northern spotted owl. This proposal would have logged significant mature, old-growth and primary unlogged forests on the flank of Grayback Mountain, in upper Rock Creek, Glade Fork, West Fork Williams Creek, on Little Sugarloaf Peak, and on the eastern flank of Holcomb Peak.

ASA was publicly opposing these mature and old-growth logging units, had visited every proposed logging unit in the timber sale, was working to draft technical comments on this project, and had begun organizing a public campaign; however, the Medford District BLM just canceled this controversial timber sale!

Although a significant, but perhaps short-lived victory, the BLM has indicated they hope to reconsider this timber sale in early 2025. We invite our supporters to contact BLM and ask them to cancel the mature and old-growth logging units previously proposed in the Cedar Flat Timber Sale. Please let them know that these units should not move forward in future BLM timber sales.

Talking Points:

1. Although we support the cancellation of the Cedar Flat Timber Sale, we are concerned that controversial mature and old-growth logging units may be included in future timber sales proposed in the area. If the Cedar Flat Timber Sale, or a new project based on this timber sale is proposed, we suggest that the BLM focus on the abundant plantation stands found in the area.
2. The Cedar Flat Timber Sale proposed logging units that included some of the last mature and old-growth forest in the Williams Creek watershed. These forests must be withdrawn from further consideration and should not be proposed for logging in any future timber sale.
3. Located in Late Successional Reserve forest, designated to protect habitat for the northern spotted owl, these mature and old-growth forests should be deferred from treatment due to their important habitat values. This includes proposed logging units on the flank of Grayback Mountain, along the Grayback Mountain Trail, on upper Rock Creek, Glade Creek, West Fork Williams Creek, and upper Bill Creek, on Sugarloaf Peak, and on the eastern flank of Holocomb Peak.
4. Ask the BLM to institute a 20″ diameter limit, require the retention of at least 60% canopy cover, limit commercial logging to plantation stands, focus non-commercial thinning adjacent to homes and communities, remove all stands over 80 years of age from logging treatments, and build no new roads if timber sales are proposed in the future.

Contact:

District Manager, Elizabeth Burghard: eburghar@blm.gov

Grants Pass Resource Area Manager, Heidi Lowrey: hlowery@blm.gov

With the fall weather comes the end of the public land grazing season on the Siskiyou Crest. Fall is a good time to go out and monitor the impact of grazing allotments on the public lands of the Siskiyou Crest, including the headwaters of the Applegate River, located on the northern slope of the Siskiyou Crest. The area is filled with sensitive wetlands, meadows, seeps, springs, and headwater streams that become heavily damaged each season by unmanaged cattle, utilizing what the agency calls “passive season long grazing.”

What this means is that cattle are dropped off in the spring and allowed to forage largely unmanaged throughout the grazing season, congregating in wetlands and meadows, along streams and other areas that are sensitive to livestock grazing. The result is the degradation of water quality, impacts to the spongy headwater basins that support water flows during the summer in the Applegate River, damage to willow wetlands, trampling of streambanks, the lowering of water tables, impacts to native vegetation, impacts to wildlife habitat, and increased competition between cattle and native grazing species such as elk and deer.

Each summer there are at least 10 active grazing allotments on the Siskiyou Crest on both the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest and the Klamath National Forest, and although stocking levels may change from year to year, there can be up to 2,000 cows permitted on the different allotments on the Siskiyou Crest each year, resulting in long-term ecological impacts.

The Forest Service often claims that historic overgrazing is responsible for the dramatic impacts we see today. Although historic grazing impacts were severe all across the eastern Siskiyou Crest in the historic era, these effects are compounded and reinforced by the overgrazing that continues to occur on public land grazing allotments to this day.

This past October, we visited the Silver Fork Basin in the Beaver-Silver Allotment and Alex Hole basin in the Upper Elliott Allotment, two of the most overgrazed meadow systems and headwater basins in the Applegate River watershed and on the eastern Siskiyou Crest. We found both areas heavily overgrazed.

Watch ASA’s new video about public land grazing on the Siskiyou Crest.

In particular, we found Alex Hole and the surrounding meadows heavily trampled and “over utilized,” meaning palatable vegetation had been eaten down to the nub, precluding both flower production and seed production for many species. Denuded to ground-level, the meadows and streams in the Alex Hole basin support almost no forage for native ungulates such as deer and elk, and cannot provide stream shade due to heavy browsing by cattle in the summer and fall.

Earlier this summer we had visited Alex Hole on the second day of grazing season and found it to have already been significantly overgrazed, just two days into the season, meaning the cows had been there before they were permitted to be there.

Currently riparian habitats throughout the watershed within federal grazing allotments are collapsing, streams are downcutting, noxious or non-native weeds are spreading, and native riparian vegetation, such as willow, is being denuded across entire stream reaches. Waterways and springs are also filled with cow excrement, and deep “punching” where cattle hooves sink deep (6″-10″) into moist soils, damaging wetlands, seeps, springs and streams through excessive trampling, excessive soil disturbance, damage to native vegetation, hydrological impacts, downcutting and the slow, steady de-watering of these habitats through the compounding impacts.

In many favored grazing sites, cattle have eaten sedges, grasses and other herbaceous species to the ground, leaving little for wildlife, including deer and elk that also forage on these same native plants and in these same native plant communities. Additionally, aspen habitats have been heavily impacted on Alex Creek, including some of the region’s only tree-form aspen stands which are now heavily degraded, unable to regenerate, and slowly dying out due to extreme and continuous grazing impacts to aspen groves on Alex Creek.

Numerous sensitive wildlife species, such as the willow flycatcher, a small song bird that utilizes mature willow stands for nesting and foraging are also being impacted by overgrazing on the Siskiyou Crest at the Applegate’s headwaters. Willow flycatcher habitat requires dense, continuous willow stands, which are heavily fragmented by cows within the tiered meadow system of the Alex Hole basin, as well as in Silver Fork basin, and in some areas the willows have been entirely extirpated from specific stream reaches due to heavy trampling and grazing.

Sensitive species like the Sierra Nevada blue butterfly utilize the high elevation alpine shooting stars (Dodecatheon alpinum) as a larval host plant; however, cattle trample these larvae, eat the larvae while gazing, and target shooting star flowers and stalks as a favored species to eat early in the season. This precludes flower production and seed production of alpine shooting stars, limiting the geographic extent of this species and hindering its natural regeneration process, thereby impacting the ability of the Sierra Nevada blue butterfly to live in these meadows because they can’t complete their lifecycles without their larval host plant.

