Author: Luke

Closed to the public but open to the highest timber industry bidder

On September 25, 2025 the local BLM sunk to a new low in transparency and accountability by shutting the public and the media out of its public land timber sale auction in Medford, Oregon. Facing threats of arrest, public members and the media were barred from entry, while the agency sold our public forests behind closed doors.

Taking their cues from the Trump Administration, the Medford District BLM is seizing its opportunity to log off our public forest lands with little to no public accountability, and they are doing so behind locked doors, guarded by armed federal law enforcement. In this way, our local BLM is closed to the public, but open to the highest bidder during timber sale auctions.

The outcome of this closed-door timber sale auction included the sale of two major Applegate Valley timber sales to the timber industry. These two Applegate timber sales are the first in a series of timber sales being proposed under BLM’s controversial SOS Project, which plans to log over 5,000 acres across the Applegate Valley, from Thompson Creek to Ruch, and east to Sterling Creek.  

The Applegate Valley timber sales offered for auction included:

1.  The Apple Saws Timber Sale above Cantrall-Buckley Park and on the eastern face of Ben Johnson Mountain.
2. The Holcomb Hollow Timber Sale surrounding Ruch and Sterling Creek, including units along and in the immediate viewshed of the popular East Applegate Ridge Trail, on the face of Woodrat Mountain, and in the mountains surrounding homes and communities in the Sterling Creek watershed.
3. The Chopper Styx Timber Sale in the Wellington Wildands and throughout the headwaters of China Gulch above Ruch.

Of these three timber sales, both the Apple Saws and Holcomb Hollow Timber Sales sold to private logging companies, while the Chopper Styx Timber Sale, which relied on helicopter yarding to access the timber, received no bids. So, in the immediate future, the BLM hopes to begin implementing the Apple Saws and Holcomb Hollow Timber Sales, riddling our beloved Ruch and Little Applegate Valley with fresh logging scars.

The impact will be to degrade recreational experiences on the extremely popular East Applegate Ridge Trail, as well as the adjacent Woodrat Mountain Launch Sites, where world-class paragliding competitions occur. The SOS Project, just like the previous “salvage” timber sales implemented in the Applegate Valley, will be damaging to scenic and aesthetic values adjacent to these recreational opportunities, and surrounding our homes, wineries, farms, and communities in the eastern Applegate Valley

Additionally, the BLM has already listed additional SOS “salvage” timber sales in their 2026 Timber Sale Plan, including large portions of Thompson Creek. Together, this series of timber sales proposed by the BLM under the SOS Project would combine to create one of the largest BLM timber grabs in the Applegate Valley for numerous decades.

Orwellian doublespeak, episodic beetle outbreaks, and predicted tree mortality

Using their typical Orwellian doublespeak, BLM is working to convince the public that living, green trees and forests must be logged, paradoxically to save them from future mortality. The project claims to be targeting “dead and dying” trees, but its broad interpretation of “dying” allows for the removal of whole stands of living, viable, green trees that survived recent beetle mortality outbreaks and expressed natural resilience under significant biological stress.

The droughts that trigger these beetle outbreaks are obviously cyclical and even under the current climate scenario, they come and go in southwest Oregon. Beetle mortality events often mirror those drought events and are considered “episodic,” meaning beetle populations often expand in direct response to the stress created by drought events, heat domes, and what some scientists are calling “hot droughts.” Under conditions of low precipitation and uncharacteristically warm temperatures—including both extended periods without sufficient winter cold and periods of extreme summer heat–beetle populations attack damaged or stressed trees en masse, build large populations, and create high levels of susceptible tree mortality. Yet, when the drought and heat subside, the beetle populations collapse and these habitats reestablish more characteristic levels of tree mortality.

The past few winters have seen a return to characteristic levels of precipitation, along with the return of more normal temperatures, and the lack of heat dome events in the region. This has dramatically reduced tree mortality across the landscape. In fact, the data collected by federal entomologists using aerial surveys and imagery, demonstrates that tree mortality in 2024 and 2025 is far less severe than in previous years and has  returned to more natural background levels.

Yet when confronted with this information, BLM just moved the goal post in their Environmental Assessment, claiming: “seasonal and annual weather is variable and difficult to predict, prediction of short term (3- 5 year) mortality can be challenging, however, short-term fluctuations should not distract from the long-term trends. The mortality patterns are consistent with projected changes in suitable habitat, due to climate change (Bennet et al. 2023a). Bennett et al. 2023 discusses continued Douglas-fir mortality and modeled the mortality across highly susceptible areas out to 2055. There is an expectation of a large increase in areas considered marginal for Douglas-fir suitability by 2055 (i.e. Douglas-fir mortality would continue to intensify and expand).”

What this means is BLM could not justify their prediction of short-term mortality (3-5 years) or the idea of logging living, viable mature trees, so they just moved the goal post, expanded their definition of dead and dying, and extended the potential period of predicted mortality out to 2055.

This allows for very broad interpretation of “dead and dying” that could functionally include just about any tree on the landscape BLM chooses to log. Yet this analysis also looses all potential accuracy and credibility by predicting which trees might die in the next 30 years, which is between six and ten times longer than the 3-5 years identified in the 2016 RMP. BLM admits in their quote above that even these more short term, 3-5 year predictions are “challenging,” yet they still claim to be able to accurately predict which trees will die by 2055.

Sound absurd? It is.

Not only does the agency have no evidence or even methodology to identify such long-term mortality trends, but making these predictions is wildly inaccurate and requires logging seemingly viable, green trees today based on an unscientific and unproven theory that these trees will die potentially numerous decades in the future.

Recent history and the actual project proposal demonstrates that the BLM will be removing thousands and thousands of living, green trees across over 5,000 acres in the SOS Project. According to the BLM’s Environmental Assessment for the SOS Project, stands considered “dead and dying” may contain as little as 10% mortality, meaning 9 out of 10 trees may have survived the recent hot drought and beetle mortality events, but they will be “salvage” logged anyway.

One of the many problems with this approach is that many of the stands targeted for logging are, in fact, relatively resilient, often mature forests that would be logged to as low as 5% canopy cover. This would leave only a few scattered trees where living, viable forest once stood. Not only is it ridiculous to claim this dramatic increase in cumulative tree mortality will reduce tree mortality in the future, but some of these stands are currently suitable northern spotted owl habitat acting as dispersal or nesting, roosting, foraging habitat for this endangered forest-loving species.

Additionally, some logging units are Siskiyou Mountains salamander sites, while others provide thermal cover for deer and elk, resting and denning habitat for the Pacific fisher, and habitat for great grey owl populations that occupy low elevation mixed conifer and woodlands habitats in the Applegate Valley and on the eastern face of Ben Johnson Mountain.

The impacts of salvage logging on wildlife, wildlands, and fire risks

Previously implemented, BLM “salvage” logging in the Applegate Valley, including the Lower Sterling, Lickety Split, Boaz Salvage and Forest Creek Salvage Timber Sales have demonstrated that many thousands of living, green, viable trees are routinely removed as “dead and dying” trees.  The result of this logging on the ground, has in many circumstances, been the removal of nearly all mature overstory trees, a near total loss of canopy cover, the retention of only a handful of trees per acre, large landslides, stream-choking debris flows, excessive stream sedimentation, the removal of northern spotted owl habitat, and the removal of Siskiyou Mountains salamander habitat, including High Priority Sites protected under the Siskiyou Mountains Salamander Conservation Agreement.

In the coming years, these heavily logged slopes will undergo a dramatic transformation and this transformation or habitat type conversion would include a significant increase in fine fuels, young tree and shrub density, and a large increase in overall fire risks due to the increasingly hot, dry, and windy environmental conditions, and the subsequent regeneration of dense, young, highly flammable tree and shrub growth wherever canopy removal and significant BLM logging occurs.

In southwest Oregon, it is undeniable that the removal of overstory canopy leads to increased fine fuel development and the regeneration of dense, young tree and shrub growth. This in turn, dramatically increases potential fire intensity, rate of spread and resistance to control. Trading mature stands, even with some level of tree mortality within them, for dense, young, even-aged growth triggered by the logging of living, green trees and forest canopy will not reduce fire risks, and is not a viable solution. Instead, it will set these habitats up for perpetually high fire risks, due to a lack of overstory forest canopy.

In our region forest canopy reduces windspeeds, reduces solar exposure, retains moisture, moderates understory growth, and maintains fire resilience. Removing large trees that are likely to survive all but the most severe wildfires, and reducing canopy cover, only replaces these currently relatively resilient conditions with young, low statured trees that support very little if any natural fire resistance.

The two timber sales currently sold by BLM, and most immediately threatening our beloved valley are explored in more detail below.

Apple Saws Timber Sale

Located above Cantrall Buckley County Park and the eastern face of Ben Johnson Mountain, the mature forests and mountains of the area create the skyline for Ruch and the surrounding valley. Sheltered from the intense late afternoon heat, these east-facing slopes support some of the most persistent and resilient forests in the Ruch area. The project includes predominantly living, green, viable stands of mature forest proposed for heavy industrial logging and significant overstory canopy removal.

The Apple Saws Timber Sale consists of 627 acres in 24 separate units, and is estimated to log 6.5 million board feet of timber. Of the 627 acres targeted for logging, 420 acres (67%) have been marked for tree removal in 19 “area units.” The BLM’s Apple Saws Timber Sale Prospectus notes that in these 19 units, 8,679 trees have been marked with white paint for retention. This accounts for the retention of 21 trees per acre and minimal canopy cover retention. In fact, the same document identified an estimated 40,437 trees for removal, with the removal of 96 trees per acre proposed. This means that across the timber sale area almost 4.6 times as many trees are proposed for removal as are identified for retention.

It also means that currently 117 trees per acre occupy these sites, and approximately 82% of the existing trees would be removed if implemented. So next time you enjoy the view from Ruch, Oregon, from Long Sword Vineyard, Valley View Vineyard, or from highway 238 as you drive through the Applegate Valley, image 82% of the forest removed and only scattered trees standing where currently mature forests exist on the skyline above Cantrall Buckley Park and on the eastern face of Ben Johnson Mountain.

