In our last blog post, we explored the connection between BLM logging operations in the Applegate Valley and elevated levels of beetle mortality in recent drought events. We also examined the BLM’s currently proposed SOS Project which would log up to 5,000 acres of beetle affected forests throughout southwestern Oregon. This logging would include the removal of both live and dead standing trees, and in many cases will result in large-scale clearcut logging.

As a follow up to this previous post, we are now exploring two recent examples of so-called “salvage” logging in stands with varying levels of beetle mortality. Although you often hear land managers claim that these salvage logging treatments are focused on “fuel reduction” and “forest health,” the timber sale marks and the actual timber sale outcomes tell a very different story.

Salvage logging, by definition, is about recovering the economic value of dead trees, and most scientific studies have proven salvage logging to be ecologically damaging.

Below we will explore the actual result of these commercial logging, and often clearcut logging operations. Our case studies will include the Lickety Split Timber Sale implemented by the Medford District BLM in the Little Applegate Valley, and the helicopter logging recently approved by the city of Ashland, Oregon on city owned forest and park lands.

Lickety Split Timber Sale, Little Applegate Valley

While the BLM recently led a public field trip to greenwash their SOS Project logging proposals, they have at the same time, been clearcutting and otherwise heavily logging large swaths of public land in the Little Applegate River watershed in the Lickety Split Timber Sale. This salvage logging project removed both dead standing, beetle killed trees, and large, green trees that survived the beetle outbreaks.

These living, green trees support favorable genetic traits that could naturally regenerate or reforest the beetle affected stands with drought and beetle resistant trees; however, in the case of the Lickety Split Timber Sale, the BLM logged many of these surviving trees, removing the naturally resistant seed trees and undermining the selective pressures and evolutionary processes that build future resilience in our local forests.

Just like other recent Medford District BLM salvage logging projects, the Lickety Split Timber Sale was implemented within stands that had been previously thinned for “forest health” and to “increase resilience,” but have instead become more susceptible to drought and beetle mortality affects. In this case, the salvage logging is occurring within the 2013 O’lickety Timber Sale, purchased by Murphy Timber Company and logged by Bull Creek Logging, as well as the Lick Stewardship Project, which was purchased and logged by Lomakatsi Ecological Services (the for-profit wing of the Lomakatsi Restoration Project). Both of these projects were illegally over-cut when they were logged due to excessive tree marking by the BLM, have subsequently sustained high levels of mortality, and were salvage logged in the Lickety Split Timber Sale.

In response to the most recent mortality in these stands, the BLM has removed nearly all overstory canopy, and in many locations, has clearcut both dead standing and living green trees. The result of the Lickety Split Timber Sale in many units looks like a clearcut, functions like a clearcut, will be replanted in plantation stands like a clearcut, and will both damage habitats and increase fire risks like a clearcut.

Although the BLM often claims these salvage logging operations will favor and encourage hardwoods, oaks, pines and more drought resistant native vegetation, again, when you compare their claims to the actual outcome of their projects, it’s a very different story. In the Lickety Split Timber Sale, the agency removed not only living and dead standing conifer trees, but also cut, damaged, or otherwise destroyed nearly every hardwood (madrone, black oak, white oak, etc.) in the timber sale units. This left virtually nothing to replace the beetle killed stands. Additionally, the widely spaced and heavily isolated conifer trees, or very occasional hardwood tree that survived the logging operation, are now highly susceptible to increased windthrow during high winds or heavy snow events.

In addition to projects like the Lickety Split Timber Sale, the Medford District BLM is administratively reclassifying many beetle killed stands as “young stands.” This allows the BLM to treat these stands using “pre-commercial” thinning prescriptions which remove virtually all hardwoods and purposefully reintroduces even-aged, plantation style forestry, instead of allowing the more resilient hardwoods, residual conifers, and naturally regenerating forests to develop after the beetle mortality events. Both the removal of more resilient, but less commercially valuable species, and the artificial reforestation or tree planting that follows such heavy industrial logging, will degrade habitats, simplify forest structure, reduce stand resilience and dramatically increase fire risks.