In fact, the federal livestock grazing program is heavily subsidized by the public. In 2015 resource economists studied the costs of livestock grazing on public lands. They found that the federal lands grazing program generated $125 million less than what the federal government spent on the program in 2014. Further, they found that federal grazing fees are 93 percent less than fees charged for non-irrigated Western private grazing land, or just $1.69 per animal per month for each cow and calf that grazes the public land. It costs more to feed a house cat, and this year’s fees are even less — in 2024 the fee was a paltry $1.35.

Public land grazing has many impacts, both contemporary and historic, but the negative effects of current public land grazing practices are clear to see on the Siskiyou Crest. These public lands contain important biological, recreational, scenic, and watershed values; yet, they are being managed as private feedlots, for federal grazing permittees, who both benefit from and significantly impact federal lands. Who does not benefit is the public, who is forced to socialize both the costs and impacts of this management.

Please help us bring public land grazing in the Applegate into the 21^st century. This begins first and foremost, with the Siskiyou Mountains Ranger District completing an Environmental Impact Statement for all grazing allotments in the Applegate, utilizing the best available modern science and research. It also begins with your advocacy, asking Forest Service managers to adopt and implement site specific Best Management Practices (BMPs) for each grazing allotment, along with publicly available Annual Operating Instructions (AOIs), that:

1. Incorporates the new mandates of the North Coast Water Quality Control Board that now requires Annual Operating Instructions (AOI) for all federal grazing allotments within its management area, including the headwater streams of the Applegate on the Siskiyou Crest. The Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest must comply with the Clean Water Act management requirements adopted by the North Coast Water Board in its Federal lands Permit.
2. Requires electronic (virtual) fencing for cattle on the Siskiyou Crest to allow land managers to better track their location, manage their movements, document cattle “drift” or trespass into unauthorized areas, and to help reduce impacts to sensitive habitats and species by herding cattle that congregate in specific habitats, especially wet meadows and rare plant populations.
3. Mandates site specific BMPs the grazing permit holder must implement to prevent unacceptable levels of water quality, riparian and wetland degradation, including but not limited to, instructions on rotating grazing among different areas, and the frequency and type of herding needed to avoid unacceptable levels of degradation.
4. Requires the agency to commit to a number of monitoring visits to each allotment on an annual basis. The agency should document the number of times and time periods that Forest Service staff will check each allotment to verify that the required grazing management actions specified in the AOI are being adequately implemented.
5. Requires mitigation in basins and watersheds that are listed as “impaired” due to sediment, water temperature or nutrient conditions. Mitigation measures should require at least a year of rest for watersheds in which the annual Multiple Indicator Monitoring (MIM) reading finds bank disturbance equal to or greater than 10%.
6. Mandates protections for rare and unusual plant species and Botanical Areas on the Siskiyou Crest, including both sensitive plants and unique plant communities like quaking aspen stands.
7. Mandates protections for the Pacific Crest Trail, its trail side camps, water sources, and scenery.
8. Requires additional protections and mitigation measures that benefit wildlife, including deer and elk.

Some of the local grazing allotments have not been meaningfully reviewed or received updates to their management plans since 1964, clearly it is time for an update and a shift towards more a modern, responsible approach to federal land management. The current management plans are badly outdated and the allotments are badly damaging habitats.

Finally, any new management plans developed by the the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forests should allow buyout options for federal grazing allotments and permits. This would allow grazing allotments to be publicly bought out and retired to protect and restore the biological, scenic and recreational values of the Siskiyou Crest region.

With both a warming climate and a looming biodiversity crisis, we should be protecting, not trampling and degrading our headwater streams. We should also be protecting our rare plant populations and designated Botanical Areas, our native pollinators, wildlife and aquatic species from unnecessary degradation. The current grazing program has significant impacts to the land, no benefit to American taxpayers, and acts as a subsidy for specific economic interests and individual families who benefit financially from the massive handouts, and leaves behind significant impacts for the public to address.

Contact the following Forest Service employees and help us support the many important values of the Siskiyou Crest. Our public lands should be managed as far more than a feedlot for private grazing interests!

Contact the following Forest Service employees with your concerns surrounding the public land grazing program and your support for updates to grazing management plans in the Applegate River watershed and in the spectacular high elevation habitats of the Siskiyou Crest.

Forest Supervisor Molly Juillerat: molly.juillerat@usda.gov

District Ranger Jen Sanborn: Jennifer.Sanborn@usda.gov

Impacts from public land grazing allotments aren’t limited to Forest Service land in the Applegate, they happen on BLM land too. Additionally, contact Senator Wyden’s office and tell him not to cosponsor the Operational Flexibility Grazing Management Program Act (S.4454, 118th Congress), which would remove the administrative control the BLM has over the grazing of livestock on 155 million acres of federal public lands. The Applegate has one grazing allotment on BLM land, the Lower Big Applegate Alloment, that could be affected by this legislation, but the impacts to BLM land throughout the West would be huge if this legislation passes.

From Andy Kerr’s blog post: Wyden’s Unilateral Public Lands Livestock Grazing Giveaway

Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) is the sole cosponsor of a bill by Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) that would give Bureau of Land Management (BLM) grazing permittees and lessees even more free rein than they have now to (ab)use the public lands. The Barrasso-Wyden bill, the Operational Flexibility Grazing Management Program Act (S.4454, 118th Congress), would effectively remove any administrative control the BLM has over the grazing of livestock on 155 million acres of federal public lands.

Andy Kerr

The Medford District BLM has been busy spinning false narratives about their proposed “salvage” logging projects in the Applegate Valley. Claiming to be targeting “dead and dying” stands and trees with the Boaz Salvage Timber Sale, the actual tree removal mark tells a very different story. Yet the BLM simply declaring living, green trees and stands that were largely unaffected by the recent flatheaded fir borer mortality events as “dead and dying,” does not change the reality on the ground — these trees survived the recent beetle outbreaks and have demonstrated either genetic or microsite related resilience.

The BLM has told the public that they must clearcut these stands — leaving, on average, 3.3 trees per acre — and kill these trees to save them from mortality. We find that logic backwards, Orwellian and wildly dishonest. In fact, both the BLM’s blatant lies and the impact of the project to forest habitats in the area are unacceptable. Only by removing all accountability, analysis and public involvement could such clearly false statements be used to justify this project.

Unfortunately, despite significant public opposition, the BLM recently proposed, retroactively approved, and sold the Boaz Salvage Timber Sale in the Applegate Valley to Mineral Creek Logging and Hauling currently based out of Eagle Point, Oregon.

The public is outraged that BLM can announce a timber sale to the industry and fully design it in a timber sale prospectus before even approving a project or disclosing the effects of the project to the public. People are also outraged that after many years of conflict with the Applegate community over its timber management program, the agency is now resorting to deception and Categorical Exclusions to increase timber production in the face of public opposition.