According to the Environmental Assessment for the entire SOS project, 67% of the forest proposed for logging, approximately 3,000 acres, currently maintains a green, living tree canopy with between 40%-90% canopy cover. This demonstrates that over 2/3 of the proposed logging area is currently in a forested condition and that number is likely even higher in the Apple Saws Timber Sale, where most stands include living, green, viable forests with significant existing canopy cover, and important closed forest habitat values.

The Apple Saw Timber Sale, like much of the SOS Project is green tree logging masquerading as a “salvage” sale, and the vast majority of the Apple Saws Timber Sale is focused on logging in stands with minimal recent beetle mortality and low to moderate fire risks. Yet, the logging proposed will impact habitat values, while increasing fire risks, and creating much higher levels of cumulative tree mortality than currently exist on this landscape. The Apple Saws Timber Sale in particular, is not about mitigating safety hazards, fire risks or beetle mortality on the landscape, it is about producing board footage for the timber industry by exploiting the natural concern of local residents when tree mortality spiked a few years ago.

The BLM is also acknowledging in the Environmental Assessment for this project that after the heavy industrial logging proposed, many of these units will not regenerate into conifer forests, will no longer have the productivity to support forested habitats, and will be withdrawn from the timber harvest land base because a sustainable harvest is unlikely in the future. These impacts cannot be characterized as anything but deforestation, forest destruction, and unsustainable logging. It also creates what scientists call “type conversion,” and it will dramatically increase fire risks in affected stands. Type conversion has long-been been identified as a negative attribute of anthropogenic management, and it occurs when an existing habitat or ecosystem is so badly degraded that it is fully “converted” into a novel system, with no historic analog.

The type conversion proposed in the SOS Project consists of degrading currently forested, partially forested, woodland or early seral mixed conifer forest habitats into much hotter, drier, more windy habitats filled with stump sprouting, even-aged hardwoods, chaparral, and/or non-native annual grasslands. According to BLM documents in the Clean Slate, Griffin Halfmoon and Poor Windy Timber Sales, this conversion from a forested habitat to a shrub or brush fuel profile represents a significant increase in fire risks, including increased rates of spread, increased resistance to control by fire suppression crews, and increased fire severity in future fire events.

Ironically, many of these habitats directly surround rural residential communities in the Ruch and Sterling Creek areas, where communities will be directly threatened by heavy industrial logging and long-term type conversions that will increase fire risks, reduce the effectiveness of future suppression actions, and encourage the type of fast-moving wildfires that most threaten homes, infrastructure, and community safety.

The Apple Saws Timber Sale will devastate our viewsheds, degrade our forests, threaten our communities with increased fire risks, damage ecosystems by creating type conversions, spread noxious weeds and non-native annual grass species, and impact important wildlife habitats, while degrading local streams and water quality. Built on a foundation of misinformation, the SOS Project would log mature, living forests that have demonstrated resilience to climate change, fire and beetle mortality events. Indeed, these are not dead and dying forests, and the Applegate Siskiyou Alliance will continue opposing this shameless timber grab!

Holcomb Hollow Timber Sale

The Holcomb Hollow Timber Sale would log a mixture of living trees and dead standing snags, including stands with significant tree mortality, and stands that largely survived recent drought and beetle mortality events in the Applegate watershed.  The Holcomb Hollow Timber Sale has three main project areas, including Woodrat Mountain, Sterling Creek and the forests along the beloved East Applegate Ridge Trail.

Built by the Applegate Trails Association with significant support from the local community, the East Applegate Ridge Trail has steadily become one of the most popular trails in interior southwest Oregon due to its relatively accessible trailheads, spectacular scenery, distant views, stunning spring wildflowers, and pleasant mixture of oak woodland, grassland, chaparral, and mixed conifer forest. Despite the extreme popularity of the East Applegate Ridge Trail, BLM has approved logging forests along the trail and in the immediate viewshed of the trail in the Holcomb Hollow Timber Sale. This includes logging off the majority of large old snags and living, green trees in the affected habitats. It also includes reopening multiple old roads that cross the trail for log hauling, closing the trail during logging operations, and other impacts that would lead to an overall degradation of both the recreational experience and scenic qualities of the East Applegate Ridge Trail.

The Holcomb Hollow Timber Sale consists of 679 acres in 29 separate units. In total, 5.5 million board feet would be logged. The Holcomb Hollow Timber Sale Prospectus demonstrates that in the 20 harvest units marked for tree removal, the BLM has marked 4,773 trees for retention, accounting for approximately 15 trees per acre. It also identified an estimated 27, 828 trees identified for removal. This means the BLM will be removing almost six times as many trees as they will be retaining within the project area, logging living, viable trees by the thousands in both stands that were heavily affected by beetle mortality and in stands that were not.

Either way, what these logging “treatments” would create is less forest cover, less canopy cover to reduce understory shrub regeneration, less cool, moist habitat conditions, less carbon stored on the landscape, less forest and snag habitat for wildlife, more soil disturbance, more sedimentation, more noxious weed and non-native annual grass spread, higher fire risks, hotter, drier environments, and more deforestation through BLM timber management. Current forest conditions in the Holcomb Hollow Timber Sale are already quite open and support approximately 56 trees per acre, meaning that approximately 73% of the existing trees would be removed if implemented.  

To make matters worse, over half of the timber sale units (53% or 360 acres) are not being marked by BLM staff, and will instead be implemented with “Designation by Prescription” and “Designation by Description” treatments. This includes all “Roadside Vegetation Management” and “Linear Feature” logging operations and would allow the BLM to simply identify a commercial unit boundary and provide the timber purchaser with prescriptions or descriptions that would inform tree removal and stand retention levels. Loaded with conflicts of interest, this means that the timber industry purchaser, buying the timber sale from BLM will determine specifically which trees will be removed and which trees will be retained.  

Obviously, when logging trees presents more profit, and leaving trees means less profit, it is easy to see the conflict of interest, and easy to see how the financial biases of the timber sale purchaser might influence project implementation far more than tree health or the probability of tree mortality.  

Currently, the BLM has also marked 319 acres in “area unit” acres, accounting for 47% of the timber sale, and in these areas the BLM has identified or marked the trees for retention with yellow paint. The mark in these areas is quite heavy and would remove the majority of the trees in affected stands. It would also convert relatively fire resilient, mature forest habitats into chaparral habitats with minimal canopy cover.

In fact, “unit” logging areas currently identified for logging in the Holcomb Hollow Timber Sale are some of the last living, green forest habitats remaining in the Ruch and Sterling Creek areas.

Currently most of the landscape consists of arid grassland habitats, chaparral, hardwood stands and early seral conifer forest with a snag and open forest component. Losing or degrading these last forested stands, or even portions of these stands, to deforestation or habitat degradation associated with logging will dramatically reduce the area’s scenic qualities, habitat values, and biodiversity, while increasing fire risks directly above rural homes and communities. The result of this large tree removal and significant canopy loss will be to reduce landscape scale fire resilience, especially in areas currently maintaining forest cover.

At the same time, stands that currently maintain significant recent mortality would also be impacted in this sale through logging and yarding operations that disturb soils, create erosion and stream sedimentation, reduce habitat values, impact future water retention, impact current hardwood habitats, degrade habitat complexity, damage wildlife habitat, impact soil productivity by removing snags, and spread noxious weeds and non-native grasses across the landscape. This spread of noxious or non-native weeds has been shown in many studies to increase fine fuels, reduce opportunities for fire containment, encourage longer, more volatile fire seasons, remove natural barriers to fire spread, and permanently alter landscape integrity.

The Holcomb Hollow Timber Sale is a recipe for deforestation in some of the driest, most fragile portions of the Applegate Valley and will increase fire risks in nearby communities, while impacting recreational values along the popular East Applegate Ridge Trail and at the Woodrat Mountain Paragliding Launch Site. It will also damage the scenic qualities of this exceptional landscape, degrade forest habitats, and impact rare species like the northern spotted owl and Pacific fisher.

ASA will continue to oppose both the Apple Saws and Holcomb Hollow Timber Sales, as well as future timber sales authorized under the controversial SOS Project. These sales will impact our communities, the resilience of our forests, the scenic and recreational values of our environment, and the beauty of our beloved watershed.

Support ASA as we oppose the SOS Project and fight for the wildlands of the Applegate Valley!

The Trump Administration is slashing regulations and opening our forests to increased industrial logging, and unfortunately, our local BLM has already responded with increasingly aggressive, dishonest, and unscientific public land logging proposals. Our response will be, as it has always been, to aggressively oppose these damaging projects, to defend the wildlands of the region, and take the tough positions necessary to save the forests we love. BLM manages their lands in Western Oregon for one purpose: timber production. Meanwhile our communities and the many important non-timber related values of these wildlands, will be sacrificed if these projects are implemented.

Applegate Siskiyou Alliance is reviewing the documents, monitoring these timber sales on the ground, and pursuing options to continue opposing these damaging timber sales. If you love the forests of the Applegate Valley and/or live in the Applegate Valley and are concerned about these projects, please consider supporting Applegate Siskiyou Alliance with a generous donation! Our communities, our forests, our watersheds and our wildlands are under threat like never before, and although our will to fight for these forests may appear unending, we need the resources to successfully monitor, review, and oppose projects, and to maximize our effectiveness. Help us stop the SOS Project and save the forests of the Applegate and Siskiyou Mountains!

With the Trump Administration proposing to eliminate the vital protections provided by the 2001 Roadless Rule, we need you help to stand up, speak out and help us protect the most important wildlands in both the Applegate River watershed, and throughout Forest Service lands nationwide. Roadless Areas represent some of the best examples of intact, non-industrialized land in the country, and their protection is at the heart of any credible conservation effort.