Don’t be fooled by the BLM’s rhetoric, the Lickety Split Timber Sale demonstrates exactly what the BLM’s proposed salvage logging in the SOS Project will create: clearcuts, heavy logging slash, extensive soil damage, stream sedimentation, an impediment to natural regeneration, new plantation stands and significantly decreased habitat values across broad landscapes. Fire risks will also increase in many of the forests that surround our communities due to the even-aged regeneration practices associated with clearcut logging and salvage logging operations.

The result of this project is quite literally clearcut, and the so-called benefits BLM speaks of are simply not part of the actual outcome from these logging operations. Rather than encouraging a natural, diverse, dynamic vegetative recovery following the recent mortality outbreaks, BLM is degrading habitats, developing plantations, and releasing naturally stored carbon through tree and snag removal operations. Rather than making our forests more resilient, the BLM and its salvage logging practices are fueling the climate and biodiversity crisis.

City of Ashland Helicopter Salvage Logging

The city of Ashland, under the leadership of Ashland Fire and Rescue, Wildfire Division Chief Chris Chambers, and with a $150,000 subsidy from the Lomakatsi Restoration Project, has also proposed a large scale helicopter salvage logging project on city owned lands, including much of the Ashland Watershed’s beloved trail system.

Similar to the salvage logging projects recently proposed or approved by the BLM, this project will “salvage” tree mortality that has occurred since previous “forest health” logging operations were implemented. Most of this project is proposed in previously “treated” stands, many of which were commercially thinned with helicopters during the Ashland Forest Resiliency Project.

Although often characterized as a beetle mortality or “salvage” logging project, the city has marked acres and acres of live, green trees that survived the recent beetle outbreaks. In fact, in our monitoring of the project it appears that more live trees will be logged than those that were recently killed by beetle infestation.

In fact, the timber sale mark (implemented for the city of Ashland by the Lomakatsi Restoration Project) did not appear to achieve overtly ecological objectives. Large snags with potential commercial value, often including the largest snags in a stand, are marked for removal. This often includes the biggest, most important wildlife snags and isolated snags that pose no risk to public safety or future fuel loading. In many cases, snags would be clearcut, or virtually clearcut, and stands of live, green trees would be heavily thinned, leaving them susceptible to the same problems, and suffering from the same fragility that the original Ashland Forest Resiliency Project thinning operations have created.

Rather than serving legitimate biological purposes, the green tree logging proposed will be used to offset the estimated $1.3 million cost of helicopter logging and the additional cost of hauling logs to the Timber Products mill in Yreka, California. The city estimates that as much as $686,000 will be made by selling both dead standing and live, green timber from the city watershed, but as much as $700,000 of city funds would be needed to cover additional project costs.

Recently, the Ashland City Council approved the logging of the Reeder Reservoir area to offset the extensive public cost of this largely unnecessary project. According to recent city drone surveys 93% of the Douglas fir trees in this area are healthy. Not exactly an emergency, the logging around Reeder Reservoir, the city of Ashland’s water supply, is being conducted to enhance the economic, not the biological value, of this shortsighted timber sale. Other areas supporting between 68% and 78% healthy Douglas fir trees would also be logged in this proposal, including Ashland’s beloved Siskiyou Mountain Park, along the White Rabbit Trail, along the Bandersnatch, Snark, and Red Queen Trails, in the Hitt Road/Acid Castle area, and on other portions of city owned land.

In fact, the city surveyed approximately 800 acres of publicly owned city park land and recreational areas using drone technology. On this 800 acres it found only 2933 dead trees or approximately 3.6 dead trees per acre. Although in some areas mortality has been more extensive, the overall effect is relatively minor, and perhaps even beneficial in the long run.

This pulse of beetle mortality would, if left unlogged, provide a necessary input of snags and downed wood in forests that are currently largely deficient in both. The beetle mortality naturally thinned forest stands, created gaps for hardwood and conifer regeneration, provides important habitat values, and significantly contributes to habitat heterogeneity.

Utilizing what we call “fear based forestry,” Chris Chambers has been quoted in local newspapers stating that beetle mortality threatens public safety, will increase fire risks, and even that dead standing trees may fall into Ashland Creek, somehow threatening downstream communities. He has also claimed that beetle mortality is threatening to convert the forests of the Ashland Watershed into grassland or shrubland habitat. Unfortunately, neither the science that has studied beetle mortality events, the severity of this particular beetle event, nor the facts of this project support this narrative.