Medford BLM District Manager, Elizabeth Burghard, committed, in writing, back in 2016, to move forward with projects in the Applegate working in the “spirit of the Applegate Adaptive Management Area (AMA).” The Applegate AMA required community-based collaboration and adaptive management; however, Elizabeth has gone back on her word and has instead dismantled collaboration in the Applegate. In fact, in this project the BLM has used exclusionary NEPA processes specifically to avoid any level of public input or accountability.

While the BLM tries to deceive the public, Applegate Siskiyou Alliance will continue bringing you the truth and fighting for the land. The ecological integrity of the Applegate is our highest priority, and our goal is to challenge projects that damage our environment, like the Boaz Salvage Timber Sale. Please support our work as we expose this damaging timber project and oppose its implementation!

The Boaz Salvage Timber Sale is another shameful timber grab by the BLM. It is also being justified using misleading information, unfounded assumptions, and by cutting the public out of the process. Contact your elected officials and the BLM to express your opposition to the Boaz Salvage Timber Sale.

Get involved! Two things you can do to help us stop the Boaz Salvage Timber Sale:

1. ATTEND A FIELD TRIP! Join Applegate Siskiyou Alliance (ASA) as we lead a field trip to the proposed timber sale units. See the misleading narrative of the BLM firsthand and visit the threatened Boaz Salvage Timber Sale with ASA.

Boaz Salvage Timber Sale Field Trip with ASA

When: October 20, 2024 10:00 AM

Where: Meet up in Ruch in the Sunshine Plaza parking lot for the carpool.

What: We will carpool up to the Boaz Salvage Timber Sale where we will stop to look at the proposed timber sale units and discuss the project. Field trip participants can look into most units from the side of the road, but we will also provide optional off-trail opportunities to walk into the units to experience these beautiful forests more closely. Bring trekking poles if you want to walk into the units, as some are fairly steep. Any walk into a unit will be short and less than an 1/8th of a mile.

Please RSVP at the following email to attend the field trip: luke@applegatesiskiyou.org

2. CONTACT BLM land managers and your elected officials!

Medford District Manager, Elizabeth Burghard: eburghar@blm.gov

Field Manager, Lauren Brown: lpbrown@blm.gov

Talking Points:

—Ask BLM to cancel the Boaz Salvage Timber Sale and other so-called logging projects that target living, green trees and stands. Many stands proposed for “salvage” logging are mischaracterized as “dead and dying.”

—Withdraw the inappropriately applied Categorical Exclusion used to authorize the Boaz Salvage Timber Sales. Logging the resilient trees and stands that survived the recent beetle outbreaks is counterproductive, unacceptable, and irresponsible.

—Implement land management activities on BLM lands that respect public involvement, and conduct appropriate levels of scientific and environmental analysis. A Categorical Exclusions does not provide adequate public involvement, analysis, or public disclosure of the project’s environmental effects.

—The BLM must not circumvent the NEPA process to avoid public accountability, the public disclosure of impacts, or to avoid public comment and input. Public lands should be managed with transparency and accountability, and projects of this scope, scale and intensity should be analyzed with at least an Environmental Assessment.

—The environmental impact of proposed project activities are simply too high and should not be approved. The retention of only 3.3 trees per acre and the removal of existing forest canopy, including large diameter trees, will increase fire risks, damage habitat values, and contribute to climate change.

In the spring and summer of 2023, portions of the Applegate Valley experienced a significant, episodic flat headed fir borer mortality event. These native beetles chew into Douglas fir trees, disrupt the flow of water and nutrients and kill drought and/or heat stressed trees as beetle populations grow. Although historically a rather benign wood boring beetle that unobtrusively killed some trees here and there, in recent years, droughts, heat domes, and other manifestations of climate change have triggered fairly large-scale outbreaks in portions of the Applegate River watershed. Although the most recent outbreak has largely subsided due to more favorable local climatic conditions, and because the most susceptible trees have already been affected, the BLM has continued using this mortality event to promote unsustainable, environmentally damaging clearcut logging in the Applegate Valley.

The Medford District BLM recently identified two new logging projects that claim to focus on the “salvage” of beetle killed trees in the Applegate Valley. These projects include the Boaz Salvage Timber Sale and the Forest Creek Salvage Timber Sale. Both timber sales are being proposed under the false pretense that the stands and trees targeted for removal are “dead and dying.” In many units proposed for logging this is clearly not the case, and instead the BLM is targeting many living, green stands that did not sustain significant mortality during the recent beetle outbreaks.

Shockingly, the BLM is scheduled to auction off these timber sales on September 26, despite not having provided the public with the proper notification or appeal opportunities. The Timber Sale Notices for these projects were released and advertised on September 5th and 6th, yet the Categorical Exclusion document authorizing the Boaz Salvage Timber Sale was signed just two days ago (9/13/24), and the Forest Creek Salvage Timber Sale Categorical Exclusion simply has not been posted on the BLM’s E-Planning website at the time of publishing of this blog post. The Medford District BLM was advertising these timber sales without official approval, and they plan to sell the timber sales before the appeal period has even ended.

So what does this all mean? It means the BLM is scheduled to auction off the Boaz Salvage Timber Sale just 13 days after they signed the decision document — the “decision document” being the signed Categorical Exclusion — and they still haven’t posted a signed Categorical Exclusion for the Forest Creek Salvage Timber Sale on their E-Planning site, even though they have it scheduled for auction on September 26th. It also means that the BLM announced the timber sale auctions to the timber industry before project approval!

The Categorical Exclusion used by the BLM is authorized for post-disturbance mortality salvage, yet these so-called “salvage” projects target many forest stands that survived the recent flatheaded fir borer outbreak and they remain living, green canopied forests. The beetle outbreak came and went, leaving the most resilient trees unscathed — perhaps they are trees with genetic adaptation to better resist drought and insects, or they were growing in more productive, moist or sheltered locations that help them withstand drought and beetle events. These surviving habitats are essentially refuges from drought and beetles, where even under heat domes, extended droughts, and less frequent cold snaps, these forests can and will maintain significant cover, especially on north- and east-facing slopes, in drainages, on lower slope positions, and at mid to high elevation habitats.

That is not to say that beetle mortality events will not occur in the future. Beetle mortality will most likely occur in response to future climactic events, but the BLM will be limiting the available host species, perhaps concentrating beetle mortality during those events and compounding whatever mortality does occur.

For example, according to the Timber Sale Prospectus for both the Boaz and Forest Creek Timber Sales, they will log tens of thousands of mature, living trees that survived the recent beetle outbreaks, leaving behind only between 3.3 (Boaz) and 4.9 (Forest Creek) trees per acre when they are done with the logging — equivalent to clearcuts.