Below are descriptions of the six Inventoried Roadless Areas in the Applegate River watershed. All would lose protection under the Trump Administration’s proposal to revoke the protections of the 2001 Roadless Rule. The six Inventoried Roadless Areas, located at least partially within the Applegate River watershed, include habitats at both low and high elevation, in the ancient forests of the region, along intact tributary streams, in beautiful oak woodlands, arid grasslands, chaparral habitats, high mountain meadows, and in the rocky high country of the Siskiyou Crest.

Below is a small sample of each roadless area and a few of their important attributes:

Little Grayback Inventoried Roadless Area

The Little Grayback Inventoried Roadless Area is located in the foothills of the Upper Applegate River watershed and above the pastoral Upper Applegate Valley. The region contains multiple popular recreational trails, including the Mule Mountain, Mule Creek, Baldy Peak, and Little Grayback trails, and spectacular low elevation foothill habitat. The area includes Mule Mountain, Baldy Peak, Little Grayback Mountain, and the southern flanks of Acorn Women Peak, as well as the majority of the Mule Creek watershed, Doe Hollow, Slickear Gulch, and Lyman Creek.

The Little Grayback Roadless Area also includes some of the most important deer winter range in the Applegate River watershed, and perhaps the region’s largest black tailed deer populations. It also includes very diverse and rich plant communities with exceptional botanical values, numerous rare plant populations, mature and old-growth mixed conifer forests, ancient oak woodlands, intact chaparral habitats, small serpentine outcrops, exceptional spring wildflower displays, and incredible views across the Applegate Siskiyou region.

The Lyman-Doe Hollow Botanical Area is also located within the Little Grayback Inventoried Roadless Area.

Collings-Kinney Inventoried Roadless Area

The Collings-Kinney Inventoried Roadless Area includes Collings Mountain, Kinney Mountain and Billy Mountain, along with numerous small streams, including Grouse Creek, portions of Kanaka Gulch, Buck Gulch, Kinney Creek, and Billy Gulch.

The area supports a diverse mosaic of vegetation, including dry mixed conifer forests, deciduous oak woodlands, live oak woodlands, madrone groves, chaparral, knobcone pine groves, and generally very steep, rugged habitats above the Upper Applegate Valley, Applegate Reservoir, and Carberry Creek. The popular Collings Mountain Trail and Grouse Loop Trails extend throughout the area, providing access to both the intact habitats of the Collings-Kinney Roadless Area and the famous bigfoot trap on Grouse Creek near the Applegate Reservoir.

Kangaroo Inventoried Roadless Area

At over 90,000 acres the Kangaroo Inventoried Roadless Area surrounds the rugged Red Buttes Wilderness at the headwaters of the Applegate River and along the Oregon-California border. The sprawling roadless area includes vast swaths of old-growth mixed-conifer and montane forest on the northern flank of the Siskiyou Crest, including the over 35,000-acre Oregon-Kangaroo Roadless Area and the over 60,000-acre California-Kangaroo Roadless Area.

Oregon-Kangaroo Inventoried Roadless Area

The Oregon-Kangaroo Roadless Area contains the backcountry surrounding the Oregon Caves National Monument and lands directly north of the Red Buttes Wilderness Area.

Dividing the Applegate from the Illinois River drainage, the tall ridge system known locally as the Grayback Range, is known for its lush ancient forests, moist mountain meadows, beautiful headwater streams, and tall mountain peaks, including Grayback Mountain, Sugarloaf Peak, Craggy Mountain, Mt. Elijah, Swan Mountain, Arnold Mountain, Steve Peak, and Iron Mountain. It also includes the Craggy Mountain Scenic Area, the Grayback Botanical Area, the Hinkle Lake Botanical Area, and the Oliver Matthews Research Natural Area, as well as the headwaters of Sucker Creek in the Illinois River watershed, Carberry Creek and Williams Creek in the Applegate River watershed.

The area is accessible from the incredibly scenic Boundary National Recreation Trail, which links together the popular O’Brien Creek, Sturgis Fork, Elk Creek, Miller Lake, Limestone Gulch, and Grayback Mountain Trails. This trail system connects the Oregon Caves National Monument with the Red Buttes Wilderness and the Pacific Crest Trail.

California-Kangaroo Inventoried Roadless Area

The California-Kangaroo Roadless Area surrounds the spectacular Red Buttes Wilderness Area with over 60,000 acres of intact, highly diverse roadless habitat. These exceptionally steep, rocky and scenic wildlands extend from the summit of the Siskiyou Crest, and reach into both the headwaters of the Applegate River, as well as south virtually to the banks of the Klamath River.

The northern slopes draining the Butte Fork and Middle Fork Applegate River watersheds contain vast old-growth forests and intact watersheds like Lick Gulch, Cook and Green Creek, and Echo Creek along the popular Cook and Green Creek, Butte Fork, and Horse Camp Trails, as well as portions of the Middle Fork National Recreation Trail. The summit of the Siskiyou Crest in this section is rugged, rocky and remote, while Cook and Green Pass and the Cook and Green Pass Botanical Area have been documented as one of the single most diverse aggregations of native plants in California.

In many places, the southern slopes drop undisturbed from the Siskiyou Crest to Highway 96 and the Klamath River. The area includes over 13 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail. It also includes the upper Seiad Creek watershed, along with Canyon, Portuguese, Fort Goff, and upper Thompson Creek. The upper portions of the Roadless Area border the Red Buttes Wilderness Area and are accessible by the Boundary National Recreation Trail which traverses the spine of Siskiyou Crest between Cook and Green Pass and Lonesome Lake.

The Seiad Baker Cypress Botanical Area is located within the California-Kangaroo Roadless Area. The area supports one of only eleven populations of Baker’s cypress in the world and is also one of the most healthy populations of this rare conifer species. Most of the area is also designated as a Backcountry Area on the Klamath National Forest

The Condrey Mountain Inventoried Roadless Area

The Condrey Mountain Inventoried Roadless Area is located east of Cook and Green Pass and west of Big Rock on the Siskiyou Crest. The over 9,000-acre Roadless Area contains extensive old-growth forests and clear-flowing streams in the Elliott Creek, Dutch Creek, Studhorse Creek, Alex Creek and Middle Hell Watersheds. The upper portions of the roadless area are accessible by approximately 15 spectacular miles of the Pacific Crest Trail which traverse montane forests, high mountain meadows, diverse botany, and unique schist geology.

The area includes portions of the Cook and Green Pass Botanical Area, the Scraggy Mountain Botanical Area, and the White Mountain Botanical Area, as well as portions of the Condrey Mountain Blue Schist Geologic Area. The Condrey Mountain Inventoried Roadless Area is one of the Applegate’s most forgotten gems and is highly important for habitat connectivity.

McDonald Peak Inventoried Roadless Area

The McDonald Peak Inventoried Roadless Area is located at the headwaters of the Little Applegate River high on Wagner Butte, Split Rock and McDonald Peak. It also extends into the Ashland watershed below Mt Ashland. The area includes some of the highest elevation habitats in the Siskiyou Mountains, along with dense old-growth forests, disjunct and unusual conifer species, lush mountain meadows, large aspen glades, sagebrush clearings, and mountain mahogany groves.

The McDonald Peak Inventoried Roadless Area also includes portions of the Mt. Ashland-Siskiyou Peak Botanical Area and creates the headwaters of the Ashland Creek watershed, which provides municipal water for the city of Ashland. Important for recreation, the area includes the highly popular Wagner Butte, Wagner Glade, and McDonald Peak Trails, which connect to the Pacific Crest Trail and the nearby Grouse Gap Snow Shelter, as well as the Ashland Trail System leading from the Siskiyou Crest to community of Ashland.

As the saying goes, “roadless is priceless” and these last intact gems should be preserved in perpetuity, not degraded for the short-term profits of the timber and mining industry. The Trump Administration has proposed eliminating protections for these roadless areas by revoking the 2001 Roadless Rule. Please help us fight like the last wildlands depend on it, because they do! Don’t let the Trump Administration whittle away the last wildlands in the country!

Below are two ways you can both support the protection of roadless areas and push back against attempts to remove roadless area protections:

Comment on the Trump Administration’s Attempt to Revoke the 2001 Roadless Rule

To provide comment on this proposal click here.

Talking Points:

1. Roadless Area protections should be strengthened and expanded rather than be rescinded.
2. Support no logging or road construction in Roadless Areas nationwide.
3. Prohibitions in Roadless Areas should include a ban on motorized trail use in all Roadless Areas nationwide.
4. Logging is not a solution to either fires or forest health concerns, and can, in many situations, make fires burn with more intensity due to microclimate alterations, the loss of large fire resistant trees, and a significant response from woody understory shrub species.
5. Road construction in currently unroaded lands is detrimental to fisheries, water quality, native plant communities, wildlife and wildfire risks, by increasing stream sedimentation, spreading noxious weeds, and creating opportunities for increased human ignitions.
6. The 2001 Roadless Rule was responsible, reasonable, and important for the maintenance of both biological values and local economies where roadless areas play a significant role in the outdoor recreation economy, provide important ecosystem services, and promote a high quality of life in surrounding communities.
7. Citizens of America love their public lands and support their protection.

Support the Roadless Area Conservation Act!

Talking points:

1. Ask your elected officials to support and even cosponsor the Roadless Area Conservation Act. You can email Congressman Cliff Bentz here. Senators Jeff Merkely and Ron Wyden are already cosponsoring the bill, which is great, and you should thank them for sponsoring it! Or if they aren’t your represenatives or senators, click here to find contacts for your senator, or here to find contacts for your representative.
2. Let them know how important these wildlands are for wildlife, watersheds, biodiversity, fire resilience, recreation, and even economic values.
3. Let your elected officials know you love roadless wildlands and support their protection through the Roadless Area Conservation Act.

Contact your elected officials and ask them to support either the Senate or Congressional version.

Roadless is priceless. Check out this drone footage of the Kangaroo Inventoried Roadless Area at the headwaters of the Applegate River!