Ironically, despite the claims of “firmageddon” in the media and the fear-based messaging of project partners, the cumulative mortality created by previous commercial thinning operations in the Ashland Forest Resiliency Project, and the additional green tree logging proposed in the Ashland watershed under the guise of timber salvage, has killed or will kill, far more trees than the recent beetle outbreak in the Ashland watershed.

The natural disturbance (in this case beetle mortality), although potentially accelerated by climate change and drought, is within the range of variability for this landscape and has likely happened before. Habitats in the transitional climate of southwestern Oregon are significantly influenced by natural disturbance episodes including drought, beetles, fire, snowloads, wind storms, and even native pathogen outbreaks. Plant communities shift in response to these disturbance episodes and mortality leaves important biological legacies that provide habitat, support complexity, hold moisture, build soil, and maintain continuity between habitats and successional stages.

Additionally, while the beetle mortality event killed genetically susceptible, less resilient trees and forests, the logging proposed will remove green, living trees that demonstrated significant resilience by surviving these droughts and subsequent beetle mortality events. These survivors may contain significant genetic adaptations important for building future resilience to drought and beetle outbreaks in our local forests, but unfortunately, the City of Ashland plans to remove many of them in helicopter logging operations.

Instead of focusing on legitimate hazard tree removal along forest roads, at trailheads, around public infrastructure and directly adjacent to communities, snag and live tree removal will be widespread throughout the watershed and will occur in relatively remote portions of these city owned properties. In many cases this will include stands far from trails, trailheads, or developed infrastructure. In these locations, public safety risks are either very minimal or non-existent. In fact, the Reeder Reservoir parcel is largely closed to the public and thus, no public safety risk can be credibly claimed. Instead, the logging proposed on the Reeder Reservoir property is purely economically driven and the live, green timber will be used to subsidize and/or offset the removal of dead standing snags throughout city owned land.

Furthermore, tree and snag removal will impact the scenic value of local recreational trails turning portions of these trails like the Bandersnatch Trail and White Rabbit Trail into extensive stump fields. Snag and tree removal will reduce wildlife habitat in the area, remove important biological legacies, leave future stands deficient in snags and downed wood, and open stands up to both increased aridity, increased drought stress and increased fire risks.

Snag and tree removal will also impact future soil stability, soil productivity, and soil moisture availability by removing snags or low vigor trees that would provide for the recruitment of coarse downed wood. Coarse downed wood is a critical component of old-growth forests, and if we want old forest habitats, we need both downed wood and big standing snags.

As for the concerns of snags falling in Ashland Creek, the science shows that has been happening for thousands and thousands of years, and is indisputably a good thing for the creek, for fisheries, and for aquatic species of all types. The reason watershed councils across the region spend millions placing large logs into streams, is because it’s good for riparian health and fish! The recent beetle outbreak provided a pulse of mortality recruiting snags, downed trees and instream wood which supports soil, wildlife and watershed health.

Conclusions

Despite the claims of logging proponents, a heavy dose of greenwash, and a persistent public relations campaign, the current push to “salvage” beetle killed timber in southwestern Oregon comes with significant environmental consequences and climate impacts, and very few benefits. Most definitely not a restoration or fuel reduction treatment, the logging currently being implemented and proposed across the region will simplify, degrade, and diminish the resilience, beauty, and biodiversity found in southwestern Oregon’s unique, highly diversified forests.

Neither the logging approved in the Ashland watershed or the Applegate Valley has positive biological outcomes; neither will meaningfully reduce fire risks; neither will restore ecosystem function, and neither will achieve the lofty objectives claimed by the city or by the BLM. These projects and their numerous undesirable outcomes should inform the conversation about future salvage logging in the BLM’s proposed SOS Project and similar projects likely to be proposed by both the BLM and other land managers.