This means, if beetles, wind throw, fire, drought, extreme heat and other natural disturbances kill those 3 or 4 trees over time, the agency will have entirely removed the conifer component, and shifted the once mature, fire and beetle resilient stands into young, more flammable and far less fire resilient vegetation types. It also makes these few remaining trees more exposed to the elements and more susceptible to wind throw, extreme heat, drought, snow damage and other forms of mortality or tree stress.

The BLM is not saving the forests of the Applegate, they are finishing them off. They are not protecting against forest loss, they are creating it.

Boaz Salvage Timber Sale

The Boaz Salvage Timber Sale is located on Cinnabar Ridge and near Boaz Mountain in the Boaz Gulch and Neds Gulch watersheds in the Upper Applegate Valley, and at the headwaters of Grouse Creek, as well as directly above Buncom in the Little Applegate Valley.

The timber sale contains some areas affected by beetle mortality, but large portions of the timber sale target living, green trees in stands that did not sustain elevated levels of fir mortality. These are not dead or dying stands as the BLM claims, they are drought and beetle resistant stands that survived the most recent beetle outbreak and continue to provide important forested habitat for wildlife, wildfire resistance, and climate resilience. In this project the BLM proposes to log an estimated 22,199 merchantable trees on 250 acres, and identified only 849 trees for retention. This translates to the retention of only 3.3 trees per acre and the clearcutting of vast swaths of green, living forest on the ridge above Buncom in the Little Applegate and above Eastside Road in the Upper Applegate.

Additionally, many of the units were previously included in the Nedsbar Timber Sale, which was highly controversial in the community and ultimately withdrawn by the BLM. The BLM is now targeting these same stands by claiming they are “dead and dying,” which is entirely untrue, and are trying to implement the logging under a Categorical Exclusion. The BLM has decided to avoid the public accountability that a full NEPA process entails, avoid creating an Environmental Assessment, and they are refusing to include any meaningful scientific analysis, public input, or public involvement.

Although many living stands are targeted with logging in this timber sale, unit 35-5 is a particularly troubling example. Located in a large swath of mature forest at the headwaters of Grouse Creek on a north-facing slope and along a cool, moist drainage dominated by large, living trees, the area contains cool, moist habitat associations and represents clear climate refugia. In fact, on the boundary of the timber sale unit grows the only known population of dwarf snow bramble (Rubus nivalis) in the low elevations of the Applegate Valley, representing one of the most unusual populations known for this species, and it is located at the southern end of its range. Dwarf snow bramble is very uncommon in the Siskiyou Mountains and only survives this far south in cool, moist habitats, usually in high elevation subalpine forests. This population of dwarf snow bramble demonstrates that this specific forested stand contains some of the most resilient climate refugia in the Applegate Valley foothills, and is one of the most persistent, drought and beetle resilient conifer forests adjacent to the Applegate Valley on BLM land. It is exactly the type of forest we need to protect in the face of climate change.

In unit 35-5, nearly the entire stand of mature, old trees would be removed, leaving only a few scattered trees, where a forest once stood. The BLM reports that 3,371 trees will be removed in unit 35-5, and nearly all of those trees are living trees, located in a refuge from climate and beetles. The currently cool, moist habitat would be opened in logging operations, exposed to the climatic extremes, and converted to a much younger, drier, sun baked, and more flammable plant community with abundant brush, stump-sprouting hardwoods and even-aged conifer regeneration.

To make matters worse the BLM’s Timber Sale Prospectus for both timber sales calls for “lop and scatter” treatments, meaning slash from these clearcut logging operations will be left on site across all 450 acres of logging units, increasing fuels in the Boaz/Cinnabar Ridge region and on Forest Creek. The conditions created will exacerbate fire intensity, rates of spread, and fire severity during fire events, while the current stand conditions would moderate fire behavior and support fire resistance.

The BLM claims this stand and others are facing imminent mortality, yet the conditions on the ground show otherwise. In fact, the only signs of imminent mortality in some of these stands are the BLM timber sale markers.

Forest Creek Salvage Timber Sale

Last week we also monitored proposed logging units in the Forest Creek Salvage Timber Sale and found many of the stands contained significant living, green tree components that would be heavily logged under this so-called “salvage” logging operation.

The pattern was similar to the Boaz Salvage Timber Sale, where many of the trees that survived the beetle outbreak would be logged, leaving only a few trees exposed to the harsh, post-clearcut elements per acre. In fact, according the BLM’s own records, this project would remove 10,641 merchantable trees, while retaining only 983 trees on 200 acres. This translates to only 4.9 trees per acre remaining after the proposed industrial logging operations in living, green canopied stands on lower Forest Creek.

To make matters worse, unit 22-1 on the lower end of Forest Creek contains the only population of the incredibly invasive, non-native shiny geranium (Geranium lucidum) in the Applegate Valley. The species is known to spread quickly and smother native understory vegetation in forest and woodland habitats, suffocating native grasses and wildflower species, and creating dense monocultural populations. The problem is becoming very pronounced in the Willamette Valley, where shiny geranium has spread quickly and is decimating native plant habitats.

Clearly brought in through illegal off-road vehicle use on BLM lands, (the initial populations are all located on unauthorized dirt bike trails), the BLM has long refused to close these trails despite knowing the highly invasive nature of shiny geranium, and as a result it has spread quickly, covering at least 70 acres before BLM began any meaningful attempt to control the infestation.

In numerous recent timber sale proposals the BLM identified this area for logging, but later dropped the unit when environmental analysis and public input identified the potential problems with invasive weed spread. Yet, hungry for more timber, the BLM has decided to exclude meaningful environmental analysis and entirely exclude the public while planning the Forest Creek Salvage Timber Sale, thus ensuring that the spread of this noxious weed is not adequately considered.

Is the BLM so adamant that every acre be logged in the Applegate that they can’t even exclude 70 acres of a highly invasive plant from their logging plans?

Unit 22-1 is a 52-acre logging unit proposed for cable yarding, which will drag logs up the steep slopes, disturbing soils and potentially moving shiny gernanium all around the site. Any disturbed soil is a vector for spread of shiny geranium. After being dragged though the soil, the logs will be loaded onto trucks, contaminated with soil and weed seeds. The tires of the log trucks and the machinery used to yard logs and slash can, and most likely will, become contaminated, creating a significant risk for spread throughout SW Oregon.

The BLM will also conduct road upgrades and maintenance in the timber sale area, which has a high potential to further spread shiny geranium in the area. Logging this unit is incredibly irresponsible, and it facilitates additional weed spread, potentially damaging to habitats throughout SW Oregon.