In the Applegate Siskiyou region we are blessed by vast roadless habitats and intact watersheds protected since 2001 by the Roadless Rule. This federal rule protected all Inventoried Roadless Areas nationwide, from new road construction and commercial logging. This includes the wildlands of the Applegate in the vast Kangaroo Inventoried Roadless Area which links the Applegate to the Illinois and Klamath River watersheds, the Collings-Kinney Inventoried Roadless Area near the Applegate Dam, the Little Grayback Inventoried Roadless Area in the Upper Applegate foothills, the Condrey Mountain Inventoried Roadless Area on Elliott Creek, and the McDonald Peak Inventoried Roadless Area at the headwaters of the Little Applegate River. These are some of the most intact environments in our region, with exceptionally high biological values.

The Applegate Valley, like so many other places throughout the American West, is defined by the public lands that surround our communities. This includes BLM lands in the Applegate foothills and National Forest lands on the Siskiyou Crest and at the headwaters of our rivers and streams. These public lands contain old-growth forests, deep canyons, clear-flowing streams, refugia for wildlife, intact habitats, recreation areas, backyard trails, remote wildlands, and beautiful blank spaces on the map.

These lands are threatened as never before. National proposals call for the privatization of public lands, increased mining that will toxify local streams, increased logging in mature and old-growth forests, removal of environmental protection regulations, and the revocation or watering down of bedrock environmental laws such as the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which requires transparency, scientific accountability, and meaningful public involvement in the federal land management planning process; the Clean Water Act that protects our nation’s water and watersheds, and the Endangered Species Act that protects species currently at risk of extinction. These proposals could turn our beautiful public lands into strip mines, clearcuts, or private housing developments.

One particularly troubling proposal by the Trump Administration is the revocation of the 2001 Roadless Rule and all current protections for Inventoried Roadless Areas (IRAs). IRAs include some of our nation’s most intact and undeveloped wildland habitats, and the 2001 Roadless Rule protects these areas from both commercial logging and new road construction.

In an effort to increase timber and mining production on federal lands, the Trump Administration has proposed a rule making process to revoke the 2001 Roadless Rule and remove protections on over 58 million acres of federal land in 39 states. This includes old-growth forests, rocky high country, headwater streams, and tens of thousands of acres of federal land in the Applegate River watershed, including six large IRAs, each with unique characteristics and important values. You now have an opportunity to provide public comment on this damaging proposal and we encourage you to speak out for roadless wildlands!

We also encourage you to contact your elected officials and encourage them to support the Roadless Area Conservation Act and protect these wildlands in perpetuity!

Below are two ways you can both support the protection of roadless areas and push back against attempts to remove roadless area protections:

Comment on the Trump Administration’s Attempt to Revoke the 2001 Roadless Rule

To provide comment on this proposal click here.

Talking Points:

1. Roadless Area protections should be strengthened and expanded rather than being rescinded.
2. Support no logging or road construction in Roadless Areas nationwide.
3. Prohibitions in Roadless Areas should include a ban on motorized trail use in all Roadless Areas nationwide.
4. Logging is not a solution to either fires or forest health concerns, and can, in many situations, make fires burn with more intensity due to microclimate alterations, the loss of large fire resistant trees, and a significant response from woody understory shrub species.
5. Road construction in currently unroaded lands is detrimental to fisheries, water quality, native plant communities, wildlife and wildfire risks, by increasing stream sedimentation, spreading noxious weeds, and creating opportunities for increased human ignitions.
6. The 2001 Roadless Rule was responsible, reasonable, and important for the maintenance of both biological values and local economies where roadless areas play a significant role in the outdoor recreation economy, provide important ecosystem services, and promote a high quality of life in surrounding communities.
7. Citizens of America love their public lands and support their protection.

Support the Roadless Area Conservation Act!

Talking points:

1. Ask your elected officials to support and even cosponsor the Roadless Area Conservation Act. You can email Congressman Cliff Bentz here. Senators Jeff Merkely and Ron Wyden are already cosponsoring the bill, which is great, and you should thank them for sponsoring it! Or if they aren’t your represenatives or senators, click here to find contacts for your senator, or here to find contacts for your representative.
2. Let them know how important these wildlands are for wildlife, watersheds, biodiversity, fire resilience, recreation, and even economic values.
3. Let your elected officials know you love roadless wildlands and support their protection through the Roadless Area Conservation Act.

Contact your elected officials and ask them to support either the Senate or Congressional version.

ASA has been busy this summer monitoring public lands around the Applegate River watershed and Siskiyou Crest region. Our work is vast like the ridges of the Siskiyous! We work throughout the region on a wide variety of issues, which we hope will lead to better land management, wilder, more healthy native landscapes, and more appropriate levels of habitat protection. Below are examples of our summer’s work.

Turtle Tales Field Trip

ASA held an online webinar and field trip to Acorn Women Lake about Western pond turtles—a declining species and candidate for listing as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act—with wildlife biologists Jade Keehn, wildlife biologist for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, and Erin Considine, wildlife biologist for the US Forest Service. We walked around Acorn Women Lake, viewed pond turtles, learned about their ecology, and also participated in a long-term monitoring project at the lake, where an estimated 200+ turtles live.

Siskiyou Crest Coalition Work

This past summer ASA staff has worked to support the Siskiyou Crest Coalition, including the Acorn Women Artist in Residence program and other outreach work in the area. We also helped to organize a successful “moth night,” surveying for moth diversity on the Siskiyou Crest with lepidopterist, Dana Ross. Additionally, Executive Director, Luke Ruediger and Suzie Savoie have also made multiple showings of their Botanical Areas of the Siskiyou Crest presentation, including one for the Friends of the Ahart Herbarium at Chico State University as part of their “All Things Botanical” presentation series. You can view the presentation here.

SOS Project

We are continuing to track and are ready to oppose the BLM’s SOS Project, which proposes over 5,000 acres of heavy industrial logging on BLM lands throughout the Applegate Valley from Thompson Creek to Ruch, and on to Sterling Creek. This project would riddle our beautiful valley in logging scars and targets mostly live, green forests under a false narrative of beetle mortality salvage. Rather than targeting the dead standing snags (which also has significant environmental impacts), the BLM is targeting many of the live stands that survived the recent beetle outbreaks.

Boaz Salvage Timber Sale

We have continued to monitor the BLM’s disastrous Boaz Salvage Timber Sale. This was likely the most egregious BLM sale in the Applegate Valley in recent history, and ASA has been out monitoring the impacts and documenting the damage of BLM logging operations on Cinnabar Ridge, which divides the Upper Applegate Valley from the Little Applegate Valley south of Ruch.

Cedar Flat Timber Sale

We are currently advocating for the BLM to cancel mature and old-growth logging units in the Cedar Flat Timber Sale above Williams, and instead focus on thinning dense tree plantations developed after historic clearcut logging operations. We are also working to encourage better communication and more meaningful public involvement opportunities around this sale. The project is located in Late Successional Reserve forest set aside to protect old forests for the spotted owl, yet currently targets numerous mature and old-growth stands for logging.

UAW Monitoring

We have been out numerous times monitoring Forest Service logging and fuel reduction projects in the Upper Applegate Watershed (UAW) Restoration Project. Our goal is to reduce the impact of future projects by documenting both where it went right and where it went wrong on the Forest Service’s UAW Project.

Middle Fork Dispersed Camping Issues

We have been working to encourage the Forest Service to address dispersed recreation issues, garbage, and inappropriate public use of the Middle Fork Applegate River area, where disperse campsites are expanding into undisturbed areas and creating environmental damage. Garbage and irresponsible use have been a problem on the Middle Fork for many decades and we would like to help turn things around in what should be the gem of the Applegate on the Middle Fork Applegate River.

Subalpine Fir Discovery

In summer 2024 during our Siskiyou Crest Conifer Field Trip Series, ASA Executive Director, Luke Ruediger found the third population of subalpine fir in the Siskiyou Mountains, and this August we visited the site with numerous expert botanists to verify the find and take a voucher specimen to document the newly discovered population just below Dutchman Peak, at the headwaters of Yale Creek. We are also working on a new Siskiyou Crest White Paper about subalpine fir on the Siskiyou Crest.

Meadow Protection

ASA has been working for years to support the protection of meadows on the Siskiyou Crest and in designated Botanical Areas. This summer we have been monitoring areas with historic off-road vehicle problems and encouraging the Forest Service to enforce existing regulations by physically blocking areas and illegal routes leading into closed areas. Our emphasis this past summer has been the monitoring of meadows and openings throughout the region to keep our native plant and pollinator habitats free from off-road vehicle damage.

Wildlife Monitoring

ASA monitors wildlife in the Applegate with various game cameras around the watershed, from low to high elevation. Our goal is to inform our knowledge of wildlife biology in the Applegate, and help track where they live, what their behaviors are, and what threats to wildlife habitat and populations ASA needs to address. ASA’s wildlife monitoring efforts can help bolster protections for wildlife in public land management, including timber sale proposals and other public land advocacy efforts.

Working through the summer heat for the wildlands of the Siskiyou!

ASA works around the clock, throughout the seasons, in the heat, in the rain, and the snow to protect the wildlands of the Siskiyou Crest and defend the public lands of the Applegate River watershed. Yet, this work requires your support to continue. We are always looking for volunteers who love this region and wish to work for its protection. We also guarantee all donations will go straight into our campaigns to protect, defend, rewild and restore the diversity and grandeur of the region!

To volunteer contact: luke@applegatesiskiyou.org

In September 2024, the Medford District BLM approved the Boaz Salvage Timber Sale by claiming that the project would sustain no significant environmental impacts and by approving the project with no scientific analysis and absolutely no public involvement, utilizing a Categorical Exclusion (CX).

What using a Categorical Exclusion means is that the BLM excluded you from the process. More specifically, they excluded the public “scoping” process and a public comment period, where the public can raise questions, state concerns, identify applicable scientific information, and identify “Action Alternatives” relevant to the initial project proposal.