Despite the forest health rhetoric, salvage logging is the worst form of industrial logging, with perhaps the most significant and lasting environmental impacts because it is often implemented as clearcut or heavy industrial logging. It is also often rushed to the mill and poorly designed without sufficient site specific analysis or adequate design features to mitigate impacts. In the case of the Lickety Split Project, it was also implemented during the rainy season maximizing the projects impact on soils, hydrology, sedimentation and watershed health.

We encourage folks to get out when the logging is finished in the Ashland watershed, or go for a drive up Lick Gulch Road in the Little Applegate River watershed. The consequences of salvage logging, the singular economic focus, and the false narrative spun by its supporters will quickly become evident.

Directions to Lick Gulch Road and the Lickety Split Timber Sale: Drive highway 238 to beautiful Ruch, Oregon and turn south onto Upper Applegate Road. Follow Upper Applegate Road 2.9 miles to the intersection of Little Applegate Road. Turn left on Little Applegate Road and continue 4.9 miles to the pavements end and turn right on Yale Creek Road. Drive past a row of mailboxes, cross the Little Applegate River on a bridge and immediately turn left on the signed “Lick Gulch Road”, also known as BLM road 39-2-28 (denoted by a large brown BLM road sign). Follow this road past a few residences and onto BLM land. Immediately you will see Lickety Split Timber Sale units. Continue driving and turn right at the next intersection. You can drive this road for 3-4 miles driving in and out of timber sale units.

Flat headed fir borers, engraver beetles, and other wood and bark boring insects

Triggered by extended droughts, a significant lack of persistent winter cold snaps, stifling summertime heat domes, and a changing climate, flat headed fir borers and fir engraver beetles have become very active across interior southwestern Oregon. In fact, populations of these native wood boring beetles have exploded in recent years, creating significant Douglas fir mortality throughout the region.

A visceral sign of climate change, the mortality reached epidemic proportions in 2022 and 2023, when flat headed fir borers could literally be heard chewing through stands of Douglas fir in the foothills of southwestern Oregon.

Mortality was occurring in large patches at lower elevations, especially on droughty sites, harsh exposures, sites with poor soils, sites more conducive to oak woodland, chaparral, or mixed hardwood stands, and in many previously implemented “forest health” logging or commercial thinning projects.

Since the 1990s, the Medford District BLM and Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest have been implementing landscape-scale logging, or commercial thinning projects, intended specifically to increase “forest health” and resilience to both drought and beetle mortality; however, in many locations these “restoration” thinning projects have had the opposite effect, and both the false claims used to justify the logging, and the forested habitats they have “treated” have begun to unravel.

Ironically, many of these previously implemented federal land timber sales have sustained significant flat headed fir borer mortality and are at the center of the region’s beetle induced Douglas fir mortality event. This includes numerous timber sales implemented by the BLM in the past 30 years in the Applegate Valley and the Ashland Forest Resiliency (AFR) Project in the Ashland Watershed. At the same time, droughty conditions and extreme temperatures are also increasing pine mortality associated with various bark beetles in both thinned and unthinned stands.

At best, the previous commercial thinning treatments failed to create the resilience or restoration predicted by the BLM and USFS in each timber sale’s scientific analysis and approval documents (e.g. Environmental Analysis, Decision Record, etc.), and the agencies need to stop promising outcomes they can’t actually create through logging.

At worst, the logging was actually responsible for the scale of the beetle outbreak by weakening whole stands of trees, and the agencies need to stop large-scale commercial logging that is contributing to the loss of regional forests.

The reality is likely somewhere in between. Climate conditions can trigger the outbreak, while in some places previous commercial thinning or logging operations have damaged soils, damaged trees, increased aridity, increased edge effect, increased air temperatures, made stands more susceptible to beetle impacts, encouraged beetle populations to expand, and contributed quite significantly to the mortality event.

In many ways, the BLM has been an active contributor to both the current climate crisis and the recent beetle mortality event, by creating extensive logging related carbon emissions that fuel climate change. Recent research found that commercial logging and timber manufacturing is the largest contributor of greenhouse gas emissions in the state of Oregon (Law. 2018), while regional research shows that commercial logging is responsible for 80% of the Forest loss in Oregon and Washington combined. It also found that logging in Oregon and Washington constitutes 67% of all forest loss in the 11 Western states where fire and beetle mortality are most acute. This makes logging, not beetle mortality, the most significant threat to the forests of the West, and in particular the most significant threat to forests in the Pacific Northwest. (Berner. 2017).