Other units proposed for logging in the Forest Creek Salvage Timber Sale include living, green trees that survived the recent beetle outbreaks. The BLM is tipping “salvage” logging on its head, in many cases focusing its logging prescriptions in the areas that survived the beetle outbreak and/or by targeting the trees within a stand that survived the recent outbreaks.

Using the fear of beetles, rampant misinformation, and purposefully misleading narratives of “restoration” and “resilience,” the agency is taking advantage of the recent beetle mortality to clearcut living forests, which in turn contributes to the climate crisis, degrades forest habitat, removes climate refugia and increases fire risks. Although the BLM claims to be public servants, it is clear that no one will benefit from these logging projects except for the BLM’s only real partners in SW Oregon: the timber industry.

Bring accountability back to federal land management and please, help us oppose this appalling, dishonest and damaging timber grab by the BLM!

Contact BLM land managers and your elected officials

Medford District Manager, Elizabeth Burghard: eburghar@blm.gov

Field Manager, Lauren Brown: lpbrown@blm.gov

Senator Wyden’s Natural Resource Staff, Jacob Egler: Jacob_Egler@wyden.senate.gov

Senator Merkley’s SW Oregon staff, Dahna Black: Dahna_Black@merkley.senate.gov

Talking Points:

—Cancel the Forest Creek Salvage and Boaz Salvage Timber Sales and the logging of living, green trees. Many stands proposed for “salvage” logging are mischaracterized as “dead and dying.”

—Withdraw the inappropriately applied Categorical Exclusions used to authorize the Boaz Salvage and the Forest Creek Salvage Timber Sales. Logging the resilient trees and stands that survived the recent beetle outbreaks is counterproductive and unacceptable.

—Do not allow logging in existing population of shiny geranium in the Forest Creek watershed. The risk of weed spread and environmental damage is simply too high.

—Implement land management activities on BLM lands that respect public involvement and conduct appropriate levels of scientific and environmental analysis. The current Categorical Exclusion does not provide adequate public involvement, analysis, or public disclosure of the project’s environmental effects.

—The BLM must not circumvent the NEPA process to avoid public accountability, the public disclosure of impacts, or to avoid public comment/input. Public lands should be managed with transparency and accountability, and projects of this scope, scale and intensity should be analyzed with at least an Environmental Assessment.

—The impact of proposed project activities are simply too high and should not be approved. The retention of only 3.3-4.9 trees per acre and the removal of existing forest canopy, including large diameter trees, will increase fire risks, damage habitat values, and contribute to climate change.

As the tallest summit on the Siskiyou Crest, Mt. Ashland is a sky island rising above the surrounding ridgelines and high above the Rogue and Colestin Valleys. Standing on the divide between the Ashland Creek Watershed, which ultimately drains into the Rogue River, and Cottonwood Creek, which drains into the Klamath River near Hornbrook, California, the Mt. Ashland area supports extensive subalpine forest, flower-filled meadows, colorful rock gardens, high elevation bunchgrass habitats, sagebrush clearings, and quaking aspen groves.

Although extremely popular for outdoor recreation and generally well known, the mountain also contains many obscure and little visited meadows, spectacular old-growth forests, rushing streams, and rare conifer species.

Many have been to Mt. Ashland hiking the PCT, mountain biking on local trails, driving road 20, cross-country skiing over deep winter snow, exploring the Grouse Basin and Grouse Gap Shelter, camping at the Mt. Ashland Campground, and visiting the mountain’s windswept summit, but have you explored Mt. Ashland’s truly wild side? You have a chance to on August 3rd for the final hike of the Siskiyou Crest Conifer Field Trip Series! The field trip is an opportunity to see Mt. Ashland in a new light though an informative and potentially adventurous hike on Mt. Ashland’s wild northern flank in the McDonald Peak Roadless Area.

Join us as we explore the wild side of Mt. Ashland, north of Road 20, west of the ski resort, and at the headwaters of Ashland Creek. We will visit and view Mt. Ashland’s rare conifer species, botanize the mountain’s dramatic summit filled with rare and unusual plants, thickets of montane chaparral, barren subalpine habitats, and massive granitic boulders.

At the summit, we will see one of only two stands of subalpine fir (Abies lasiocarpa) in the Siskiyou Mountains. The largest population on the Siskiyou Crest is found near the summit of Mt. Ashland, where stunted krummholz-form trees grow in blue-green mats surrounded by rock gardens and sparse subalpine flowers not more than a few inches high. More common to the north and east in the Rocky Mountains, Cascade Mountains and Blue Mountains, where heavy winter snow creates ideal conditions for subalpine fir, the Mt. Ashland population is disjunct from the majority of the species’ range .

We will also peer down from the summit into “the bowl,” a deeply scoured basin of granite, with mats of greenleaf manzanita and stunted conifer groves consisting of mountain hemlock, western white pine, and red fir. Within this habitat one can also find the last mature whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis) tree on Mt. Ashland and in the Siskiyou Mountains. Although we do not know what the historic impact of ski resort development and/or communication tower development was on either subalpine fir or whitebark pine, we do know that whitebark pine was known to occur on the mountain in 1969, and as recently as 2003, only three mature whitebark pine trees remained on Mt. Ashland, along with a few planted seedlings.

Currently, only one mature whitebark pine is surviving on Mt. Ashland due to a combination of unfortunate factors, including a naturally small population size, the loss of winter snowpack, the non-native white pine blister rust, and bark beetles that have become more virulent and damaging throughout the range of the whitebark pine in recent years. With nowhere to escape at higher elevations, the whitebark pine is highly susceptible to climate change and remains precariously close to extinction in the Siskiyou Crest region.

After visiting the summit, we will drive down the mountain where the field trip offers two separate options. These options include a leisurely hike along the PCT and/or Rabbit Ears area with expert botanist Julie Kierstead, or a difficult and adventurous off-trail hike onto the wild side of Mt. Ashland through moist mountain meadows, intact bunchgrass clearings, and montane forests. The off-trail hike will lead to a meadow and wetland system on the East Fork Ashland Creek that supports beautiful stands of Engelmann spruce (Picea engelmannii).

Engelmann spruces is found only on Mt. Ashland in the Siskiyou Crest region, and in a few locations further south in the Russian Wilderness at the headwaters of the Salmon and Scott Rivers. Engelmann spruce is a tree of the Rocky Mountains, the Cascade Mountains, and the Blue Mountains, and is often associated with deep, snow and moist montane habitats. At Mt. Ashland, Engelmann spruce grows along meadows, wetlands and springs in the East Fork Ashland Creek watershed.

The journey in the McDonald Peak Roadless Area will show you the most remote, intact, and little visited corners of Mt. Ashland, along with some of the rarest conifers in the Siskiyou Mountains. We think it will also give you a whole different perspective of Mt. Ashland and its surrounding wildlands.