The BLM then excluded the release of a detailed Environmental Assessment (EA) which would have analyzed these action alternatives and their impacts, while offering yet another public comment period, and additional opportunities for public involvement, all before making a final decision.

Yet, in the case of the Boaz Salvage Timber Sale, the BLM simply skipped these steps and approved the project claiming it would have such minimal environmental impact that no comment periods or detailed analysis was required.

According to the Categorical Exclusion used to approved the Boaz Salvage Timber Sale,

“These categorical exclusions are appropriate in this situation because there are no extraordinary circumstances potentially having effects that may significantly affect the environment.”

Yet, ASA has been monitoring the project’s implementation for many months and our work demonstrates that this project has been one of the most damaging timber sales on BLM lands in the Applegate Valley in recent memory. During the coarse of the last six months, the BLM and Mineral Creek Logging have been devastating the forests of Cinnabar Ridge clearcutting whole stands of live, green forests and leaving on average only 3.4 trees per acre across the entire timber sale. In the process, once forested slopes have been laid bare, landslides have been triggered, streams have been bulldozed and filled with sediment, and wildlife habitats have been irreparably damaged.

Additionally, when compared to the conditions before the logging occurred fire risks will be dramatically increased on the clearcut slopes of the Boaz Salvage Timber Sale. This is because clearcut logging replaces fire resistant mature forest with dense even-aged growth. Although still raw and covered in logging slash, within the next 3-5 years young trees, shrubs and fine fuels will proliferate in the Boaz Salvage Timber Sale elevating fire risks across Cinnabar Ridge.

ASA recently took a drive up Boaz Gulch Road to document the now fully logged and thoroughly devastated Boaz Salvage Timber Sale. What we found was is heartbreaking, but informative. It is also a cautionary tale of what could be ahead for the Applegate Valley if the BLM moves forward with the Ashland 2025 SOS Project.

Although only 250 acres in size, the Boaz Salvage Timber Sale had significant environmental impacts, and will leave a lasting scar in the lower portions of both the Upper Applegate and Little Applegate Valley’s. The Ashland 2025 SOS Project would log over 5,000 acres using similar prescriptions, similar unit criteria, and similarly misleading definitions of “dead and dying” trees, only this logging would be widespread across large portions of the Applegate Valley.

Below is a photo essay taken in late June in the Boaz Salvage Timber Sale along with infrared satellite imagery showing the stands before and after treatment.

Unit 26-1

Unit 26-2

Unit 27-3

Unit 27-4

Unit 27-5

Unit 27-6

Unit 34-1

Unit 34-2

Unit 35-3

Unit 35-5

NOTE: The Medford District BLM had previously proposed and analyzed the Strategic Operations for Safety (SOS) Programmatic project, and issued an Environmental Assessment for that project. That “programmatic” project that would have approved projects across large portions of Medford District BLM lands, but that project has been DROPPED. This new project, unfortunately, has a similar name, which makes things confusing. This new project, is just focused on the Applegate and is called the Ashland 2025 SOS Project, because it is in the BLM’s Ashland Field Office.

The Ashland 2025 SOS Project Proposal

The Medford District BLM has recently proposed the Ashland 2025 SOS Project, a strangely misleading project that has nothing to do with the town of Ashland and everything to do with logging the forests of the Applegate Valley. This massive project proposes to log both the dead standing snags created in recent flat headed fir borer outbreaks and many of the live trees that survived the outbreaks.

Using the recent beetle mortality outbreaks in southwestern Oregon to encourage widespread industrial logging, the project proposes logging similar to the recent “salvage” logging operations implemented in the Upper Applegate, Little Applegate, and Forest Creek areas in the Lickety Split, Boaz Salvage, and Forest Creek Salvage Timber Sales.

The SOS Project Will Log 5,359 Acres in the Applegate

Unfortunately, this new, proposed SOS Project is much larger than the recently completed timber sales just listed. The Ashland 2025 SOS Project will log 5,359 acres on Thompson Creek, in the Wellington Wildlands at the top of China Gulch, on Ben Johnson Mountain above Cantrall Buckley County Park, on the face of Woodrat Mountain adjacent to the paragliding launch sites above Ruch, on the East Applegate Ridge Trail—the region’s signature low elevation non-motorized trail—and on Sterling Creek.

Although the BLM claims the Ashland 2025 SOS Environmental Assessment will target only dead and dying trees in its logging units, the interpretation of “dying” has been used quite liberally and without accountability. In fact, whole groves of living, viable trees would be logged under the guise of “salvage” logging, including stands with as little as 10% recent mortality. The project proposes the removal of the vast majority of trees in many of the units and would retain as little as 5%-10% canopy cover.

The SOS Project Will Increase Fire Risks in the Applegate

If authorized and implemented by BLM, the canopy reduction proposed, along with large tree logging and other significant habitat alterations would degrade forest habitats already stressed by climate change, damage important wildlife habitats, and impact local watersheds. Contrary to the claims of the BLM, the project would also dramatically increase fire risks by creating a dense regenerative response, by removing large fire, beetle and drought resistant live trees, and by converting once protected forest microclimates into hot, sunbaked shrubfields with significantly higher fire risks.

Dangerously, the SOS Project would surround rural residential communities in the Applegate Valley with increased fire risks and habitat conditions that can fuel fast moving, high intensity fire through the deposition of logging slash, the regeneration of dense, even-aged, highly flammable vegetation, and the removal of the trees and conditions that favor more slow moving, low to moderate intensity fire.

Anyone with experience in the forests of southwestern Oregon knows that when you remove a mature forest canopy you create hotter, drier slopes with significantly higher fire risks. For example, in 2018 the BLM analyzed the Clean Slate Timber Sale east of Selma, Oregon and found:

“For the first 1 to 5 years after harvest, these stands would remain a slash fuel type until the shrubs, grasses, and planted trees become established. After the establishment of regeneration, these stands would move into a brush fuel type. Brush fuel types are more volatile and are susceptible to high rates of fire-caused mortality. Stands could exhibit higher flame lengths, rates of spread, and fire intensity. Fires started within these stands could be difficult to initially attack and control. For 5 to 20 years following planting, the overall fire hazard would increase in these stands.”

The SOS Project would log in mature stands with minimal tree mortality, but it would also include some stands with higher levels of recent beetle mortality. In these stands, the BLM is proposing to log both dead standing and living trees, and the project would also damage and/or destroy hardwoods, younger vegetation, and living mature conifer trees during the felling, yarding and tree removal process. It will also damage, compact and disturb forest soils which could lead to sedimentation and landslides like those that recently occurred in the Boaz Salvage Timber Sale above the Upper Applegate Valley.

The SOS Project Will Degrade Applegate Valley Views

If the SOS Project is approved the viewsheds of the Applegate Valley would be badly degraded, including along the Highway 238 corridor, on beloved non-motorized trails like the East Applegate Ridge Trail, on the Woodrat Mountain Paragliding Launch Sites, in the Wellington Wildlands, and from nearly every vineyard tasting room and residence in the Ruch area.

Snag Habitat is Important Habitat

Yet, the impact is far more than aesthetic, and the logging proposed would leave lasting negative impacts on the ecology of Applegate forests. The SOS Project would impact mature, living forests that provide important habitat for species like the northern spotted owl, the great grey owl, and the Pacific fisher. Removing mature, relatively complex, closed-canopy forests and replacing them with a scattering of large overstory trees and dense regenerating forest vegetation does not benefit these species, does not support “forest health” as the BLM claims, and has very little to do with the so-called “salvage” of dead standing trees.

Additionally, the removal of standing snags and snag patches, where they do not pose a risk to public safety or infrastructure is proposed throughout the SOS Project. This would dramatically alter these habitats and the complexity of forest regeneration. It would also remove the significant flush of snags created by recent beetle mortality. These snags and the subsequent downed wood they represent are the only input of these habitats that affected stands will support until the forest again grows trees large enough to develop and restore large snag and downed wood supplies.

The dead standing snags and downed wood created by beetle outbreaks are important forest structures for wildlife who disproportionately utilize large commercial sized snags for denning, nesting, rearing young, and resting or perching. Snags and downed logs are utilized by an incredible number of wildlife species, including black bears, Pacific fisher, cougars, coyote, numerous woodpecker species, song birds, raptors of all sorts, bats, terrestrial salamanders, butterflies, bees and other pollinators, and numerous aquatic species, including endangered Western pond turtles, the Pacific giant salamander, and endangered anadromous fisheries. From a biological perspective snags, downed wood and instream wood are not a liability, they are a necessity for so many species and BLM logging in the SOS Project would create long-term shortages in snags, downed wood, and forest complexity .

The Flat Headed Fir Borer Outbreak Has Subsided

Finally, the episodic flat headed fir borer beetle mortality event that BLM claims to be responding to in the SOS Project has subsided, and even a casual observer will notice that little new mortality is occurring in the spring of 2025. The heavy rains of this past winter should help mitigate the affects of summer drought on these landscapes and beetle populations have crashed when compared to the spring of 2023.

Look around the valley and its forested foothill slopes. Do you see swaths of “red” or “bronze” trees dying out as they were in 2022 and 2023, or do you mostly see the “gray” snags of years past? The BLM claims we are still in the midst of this outbreak and masses of living, green trees will soon die from beetle infestation. Yet, beetle populations have been dramatically reduced since 2023 and beetle mortality has returned to background levels, or near background levels.

We have seen this cycle in the Applegate many times over the years, and it is just part of the natural cycle. Being located in the driest major watershed in Western Oregon, many forest habitats in the Applegate foothills are on the margin and often grow within a patchwork of oak, madrone, canyon live oak and other hardwood species, arid grasslands, and chaparral. In moist years Douglas fir grows well in the Applegate, but in dry periods heavy losses from drought stress and beetle outbreaks can occur. For example, on Thompson Creek and Ferris Gulch in 2016, large outbreaks occurred and subsided, and these forests were less affected by the outbreaks in 2022 and 2023 and have demonstrated increased resilience. In many locations, the stands on Thompson Creek and Ferris Gulch have also begun to naturally recover with a diversity of pine, fir and young hardwoods growing in the canopy gaps created by flat headed fir borer mortality in 2016.