BLM’s Response: The SOS Project

In response to the recent increase in beetle mortality, the Medford District BLM has proposed the Strategic Operations for Safety (SOS) Project, a large-scale “salvage” or post-disturbance logging project sprawling across rural southwestern Oregon. Proposed under the pretext of public safety, the focus of the project would actually be to opportunistically log 1,000 acres, and roughly 10 million board feet of dead and supposedly “dying” trees to meet the agency’s 2024 timber targets.

Currently the BLM has identified a massive planning area sprawling across the BLM lands surrounding both the Rogue and Applegate Valley. Unfortunately, what the agency has not done, is identify where within this vast landscape that post-disturbance logging would actually occur. According to the Scoping Notice for the Strategic Operations for Safety Project (SOS Project), the BLM would log approximately 5,000 acres in still undisclosed locations.

These operations could occur along BLM roads, in what the BLM calls Potential Operational Delineation (POD) areas, and within 1 mile of developed areas or homesteads. They could also be implemented in Riparian Reserves, Late Successional Reserve (LSR) forests, along hiking trails and in recreation management areas, degrading the values these areas were designated to protect.

The agency claims this logging is benign or even beneficial, and is necessary for both public safety and future fire containment. Yet, the agency proposes logging over 500′ on either side of BLM roads and so-called POD areas, far beyond what can be credibly called “hazard tree” logging, and far beyond what is necessary for future fire containment. As currently designed the project is an excuse to log, not a valid public safety or fire risk reduction project.

The BLM also proposes logging both dead standing, beetle killed snags, and live, green trees that survived the beetle outbreak. Yet, these surviving trees contain either high genetic resistance, or grow in favorable microclimate conditions, allowing for their survival and persistence. Removing these trees will generate short-term profits for the industry, and provide board footage for the BLM’s annual timber quota, but will undermine long-term forest and climate resilience.

Snags provide important wildlife habitat and are the foundation of both stand recovery and future forest or woodland complexity. In fact, research conducted in southwestern Oregon following the 1987 Galice Fire found that large downed wood retained “tremendous quantities of water… Even after 77 days without rain and an intense wildfire.” The researchers literally wrung water out of downed logs which had 25 times more moisture on a weight basis than did soil samples. Researchers suggested that this moisture “may help pioneering plants become established where soil moisture is low,” making it “a requisite for maintaining long term forest growth” in the region. The author explains, “in the Klamath Mountains conifer seedling performance can depend on the ability of the soil to retain moisture and support nitrogen fixing and ectomycorhizal organisms. Removal of large amounts of organic material may result in difficult reforestation of these thin, droughty, and infertile sites.” (Amaranthus, 1990)

Following a significant mortality event, snags become the only large wood this system will produce for decades or even centuries, creating structure, diversity, habitat and favorable growing conditions for young, regenerating forests. Large, relatively rot resistant species can persist, provide continuity, and play functional roles in the regenerating ecosystem for centuries, if not removed in post-disturbance logging operations.

The reality is, that the BLM has a stocking requirement after “regeneration” logging. This usually means that they have to plant trees after clear cutting an area. This means that the “regeneration” logging proposed in the SOS project will be followed by tree planting and plantation development, creating dense, young, heavily simplified, and highly flammable vegetation that has been proven in multiple regional wildfires to increase fire severity and spread.

As currently designed the SOS Project will leave a lasting biological impact, provides little public safety benefit, and will produce low value timber that can only be implemented at a deficit to the taxpayer. Our forests and climate are sending out an SOS, and unfortunately, the BLM is responding in the only way it knows how: with a new timber sale to supposedly “fix” the problems the last one created. An endless cycle that needs to end for the sake of our forests and climate.

COMMENT NOW on the SOS Project.