Join us on the wild side with an off-trail hike to spectacular meadows and Engelmann spruce groves, or botanize more accessible portions of the mountain with expert botanist Julie Kierstead.

Rising above the pastoral Williams Valley, Grayback Mountain is the signature peak of the area and holds a special place in the hearts of many local residents. Reaching epic proportions in local lore and revered by those who live at the mountain’s base, Grayback Mountain and the vast wildlands to the south, the Kangaroo Inventoried Roadless Area, tie directly into the Red Buttes Wilderness Area at the headwaters of the Applegate River. A north-south spur ridge of the Siskiyou Crest, the “Grayback Range” also connects the forests of the Applegate Valley directly to the Siskiyou Crest and its world-class botanical diversity and habitat connectivity.

The Grayback Range also divides the Applegate from the Illinois River watershed and contains the last significant block of uncut, old-growth forest visible from the Williams Valley. As the wild, forested backdrop to the Williams area, Grayback Mountain is flanked by Big Sugarloaf Peak, a broad forested knob dropping steeply into the headwaters of the Williams Creek watershed.

Grayback Mountain is cherished by local communities for the clean, cold water it provides, the ancient forests it still supports, the wildlife it harbors, and for the scenic backdrop and views. In fact, as an acknowledgment of their love for the mountain, community members have fought for these forests, including large-scale civil disobedience protests and mass arrests at the Sugarloaf Timber Sale in 1995 on Forest Service land, where massive old growth trees over 400 years old were logged by Boise-Cascade timber company. This was followed by spirited campaigns to stop the China Left Timber Sale (on Forest Service lands) further south and west in the Grayback Range between 1996 and 1997. During this campaign activists from Williams and throughout southern Oregon blockaded forest roads and set up the Sucker Creek Free State, protesting for two years to stop, slow and ultimately cancel the timber sale after many of the units had been logged.

Following the Sucker Creek Free State, community activist fought off the Scattered Apples Timber Sale on BLM lands in the Williams Creek watershed, and most recently Applegate Siskiyou Alliance and other environmental organizations across the region successfully challenged the BLM’s Late Mungers and Penn Butte Timber Sales in Williams Creek’s western tributaries.

In another expression of their love for this place, residents in the Williams Valley spent over 15 years working as dedicated volunteers to build the Grayback Mountain Trail. After years of backbreaking labor, sweat, sore muscles, and BLM red tape, the Grayback Mountain Trail is now a community asset and one of the region’s most popular backcountry hiking trails. The trail traverses old-growth forests on the flanks of Big Sugarloaf Peak and in the upper reaches of Williams Creek that are now threatened with the BLM’s Cedar Flat Timber Sale.

The Cedar Flat Timber Sale extends across BLM lands at the headwaters of Williams Creek, including both the East and West Forks. It also contains old-growth logging units surrounding the Grayback Mountain Trail. Recently ASA, set out for upper Williams Creek to monitor BLM logging units in the area and are outraged, but not surprised by what we found.

The Cedar Flat Timber Sale targets some of the last old stands remaining in the Williams Creek watershed, including the headwaters of Rock Creek and Glade Fork on the productive north-facing slopes of Big Sugarloaf Peak. These units contain moist forest associations, including lush Douglas fir forests, Port Orford cedar stands, massive old pines, beautiful wide-branching hardwoods and forests carpeted in understory species more common in the coast range than the interior Siskiyou Mountains. At the eastern portion of Port Orford cedar’s range in Oregon, the area represents a wet pocket of coastal forest, a significant climate refuge, and a massive concentration of carbon stored in forest soils, trees, snags, and downed wood.

The BLM’s proposal includes 3,222 acres of potential commercial logging, including 2,493 acres of Late Successional Reserve (LSR) forest, set aside specifically to protect old forest habitat for the northern spotted owl and other forest dwelling species. The logging proposed is likely to include a mixture of heavy commercial logging, group selection logging, Riparian Reserve logging, new road construction, and the logging of large overstory trees that support complex old forest canopies, important wildlife habitat, and high levels of fire resilience.

Based on what we have found so far in the Cedar Flat Timber Sale units, we believe significant mature, late successional and old-growth forest will be targeted with damaging commercial logging prescriptions. We also believe the controversy this sale sparks will ignite opposition, outrage, and protest like the BLM has never seen before!

Rock Creek/Grayback Mountain Trail Units

The so-called Cedar Flat Forest Management Project (i.e. timber sale) map provided with the recent scoping notice identifies a large sprawling “treatment area” in Section 29, below the summit of Big Sugarloaf Peak and at the edge of the Grayback Glades Research Natural Area (RNA). The proposed logging unit extends across the community built Grayback Mountain Trail and drops down the flank of the ridge into old-growth forests in both the headwaters of Rock Creek and the West Fork Williams Creek.

Although not technically inventoried as roadless by the BLM, these stands are contiguous with old-growth forests flanking Big Sugarloaf Peak in the vast Kangaroo Inventoried Roadless Area on adjacent Forest Service lands. The proposed treatment area includes large blocks of relatively moist old-growth forest, including ancient Douglas fir trees up to 4 and 5 feet diameter. Diverse, complex, and important for numerous old-growth species, including the northern spotted owl, pacific fisher and perhaps, even the coastal marten. These ancient, closed forests are also important to the surrounding communities for their scenic and recreational value.

After years of effort working with the BLM to build the Grayback Mountain Trail, the community of Williams is outraged by the agency’s old-growth logging proposal along the trail and on the slopes below. These forests constitute some of the last old-growth forests remaining on BLM lands, and one of the largest blocks of old forest remaining in the area.

To log these forests is unconscionable, and in the era of climate change, profoundly irresponsible. They are treasures in the local community, islands of biodiversity, sources of clean, cold water for downstream watersheds, and by far the most resilient, diverse, and complex forests remaining on BLM lands in the Williams Creek watershed. These are not forests in need of restoration, fuel reduction or timber management, rather they should be managed for their biodiversity, their scenic qualities, and their carbon storage.

ASA has proposed these lands for protection as an expansion of the existing Grayback Glades Research Natural Area (RNA), and as part of a large addition to the Red Buttes Wilderness, including the entire Kangaroo Inventoried Roadless Area and adjacent, unprotected BLM lands.

The BLM has given the public until the end of 2024 to comment on this project. ASA would start by asking that all treatment units proposed in Section 29 and along or adjacent to the Grayback Mountain Trail be canceled, and added to the Grayback Glades RNA.