Additionally, only a portion of the Applegate tends to be heavily affected by large outbreaks of flat headed fir borer beetles, as the more moist part of the watershed demonstrate more resilience. More moist areas in the western Applegate Valley, at mid to high elevation areas, in drainages and canyon bottoms, and to some extent north and east facing slopes at lower elevations can all act as refugia and sustain far less mortality during regional drought cycles. Currently the mortality is centered around the eastern Applegate Valley near around Applegate, Ruch, Sterling Creek, Little Applegate Valley, and portions of the Upper Applegate Valley.

It is also important to note that the cumulative mortality created by proposed BLM logging operations would significantly exceed the level of natural mortality in affected timber sale units, and rather than mitigating the beetle mortality event, the agency is only adding to it by logging living trees across over 5,000 acres in the Applegate River watershed.

The BLM Has a Poor Track Record With “Salvage” Logging in the Applegate

The science shows that logging large old trees and removing snags following wildfires or beetle outbreaks does not reduce fire risks, benefit wildlife, or increase forest health. Recent salvage logging timber sales in the Applegate Valley have converted once living, green forests and beetle killed snag patches filled with vibrant natural regeneration into grayish-brown scars denuded of nearly all vegetation and cleared of virtually all habitat complexity. The results can be seen up Lick Gulch in the Little Applegate, on Cinnabar Ridge above both the Upper Applegate and Little Applegate Valleys, on Boaz Mountain, and in the Forest Creek watershed where recent BLM “salvage” projects have been implemented.

What you will find in these recently implemented “salvage” timber sales are raw, eroding, denuded slopes, stripped of their biological legacies and forest canopies, cleared of most vegetation, churned to bare ground by dozer treads, deeply rutted with vertical skyline yarding scars, streaked in landslides, and littered with logging slash.

The SOS Project is a timber grab plain and simple, and it would have devastating impacts to our region.

Please comment on the BLM’s Ashland 2025 SOS Project and let them know the forests and even the snags in many portions of the Applegate are worth more standing.

Comments are due by June 23, 2025! Please help us protect the Applegate and submit comments by clicking on this link

Read the EA and find other information on the BLM’s SOS Project site. Click on participate now to comment!

Talking Points for Public Comment:

• Logging stands with as little as 10% tree mortality is counterproductive. In those stands with relatively minimal recent mortality the BLM is inappropriately merging commercial thinning treatments and “salvage” logging prescriptions to increase timber harvest, reduce canopy cover retention, limit overstory tree retention, and implement increasingly severe green tree logging treatments that violate the BLM’s 2016 Resource Management Plan (RMP).
• The SOS Project proposes a dramatic reduction in canopy cover to as low as 5%-10%. Large tree removal and excessive canopy reduction would lead to increased fire risks, dense even-aged growth, hot, dry microclimates, more extreme fire behavior, and increased rates of spread in local wildland fires.
• All logging treatments in all Land Use Allocations, including the Timber Harvest Land Base, are required to reduce fire risks in the 2016 RMP, yet the SOS Project would dramatically increase fire risks due to intensive logging operations, canopy loss, large tree removal, and the subsequent development of dense shrub and tree regeneration.
• Commercial logging treatments proposed in living green stands in the SOS Project are inconsistent with dry forest management direction provided in the 2016 RMP. The 2016 RMP requires commercial thinning and Integrated Vegetation Management treatments and higher levels of tree and canopy retention than proposed in the SOS Project.
• The BLM should log no living, green trees in the SOS Project and should instead fell or remove only dead standing trees that pose a true hazard to public safety or infrastructure, including trailheads were cars will be parked, major access roads, ingress and egress routes for residential properties and major BLM roads.
• The BLM should build no new roads, “temporary” or permanent, in the SOS Project.
• The BLM should cancel all logging units in the Wellington Wildlands including units 8-3, 9-2, 17-3, 16-1, 16-1, 17-5, 17-6, 17-7, 17-8, 17-12 and adjacent Linear Treatments.
• The BLM should cancel all logging units along the East Applegate Ridge Trail and within its immediate viewshed, including units 11-1, 13-1, 13-2, 13-3, 13-4, 14-1, 14-2, 24-1, and adjacent Linear Treatments.
• The SOS Project proposes unit-based “salvage” logging that is strictly prohibited in Riparian Reserve and Late Successional Reserve forests under the 2016 RMP. All units in Riparian Reserves and Late Successional Reserves should be canceled.
• The BLM cannot “tier” to analysis that does not exists. The 2016 RMP did not analyze, model, authorize, or consider beetle or “decline” related salvage logging.
• The current analysis for the SOS Project is inadequate and a full EIS should be utilized to analyze, disclose, and consider the project’s environmental impacts. This would also allow for additional and more meaningful public comment.
• Current analysis fails to adequately consider the impact of logging on fire risks, recreation, wildlife including the Northern spotted owl, Pacific fisher and other species, water quality, and fisheries.

Which look more healthy to you? Green forests dominated by mature trees, natural regeneration in unlogged beetle mortality patches, or clearcuts and landslides in recent BLM logging projects?

ASA spent the last five years opposing the IVM Project, which would have logged up to 20,000 acres of forest and built up to 90 miles of new road throughout the Medford District BLM. We also opposed the first two timber sales, Penn Butte and Late Mungers, in the larger IVM Project. These sales targeted both mature and old-growth forests above the communities of Williams and Murphy in the western Applegate Valley with significant industrial logging, large tree removal and canopy reduction.

ASA worked to monitor the timber sale units, document the timber sale tree removal mark, and identify a broad range of potential project impacts that would not be compliant with the proper management of fire risks or with the management of Late Successional Reserve (LSR) forest set aside to protect old forest habitat for the northern spotted owl. We held protests and rallies, spoke out in the media about the IVM and Late Mungers Projects, led field trips, conducted public presentations, and participated in the limited BLM planning process.

After exhausting all other avenues, in August 2023 Applegate Siskiyou Alliance filed suit against the BLM, claiming the IVM Project violated the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) by authorizing timber harvest activities in Late Successional Reserve forests and Recreation Management Areas that were inconsistent with management direction provided by the BLM’s 2016 Resource Management Plan. Additionally, the suit claimed that the BLM violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by failing to conduct proper project level analysis and public involvement processes.

Our day in court occurred in April of 2024, and a month later, in May 2024, Judge Mark D. Clarke from the Oregon District Court in Medford provided the initial judgement, ruling on behalf of the environmental litigants, including ASA, in his Findings and Recommendation. He found the BLM had violated NEPA and FLPMA by violating standards for management and habitat protection in Late Successional Reserve (LSR) forests, by failing to consider the increase in fire risks associated with old forest logging and canopy reduction, and by failing to implement proper public involvement and scientific analysis.

This decision was then sent to US District Judge Ann Aiken, and after almost a year of waiting, on March 31, 2025, US District Judge Ann Aiken adopted the initial Findings and Recommendation of Magistrate Judge Clarke, affirming the claims of numerous environmental organizations, including Applegate Siskiyou Alliance, KS Wild and others who challenged the Medford District BLM’s massive Integrated Vegetation Management (IVM) Project, along with the Late Mungers and Penn Butte timber sales.

The IVM Project proposed heavy commercial logging in Late Successional Reserve (LSR) forests set aside to protect habitat for the northern spotted owl across southwestern Oregon. Judge Clarke found, and Judge Aiken affirmed, that Late Successional Reserve (LSR) forests were designated for the “purpose of habitat protection,” and the IVM Project “would render this direction superfluous,” by authorizing timber harvest that would preclude or delay the development of northern spotted owl habitat for more than 20 years. According to the Findings and Recommendation, the IVM unlawfully “authorizes commercial logging of large diameter trees in areas of Oregon’s forest that have historically been preserved.”

In this case, the BLM claimed that the clear guidelines in the 2016 Resource Management Plan that limit logging operations in LSR forest only apply when they intend them to, yet Judge Clarke found “the BLM’s interpretation is plainly inconsistent with the 2016 RMP.” He also found that “sacrificing habitats for commercial logging” in LSR forest, as proposed in the IVM Project, is a violation of the BLM’s overarching 2016 Resource Management Plan (RMP).

The order also confirms that the BLM was attempting to circumvent the public involvement and scientific analysis process required under NEPA by failing to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), by failing to take a “hard look” at the site-specific project level impacts, and by inappropriately “tiering” projects without adequate public involvement or analysis. 

Finally, the court also found that BLM failed to adequately consider the negative impact large tree logging and heavy canopy reduction can have on future fire risks by replacing large, fire resistant trees with dense, even-aged brush and young tree regeneration, and by altering microclimate conditions.

In fact, Judge Clarke states in his Findings and Recommendation that, “by simply electing its chosen alternative without fully exploring the conflicting research on the issue through a formal EIS, BLM effectively reduces its findings to only the positive outcomes, while discounting the coinciding negative possibility that treatments would exacerbate forest fires. Plaintiffs have adequately presented evidence that casts serious doubt upon the reasonableness of BLM’s conclusions and therefore raised a substantial dispute sufficient to show the Program is highly controversial. Preparation of an EIS was required in this context.”

The IVM Project was a major threat to the forests of southwestern Oregon. We are grateful that the courts upheld the law, held the agency to account, and protected our watersheds from unlawful BLM logging. We are also grateful for all who helped achieve this result for the forests of our region, including residents, activists, and organizations throughout the Applegate Valley and southwestern Oregon.

Finally, we are grateful to the University of Colorado Law School Natural Resources, Energy and Environmental Law Clinic who has represented ASA in this case for years now. We most certainly could not have achieved these results without Professor Sarah Matsumoto and the many students that helped develop this case, collaborated on writing briefs, and argued our case in court. THANK YOU!