Glade Creek Units

At the headwaters of Glade Creek the BLM has also identified a series of logging units that include unroaded and unlogged forest habitat contiguous with the beautiful old-growth forests on Pipe Fork, the Grayback Glades Research Natural Area, and with the vast Kangaroo Inventoried Roadless Area to the south. Although not technically inventoried as roadless by the BLM, these stands are among the most intact in the Glade Creek watershed and provide connectivity from the Williams area to the wildlands of the Siskiyou Crest.

Starting at roughly 4200′ in elevation, these units extend into montane forest associations containing significant stands of white fir and lush high mountain understory communities. These primary, unlogged forests are foundational to the Glade Creek watershed, and create some of the most important wildlife habitat in the area. Consisting of mature, largely closed forests, they are currently developing naturally into late successional or old growth forests. Patches of mortality have begun generating large diameter snags capable of supporting significant cavity habitat, and large downed trees hold moisture and provide habitat complexity.

The trajectory of this beautiful forest is towards old-growth conditions and logging provides absolutely no benefit. Not in need of restoration or fuel reduction, we believe these stands deserve protection as part of an expanded Grayback Glades Research Natural Area. We also ask that BLM cancel the large “treatment area” in the southern portion of Section 34 and at the headwaters of Glade Fork. These forests are worth more standing!

Units 34-01, 34-02, & 34-03

The BLM has also begun marking unit boundaries on Glade Creek and has identified three timber sale units including 34-01, 34-02, and 34-03. These units contain a variety of forest and stand conditions, including younger plantation-like stands, high graded forests with dense young stands, and older forests with more complex habitat conditions. Portions of these stands have been heavily logged while others are primary forest with intact biological legacies.

For example, unit 34-03 shows clear signs of historic high severity fire with big fire scarred snags and downed trees. It also supports dominant overstory trees that have regenerated since the last wildfire. The lower end of 34-01 also contains mature and late successional forest and unit 34-02 contains mature forests with stands of Port Orford cedar. These mature stands are in need of protection and should be removed from the timber sale.

Conclusion

Residents in southern Oregon have fought lawless logging on Grayback Mountain and Big Sugarloaf Peak before, and will do so again if necessary. In fact, the Sugarloaf Timber Sale in 1995 kickstarted a series of timber sale protests across the region that became known as the “timber wars.” Enraged by the old-growth logging occurring on public lands, the public at large revolted, occupied National Forest lands, put their bodies on the line, got arrested en mass, and fueled a movement across the West to defend these last old forests. Some of us from ASA were there and remember this controversy well.

In spite of the history, BLM has never moved on or changed its ways, and like clockwork, after the local community and conservation organizations successfully sued on the IVM Project, as well as the Late Mungers and Penn Butte Timber Sales above Williams, BLM came back with yet another controversial old-growth timber sale, this time near our beloved Big Sugarloaf Peak, which many of us have worked hard to protect in the past.

Based on the BLM’s insistence on proposing illegal and highly controversial timber sales, they have been stymied by lawsuits and subjected to multiple rounds of recent protests in the Applegate Valley, including against the Bear Grub and Late Mungers/Penn Butte Timber Sales. They have also recently been subjected to tree sitting actions in the Poor Windy and Rogue Gold Timber Sales. The Medford District BLM appears poised to reopen the wounds still only partially healed after the timber wars of the 1990s by proposing late successional and old-growth logging projects throughout the region.

Steering recklessly towards conflict, the BLM is once again planning to target some of southern Oregon’s most beloved forests and will surely provoke a response. ASA will be working to stop the Cedar Flat Timber Sale and its old-growth logging proposals at the headwaters of Williams Creek and on the lush northern face of Grayback Mountain and Big Sugarloaf Peak. Please join us as we save Grayback Mountain from the BLM’s newest old-growth logging proposal.

For more information: Cedar Flat BLM Eplanning site

Comments are being accepted until the end of 2024. ASA will be providing information to the public as we monitor the timber sale units. We encourage you to comment and will share information throughout the process. Save Grayback Mountain! Stop the Cedar Flat Timber Sale!

Applegate Siskiyou Alliance worked this past winter with volunteer crews and funding from the Ashland Food Co-op Community Grant Program to build the Tallowbox Trail. We recently opened the trail to the public with a grand opening ceremony, a hike on the trail, and a side trip to the summit of Tallowbox Mountain.

Applegate Siskiyou Alliance is excited to open this new trail in the BLM’s Burton-Ninemile Lands with Wilderness Characteristics (LWC) and is grateful to all the volunteers who helped build the trail—we had one hell of a buckbrush clearing crew! We are also grateful to John MacKenzie for building the beautiful wooden Tallowbox Trail signs, the Ashland Food Co-op for additional funding, and Josh Weber from Green Path Landworks for helping with more technical sections of trail construction. It was a great community effort, is now a great community asset, and provides the Applegate with yet another beautiful hiking trail to enjoy the region’s spectacular beauty.

Below is a detailed trail description followed by detailed directions to both the lower Ladybug Gulch Trailhead along Star Gulch Road and the upper Tallowbox Trailhead above Cantrall Buckley Park.

The trail can be hiked from top to bottom as a relatively strenuous 4.2 mile hike (one way) and over 2000′ elevation gain. As a shuttle from trailhead to trailhead, or in smaller chunks from either the (lower) Ladybug Gulch or (upper) Tallowbox Trailheads.

Tallowbox Trail

The Tallowbox Trail is the Applegate Valley’s newest backcountry trail and a beautiful hike through forests, woodlands, grasslands, and thickets of chaparral, with commanding views across the Siskiyou Crest and the Upper Applegate River watershed.

The trail begins along Star Gulch deep in a forested canyon. A small cascade tumbles over bedrock in vine maple thickets along Star Gulch, while the trail starts up across the road on Ladybug Gulch. Pass the wooden Tallowbox Trail sign and hike onto an old road built historically to access the old Tallowbox Mountain fire lookout (burned by vandals in 2007 and never replaced). Today, this old road has been decommissioned and re-contoured by the BLM to reduce sedimentation and hydrological impacts on the stream, and to the fisheries of Star Gulch. Most recently, the old road has been converted into a non-motorized hiking trail by Applegate Siskiyou Alliance and now serves as the beginning of the Tallowbox Trail.

Ladybug Gulch is a beautiful seasonal stream surrounded in mature Douglas fir forest, stately canyon live oak, bright orange madrone, and a riparian area lined in alder, maple, and beaked hazel. The trail winds up this pleasant, shaded stream on a gentle grade, making a leisurely hike through wonderful mixed conifer forests. The trail crosses the small stream twice (just a step over the creek) and continues upstream to a final crossing where it then winds around a motor vehicle closure and onto an old road a little less than a mile from the trailhead. Follow the brown carsonite TRAIL signs up the old roadbed and into the upper Ladybug Gulch canyon through forested habitat with a few scattered openings of oak and chaparral.