For the past few months, through heavy rain and deep snow, the Medford District BLM has been logging the Boaz Salvage Timber Sale in the Upper Applegate Valley above Eastside Road, and for the past few months Applegate Siskiyou Alliance has been documenting extreme environmental impacts.

We have repeatedly notified the Medford District BLM that violations of both the Categorical Exclusion and Decision Record that authorized this project are occurring and significant environmental impacts that exceed those considered in the limited environmental analysis are taking place. Since December 2024, we have repeatedly asked the BLM to implement their own Project Design Features (PDFs) surrounding wet weather logging, yarding, hauling and road construction on this timber sale. These PDFs are intended specifically to avoid damage to streams, soils, water quality and Riparian Reserves, by limiting certain yarding, hauling and ground disturbing activities during the wet weather season.

Unfortunately, the BLM has simply refused to implement these PDFs, even after repeated requests to stop the wet weather activities and comply with NEPA authorizations. Instead, the BLM moved forward with these activities through multiple severe atmospheric rivers and heavy precipitation events between December 2024 and March 2025.

The BLM’s irresponsible behavior and clearcut logging prescriptions culminated recently into a large landslide and debris flow that occurred on March 16, 2025 in unit 27-5 of the Boaz Salvage Timber Sale. The landslide and debris flow is clearly associated with the wet weather and clearcut logging activities implemented in the Boaz Salvage Timber Sale by the Mineral Creek Logging company.

Logged in January and February 2025, unit 27-5 of the Boaz Salvage Timber Sale was predominantly mature Douglas fir forest before being logged and the forest had sustained little mortality in recent flatheaded fir borer mortality events. Yet, BLM retained only 5.3 trees per acre in unit 27-5 with most of the retention occurring in a draw in the eastern half of the unit, while most of the western portion was a large clearcut with only a few isolated trees and snags remaining.

Logging off whole groves of mature, living conifer forest on exceptionally steep, potentially erosive slopes, the adjacent hardwood trees, woody shrubs, and understory vegetation were also removed through collateral impacts, the soil was heavily disturbed and skyline yarding scars cut deep grooves into the steep mountainous terrain. These yarding scars create unnatural erosion gullies that alter the slopes hydrology, accumulate runoff and can channelize debris flows like they did in unit 27-5. .

The landslide cut loose both above and below road 39-3-27.2 tearing down the steep clearcut slope and facilitating a debris flow of thick mud and logging debris which ran down the slope, jumped onto the road, and spilled down a seasonal tributary of Neds Gulch. Likely thousands of cubic feet of mud and logging debris either flowed down the slope or was deposited directly into the stream filling the riparian corridor.

The BLM blames the landslide on a steep, poorly built road cut that failed and triggered the proceeding blow out. Yet, this assumption fails to consider the vast stump field through which the land slid, the wasteland of disturbed soil, yarding scars, logging slash and unmerchantable waste wood left over from log processing. The impacts of logging, yarding, log hauling, and log processing and the destabilization they created were at least strong contributing factors to this devastating landslide and debris flow, if not the sole factor. These slopes have withstood rainstorms, rain on snow events, atmospheric rivers and floods for thousands of years, and just happened to blow out, mere months after clearcut logging occurred? We find this to be far more than a coincidence, and instead a cause and effect relationship.

Please contact the Medford District BLM and ask them to withdraw the Boaz Salvage Timber Sale due to significant environmental effects that exceed those authorized and due to repeated violations of wet weather logging restrictions and Project Design Features identified in the Boaz Salvage Timber Sale Prospectus and the 2016 Resource Management Plan. Below are contacts for BLM officials:

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

Lauren Brown, Medford District BLM, Ashland Resource Area Manager: lpbrown@blm.gov

Please also contact your elected officials and encourage them to support conservation organizations and local residents by requesting that the Boaz Salvage Timber Sale and all recently approved “salvage” timber sales in the Applegate Valley be withdrawn including the Forest Creek Salvage Timber Sale, the SOS Project, and SOS Project 1.

Below are links to contact forms:

https://www.wyden.senate.gov/contact/email-ron

https://www.merkley.senate.gov/connect/contact/

These projects are using recent beetle mortality in the area to instead target living, green trees with clearcut logging practices that have no place on federal lands. The significant impacts sustained in the Boaz Salvage Timber Sale demonstrate that the BLM’s “solution” of clearcutting living, green forests under a guise of “salvage” logging is creating much more dramatic and last impacts than the beetle mortality that occurred in 2022 and 2023. The real threat to these watersheds is BLM “salvage” logging, not habitat producing beetle mortality patches that are already regenerating, with a diversity of native species.

The Cedar Flat Timber Sale was first proposed in June 2024 by the Medford District BLM, Grants Pass Resource Area. The timber sale was located in the upper Williams Creek watershed in Late Successional Reserve (LSR) forest set aside specifically to protect, maintain and recruit habitat for the northern spotted owl, support habitat connectivity, and recover owl populations that are currently heading towards extinction. The project immediately raised concern at ASA and we went out to take a look.

Surveying the proposed units we found numerous mature and old-growth forests targeted for industrial logging in this old forest reserve, and after publicizing our findings, pressing the Medford District BLM, and opposing the project, the agency suddenly withdrew the Cedar Flat Timber Sale in the fall of 2024; however, they also announced that the project would reevaluated and reconsidered in early 2025.

Recently the Cedar Flat Timber Sale showed up in the Medford District BLM’s 2025 Timber Sale Plan as an estimated 300-acre timber sale producing approximately four million board feet of timber, and sure enough, just a few days ago, the agency announced the newest iteration of the Cedar Flat Timber Sale and have once again released a scoping notice and initial information on the proposed timber sale in the upper Williams Creek watershed.

This new Cedar Flat timber sale is proposed in the same geographic area as the last one, including units at the headwaters of Glade Fork, on Rock Creek, West Fork Williams Creek, Lone Creek, Tree Branch Creek, Goodwin Creek, Bear Wallow Creek, and small portions of Mungers Creek. The project proposes 2,588 acres of “proposed treatment areas,” including commercial timber sale units in both LSR forest and Riparian Reserves set aside to protect water quality, fisheries habitat, and habitat connectivity along streams and stream corridors.

Like the original Cedar Flat Timber Sale, this iteration includes heavy commercial logging and “group selection” logging, a form of staggered clearcut logging that removes whole stands of mature forest and regenerates young, even-aged shrubs, hardwoods and small conifer trees with little habitat value, no biological legacies, and dramatically increased fire risks. Logging would remove trees up to 40″ diameter in moist sites and 36″ diameter in dry sites, create group selection openings up to 4 acres in size, and reduce canopy cover to as low as 30%. Some alternatives in the proposal would also build new roads, doing further damage to the area’s last intact forest habitats.

Although we remain concerned by the number of mature and old-growth logging units still proposed in the Cedar Flat Timber Sale, we are also pleased to report that our collective advocacy led to numerous controversial mature and old-growth logging units being canceled, and some progress has already been made. This progress includes the cancellation of units in old-growth forests below Sugarloaf Peak at the headwaters of Rock Creek and along the Grayback Mountain Trail, at the headwaters of Glade Creek, and at the headwaters of West Fork Williams Creek.

Still included in the timber sale are mature and old growth logging units at the headwaters of Bear Wallow Creek below Holocomb Peak, at the headwaters of West Fork Williams Creek, and on Little Sugarloaf Peak that must be opposed. These units propose logging some of the last old forests remaining in the West Fork Williams Creek watershed that are the foundation for the area’s LSR forest habitat.

The BLM is accepting public comment on this project until February 20, 2025. Please speak up for the forests of Williams Creek and comment on the Cedar Flat Forest Management Project and Timber Sale. We need you to speak up for these old forests and help us stop the mature and old forest logging in the Cedar Flat Timber Sale.

Talking Points:

-Ask the BLM to withdraw all mature, primary, late successional, and old-growth forest logging from the Cedar Flat Timber Sale, including the old forests proposed for logging at the headwaters of Bear Wallow Creek, West Fork Williams Creek, and on Little Sugarloaf Peak.

-Ask BLM to maintain all northern spotted owl habitat designations, trees over 20″ diameter, canopy coverage of 60% or more and stands over 70 years of age that remain on the landscape.

-Ask BLM to build no new logging roads in the Cedar Flat Timber Sale. Road density is already extreme in the planning area. Roads in this area are spreading Port Orford-cedar Root Rot and damaging water quality.

-Ask BLM to analyze the impact of proposed logging activities on carbon storage, climate resilience, mature and old forest habitat, northern spotted owl habitats, Pacific fisher habitats, and other rare, unique or sensitive species in the upcoming EA.

-Tell BLM that all action alternatives must protect the mature, primary, late successional and old-growth habitats remaining in the planning area and work with young stands to recruit and restore LSR function and complex forest habitats.

-Ask BLM to analyze the impact of proposed logging on water quality, watershed values, and anadromous fisheries. The Williams Creek watershed is one of the most important low gradient streams and coho salmon watersheds in the Applegate River watershed. In addition, the Applegate River watershed contains only 12% of the Rogue River basin, but supports 1/3 of the coho salmon spawning in the Rogue River watershed. All action alternatives must protect threatened populations of coho salmon and the water quality on which they rely.

-Tell the BLM that the intensity of logging proposed will impact watershed values, fisheries, and old forest habitats, as well as late successional species such as the northern spotted owl, Pacific fisher, red tree vole, Humboldt marten and others.

-Ask BLM not to set back northern spotted owl recovery objectives by precluding or delaying northern spotted owl habitat development for more than 20 years in LSR forest habitat, as the current proposal does.

Comments will be accepted until Feburary 20, 2025.

For more information on this project and to provide comments follow this link: https://eplanning.blm.gov/eplanning-ui/project/2036044/510

The Medford District BLM has begun logging the so-called Boaz “Salvage” Timber Sale in the Applegate Valley by clearcutting living, green, viable stands of forest. Asking the public to suspend their disbelief, the BLM is simply declaring living stands “dead and dying,” yet in many of these stands the only signs of imminent mortality are the BLM’s timber sale boundary markers and the tree removal mark.