Reaching a major saddle and road intersection, follow brown carsonite TRAIL signs to the right. As you climb the view broadens, the soils become more rocky, and the forest slowly gives way to live oak and madrone woodland. At about 2.5 miles from the trailhead and after a relatively gradual 2000′ climb, the Tallowbox Trail reaches a small grassy clearing directly below the summit of Tallowbox Mountain. The clearing dotted in rabbitbrush, silver lupine, and twisted oak trees can be quite colorful in the spring and early summer with beautiful wildflowers. As you continue hiking, the summits of the Siskiyou Crest can be seen in the distance, dominated by the rugged skyline of the Red Buttes Wilderness.

Shortly you will reach an intersection with the Tallowbox Mountain Lookout Road and the remainder of the Tallowbox Trail. The Tallowbox Trail is marked with another wooden Tallowbox Trail sign on your right. This is the highest point of the Tallowbox Trail at 4,600′. At this point, you can also make a detour up to the peak of Tallowbox Mountain. Although this is a detour off the official Tallowbox Trail, it is a worthy side trip (described at the end of this trail description).

If you remain on the Tallowbox Trail, it quickly enters an isolated stand of large Douglas fir and ponderosa pine trees with charcoal covered trucks from a previous prescribed burn. The stand is relatively spacious and dominated by large, old trees. A canopy shades the forest floor, which is subsequently open and relatively clear, creating picturesque stands that merge below with groves of live oak. The trail them drops past a narrow band of white oak woodland and into a sweeping, grassy clearing punctuated by a few tufts of dark bedrock and fields of California poppy.

The prairie-like slope offers dramatic views to the south and east across the Upper Applegate and Little Applegate River watersheds. In the winter and spring the line of distant snow-capped summits can be quite impressive, extending from Wagner Butte, Big Red Mountain and Dutchman Peak, to the rugged Condrey Mountain Roadless Area, and the dramatic Red Buttes Region. Star Gulch descends below in a long forested canyon, while Mount Baldy and Burton Butte rise dramatically to the east, looming above the Applegate Valley and the surrounding foothills.

Dropping steeply, the trail continues down this old road bed then reaches a more gentle ridgeline and traverses the slopes to the east through thickets of chaparral and openings filled with wildflowers in the late spring and early summer. This includes California poppy, California lomatium, fernleaf lomatium, large patches of cobwebby thistle, and populations of the rare giant death camas.

In the state of Oregon, giant death camas is found only sporadically in the mountains of the Upper Applegate Valley. The large white and yellow flowers of giant death camas grow in a relatively open panicle from large, green, strap-shaped foliage. Populations of this species are more abundant in California where it grows in the mountains and foothills adjacent to the Central Valley, but in Oregon the species is known from only a handful of populations in the Upper Applegate Valley, with the largest, most robust population being found on Tallowbox Mountain.

The beautiful views, wildflowers and chaparral continues to the upper Tallowbox Trailhead, located in a low saddle between Tallowbox Mountain and Mount Baldy at roughly 4,000′.

Optional Tallowbox Mountain summit detour:

From the high point on the Tallowbox Trail, instead of following the trail, turn north along the roadbed and quickly reach an intersection. Walk to the left, passing through a locked gate and continue along the lookout road through mature forests of white and Douglas fir. These more lush and productive forests on the mountain’s north and eastern slope contain patches of red flowering current, Oregon grape, and Rocky Mountain maple, along with western bleeding heart blossoms in the spring. The road hits a major switchback then enters more open slopes with blooming groundsel and balsamroot. The road then climbs to the summit, communication site and former lookout site. The summit although altered by lookout and communication site construction, contains robust populations of giant death camas, pink mats of spreading phlox, bright yellow carpets of sulphur buckwheat, clumps of pale yellow bigseed lomatium, and the rather non-distinct, pale pink Holboell’s rock cress.

The former one room lookout built on a 30 foot tower was originally built in 1918, but was damaged irreparably by vandals and arsonists in 2007, and removed. Although the lookout no longer exists and a communication site has been developed on top of Tallowbox Mountain, it remains interesting botanically and the view is incredible across the Applegate Valley, the Rogue Valley and the Siskiyou Crest region.

From the summit, you can gaze across the Siskiyou Crest From Mt. Ashland and Wagner Butte to Grayback Mountain, across the scenic Applegate Foothills and Applegate Valley below. To the south is a seemingly endless horizon of rugged ridges and canyons rising to the dramatic spine of the Siskiyou Crest. To the north and northwest, rugged foothills line the narrow Applegate River Valley, while the broad Rogue Valley to the northeast is bound by the Cascade Mountains, including views all the way out to the Crater Lake rim, the Sky Lakes Wilderness and the conical peak of Mt. McLaughlin.

Shorter Options on the Tallowbox Trail

Tallowbox Trailhead to Tallowbox Mountain section: Drive to the upper Tallowbox Trailhead above Cantrall Buckley Park. This option consists of a 1.5 mile hike and about 1000′ elevation gain (one-way) from the upper trailhead to the summit of Tallowbox Mountain. The hike offers exceptional views, diverse vegetation, and beautiful wildflowers.

Ladybug Gulch section: Drive to the (lower) Ladybug Gulch on Star Gulch. This option includes a roughly 1 mile hike with about 350′ elevation gain (one-way) in a shaded canyon of mature forest along Ladybug Gulch. The hike offers solitude, a relatively easy walk among mature conifer forest, and a beautiful seasonal stream.

Directions to trailheads

Directions to the upper Tallowbox Trailhead:

Starting from Ruch, Oregon, drive highway 238 west about one mile and turn left on Hamilton Road. In about one more mile turn right onto Cantrall Road. You will drive past Cantrall Buckley County Park, and through a residential area. Staying on the paved Cantrall Road up to the ridge and beyond as it winds around the eastern flank of Ben Johnson Mountain. Almost 6 miles from Cantrall Buckley Park the pavement ends. Continue along this relatively well graded, well maintained gravel road approximately 1.5 miles to a small pullout on the left, marked with a wooden “Tallowbox Trail” sign along the road.

Directions to the lower Ladybug Gulch Trailhead:

Starting from Ruch, Oregon drive Upper Applegate Road south to Star Gulch Road (just before Star Ranger Station). Turn right onto the paved Star Gulch Road and continue immediately over a concrete bridge. Drive 5.8 miles Up Star Gulch Road to the Tallowbox Trailhead, marked by a wooden Tallowbox Trail sign on the right side of the road. Parking is in a wide pullout across from the trailhead and just below a small concrete bridge over Ladybug Gulch.