As we write this blog the BLM is clearcutting whole stands, retaining on average 3.3 trees per acre and making a mockery of truth, honesty, and accountability in the process. Applegate Siskiyou Alliance has opposed this timber sale since the BLM proposed to auction the sale to the timber industry without formal authorization. We have also ground-truthed all the units in the timber sale and found most of them to contain living, green, viable trees and stands. In fact, most have been only minimally impacted by the recent beetle mortality event. We also found a few stands that did contain significant tree mortality, where BLM will log nearly every tree that survived the beetle outbreak — logging the trees that have the genetics and are located in portions of the landscape that helped them survive the outbreak. These are the very trees we need to retain on the landscape for climate resiliency into the future.

Below we will expose the BLM lies one by one, showing how this dishonest and purposefully misleading narrative is affecting our environment and how the BLM is clearcutting our beloved forests.

Lie #1: The trees targeted for logging are dead and dying.

The BLM claims the trees in the Boaz “Salvage” Timber Sale are “dead and dying,” but the majority of the timber sale is located in living, green stands of trees and forests with little recent fir borer beetle mortality. According to the BLM’s authorization documents, a tree deemed “dead and dying” must be determined to be “likely to die within a few years.”

Yet, ASA hired professional certified forester, Kenneth Baldwin who issued a report that directly contradicts the BLM’s analysis, and found that the majority of the trees and stands proposed for logging are not dead and not dying, but are instead, living viable stands of trees.

“In summary my field survey of the thirteen units in the Boaz Mortality Salvage Sale, I conclude that most of the live Douglas-firs are not “severely damaged” nor “likely to die within a few years” and therefore do not meet the CX definition of dying trees. These trees are incorrectly designated for cutting in the units,” said Baldwin.

Additionally, satellite and infrared imagery shows that BLM is targeting living stands of trees with clearcut logging, which will only increase mortality and forest loss in our area.

We cannot allow the BLM to continue deceiving the public, implementing clearcut logging that degrades habitat, increases fire risks, impacts that area’s high scenic qualities, and logs living, green stands of trees under the guise of “salvage” logging. In the era of misinformation and “fake news,” we must hold the BLM accountable and demand that federal land management agencies provide honest, truthful analysis. We are also calling on our elected officials to confront the misinformation of the BLM, demand that the agency serve the public interest, protect our climate, and shut down this rogue agency that lies to promote its timber-first agenda, disregards all public concerns, and is actively working to take the public out of public land management.

The forests in the Boaz Timber Sale are not “dead and dying,” they are being killed by the BLM for the benefit of the industry and to the detriment of both the land and nearby communities.

BLM IS THE THREAT TO NATIVE FORESTS, NOT NATIVE BEETLES!

Lie #2: The BLM claims it is conducting “salvage” logging focused on the removal of dead and dying trees.

As identified above, very little of the Boaz Timber Sale contains “dead and dying” stands or trees, and the timber sale instead targets mostly living, green, viable stands of forest for clearcut logging. Additionally, even in stands that did support significant recent mortality, the BLM is proposing to log off many of the trees that survived the recent beetle mortality outbreaks. By logging living stands and living trees, BLM is undermining the resilience of our forests to future drought and beetle outbreaks and logging off trees that contain either genetic or situational resilience.

The Boaz Salvage Timber Sale is creating extensive forest loss that only compounds the mortality that did occur during the 2022-2023 mortality outbreak, releasing extensive carbon into the atmosphere fueling climate change, degrading habitat, and increasing fire risks. BLM is blatantly lying about the mortality in these stands, the impacts of the logging, and the health of the forests in question. The Boaz “Salvage” Timber Sale is not salvage logging and instead is clearcut logging and deforestation of green, living forests.

Lie #3: The flat headed fir borer outbreak is continuing unabated.

The BLM claims that flat headed fir borer mortality of 2022-2023 is ongoing and has continued unabated. Yet, all one needs to do is look around the watershed, go for a hike, or take a drive through the Applegate Valley. The tree mortality that occurred in response to droughts and heat domes in 2022 and 2023 has subsided and returned to background levels. Additionally, the abundant rain this fall and winter will most certainly reduce tree mortality even further. Flatheaded fir borer outbreaks are eruptive and responsive to climactic conditions, including prolonged drought, extreme heat, and a lack of winter cold. They are also naturally moderated by more favorable climactic conditions, as we are experiencing this year.

Once again, the BLM is lying to promote their timber-first agenda. They are refusing to publish information showing the level of mortality in 2024, and are operating off false assumptions, not based in fact. The flatheaded fir borer mortality outbreak has collapsed and BLM’s claims that trees are still dying en mass is inconsistent with the facts on the ground.

Lie #4: The recent beetle mortality will increase fire risks.

Past studies exploring the relationship of beetle mortality and fire behavior have also shown no direct correlation between increased fire severity and bark beetle mortality. This includes studies conducted in the Pacific Northwest (Meigs, 2016), the Rockies (DellaSala, 2016), in California (Bond, 2009), and in Oregon (Donato, 2006). Studies across the West have actually shown a decrease in fire severity associated with bark beetle mortality and an associated “dampening” of fire behavior (Meigs, 2016; Harvey et al. 2014; Donato, 2013). In fact, beetle mortality across a range of forest types has not been shown to influence the occurrence or increase the risk of fire, relative to unaffected stands (Bond, 2009; Kulakowski & Jarvis, 2011; Black et al. 2013; Harvey et al. 2013; Hart, 2015).

BLM is manipulating and cherry-picking their science, ignoring a massive body of science that contradicts their claims and once again lying to the public. The majority of scientific studies show that beetle mortality does not increase fire risks, yet BLM refuses to accept the best available science and instead promotes a false agenda meant to increase timber production on BLM lands and continue deforestation in southwest Oregon.

Lie #5: BLM logging will reduce fire risks

As identified above, the science demonstrates that beetle mortality events do not increase fire risks and may, in fact, reduce them; however, BLM refuses to objectively study the science and embrace these facts. Instead the agency is claiming that clearcut logging in the Boaz Timber Sale (to 3.3 trees per acre) will reduce fire risks. Ironically, this contradicts their own analysis in their Clean Slate and Griffin Halfmoon Timber Sales that admitted that extensive canopy reduction and large tree removal at this scale creates increased fire risks, increased fire severity, increased rates of spread, and generally more intense fires.

Additionally, the Boaz Salvage Timber Sale Prospectus, utilized by the BLM to outline timber sale activities for potential timber industry purchasers states that all units in the timber sale will be “treated” with lop and scatter slash abatement, which means all limbs, tops, logging slash and unmerchantable material will be left on the forest floor, dramatically increasing fire risks, understory fuel loading, and fire-available fuel in logged stands.

To claim to be reducing fire risks while implementing clearcut logging, artificially replanting conifers to create even-aged and highly flammable timber plantations, and leaving all logging slash on the forest floor is disingenuous, misleading, and untrue. Once again, the BLM lying about the effects of this project which will dramatically increase fire risks for the forests and surrounding rural communities in the Applegate Valley.

As Los Angeles recovers from devastating wildfires, the Medford District BLM is turning living, green forests into clearcuts that will turn into dense brush above the rural communities of the Applegate, creating highly flammable areas as residents work hard to make their own properties fire resilient.

Lie #6: The stands proposed for logging do not include Northern spotted owl and Siskiyou Mountains Salamander habitat.

The BLM claims that the stands proposed for logging are “dead and dying,” and therefore do not support northern spotted owl habitat; however, many of the stands proposed for logging include very little tree mortality and were identified in previous logging proposals as suitable habitat for the northern spotted owl (nesting roosting, foraging, and/or dispersal habitat). Given the lack of significant mortality in these stands, claiming that they no longer contain living forest canopy, large diameter trees, multi-aged stand structure and other constituent elements of northern spotted owl habitat is absolutely untrue.

Nothing has changed in these stands and they remain northern spotted owl habitats. Other locations in the Boaz Salvage Timber Sale have been identified as Siskiyou Mountains salamander High Priority Habitats, where an existing 2007 Conservation Agreement precludes the BLM from removing too much canopy, operating heavy equipment, or significantly altering the habitat for this rare species; however, BLM’s Boaz Timber Sale will clearcut these habitats in violation of the Conservation Agreement damaging important Siskiyou Mountains salamander habitats.

Take Action!

Lies must be exposed with truth and the Medford District BLM’s dishonest salvage logging agenda must be stopped. They are currently logging the living, green forests of the Boaz Salvage Timber Sale and have proposed their massive SOS Project that will continue the public deception and log shows across up to 15,000 acres every five years. In the era of misinformation, we believe the public and our elected officials, must demand truth and honesty in government. The BLM has proven themselves to be dishonest and unworthy of managing our public lands. Lying to the public and undermining the public interest is unacceptable, but it is routine on the Medford District BLM, who has become a rogue agency, in need of significant reform.

Contact the following BLM and elected officials, and let them know you demand truthful analysis, honest projects that reduce, rather than increase fire risks, and the protection of our environment, our climate and the beautiful forests of southwestern Oregon. No more clearcut logging on BLM lands! Ask the BLM to withdraw the SOS Project and the Boaz Salvage Timber Sale and demand that elected officials take action now, before more living, carbon rich forests are clearcut under BLM’s misinformation campaign.

BLM District Manager Elizabeth Burghard: eburghar@blm.gov

Ashland Resource Area Manager, Lauren Brown: lpbrown@blm.gov

Senator Wyden: https://www.wyden.senate.gov/contact/email-ron

Senator Jeff Merkley: https://www.merkley.senate.gov/connect/contact/

Representative Pam Marsh: Rep.PamMarsh@oregonlegislature.gov

Representative Jeff Golden: Sen.JeffGolden@oregonlegislature.gov