Talking points for public comment:

• The project proposal lacks specificity, precluding meaningful public comment, agency analysis, and the disclosure of impacts as required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Site specific unit boundaries must be identified to conduct a valid scientific and public analysis.
• The proposed logging of dead or dying trees up to 500′ from roads and PODS serves no public safety purpose. No trees in our area grow 500′ tall, and therefore, cannot pose a safety risk to roads 500′ away. Tree and snag felling for public safety and fire suppression purposes should occur no more than 150′ from main system, high-use BLM roads.
• Logging dead or dying trees up to 1 mile from developed areas serves no public safety purpose and will not reduce fire risks unless the the tree felling is limited to areas within 150′ of homes or developed areas, and within 150′ of ingress/egress roads.
• Tree removal from the site is unnecessary and serves no public safety purpose. Once felled, a valid hazard tree 150′ or less from a high-use BLM road has been fully mitigated of all public safety risks. Trees that pose actual public safety risks could be felled, but tree yarding and removal is necessary, especially because much of the low value dead standing material will be sold at a loss to the public. Trees felled into the road could be removed if necessary, but trees felled onto the slopes should be retained and left on site for biological values.
• Standing snags and large downed trees are important for carbon storage, soil development, forest and woodland regeneration, habitat, water retention, and are the foundation for future forest complexity. These biological legacies should be retained on site whenever possible. Large downed wood has been show to be essential for stand regeneration and serves to dampen fire activity.
• No live trees that survived the recent beetle outbreaks should be felled or removed in the project area. These trees likely contain genetic or situational advantages, that allow for beetle and drought resilience. These are the most site-adapted trees, will encourage resilience and are preferable for forest or woodland reestablishment. The BLM should maintain these living trees for seed production and regeneration as well as habitat value.
• Tree felling and removal should not take place in Riparian Reserves, and only valid hazard tree felling within 150′ of high-use BLM roads should be considered in Late Successional Reserve (LSR) forest.
• The BLM should not build new roads in the SOS Project.

All comments must be received by January 7, 2024

For more information: SOS Project Website

Click on “Participate Now” to comment

To comment send an email or letter to:

By email: BLM_OR_MD_Safety_EA @blm.gov

-or-
By mail or delivery service:
Attn: Strategic Operations for Safety EA

Medford District BLM

3040 Biddle Road

Medford, Oregon 97504

Would you be concerned if your favorite backcountry trail was proposed as a 1000′ wide fuel break without adequate public involvement or environmental review? Do you think intact roadless areas, botanical areas and Forest Service recreation areas should be turned into “fuel breaks” far from homes and communities, even if they do not represent fire risks? That is exactly what is being proposed by the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest along the spectacular McDonald Peak and Wagner Butte Trails, the Elliott Ridge/Stein Butte Trail, and the Sevenmile Ridge Trail near Big Red Mountain.

The agency has released a Scoping Notice for the Siskiyou Mountains Ranger District Fuel Break Project which would build many miles of fuel breaks across the Applegate River watershed, on the face of some of the Siskiyou Crest’s highest peaks, and in some of the region’s most intact habitats. Proposed to take place up to 500′ on both sides of roads and backcountry trails, the fuel breaks would affect a wide variety of ecosystems from high to low elevations.

What the scoping notice does not do is describe what will be done in these sites and along these popular and well-loved recreational trails. How would these diverse ecosystems be “treated”? We simply do not know, and based on the information currently available, the Forest Service intends to approve these projects using Categorical Exclusions, meaning they will be largely excluding the public involvement process and the necessary environmental and scientific reviews, in some of the most botanically diverse places in the region.

Although these so-called treatments would include only non-commercial thinning, they would still have significant impacts to these intact ecosystems, especially in mid to low elevations in chaparral, montane chaparral, live oak woodland, oak woodland and mixed hardwood habitats. Plant communities at high elevations would also be impacted, including unique sagebrush clearings and aspen groves, ancient mountain mahogany groves, serpentine influenced Jeffrey pine woodlands, and montane snow forests, including mountain hemlock and red fir at up to over 6,800′ elevation on the face of McDonald Peak, and over 6,400′ at Wrangle Gap and around Wrangle Camp.

What little we know about the project, is that four large fuel breaks are proposed sprawling across many, many miles of National Forest land and consisting of up to 4,290 acres of public land.

This includes fuel breaks:

1. Along Elliott Ridge and Yellowjacket Ridge from Silver Fork Gap to the Applegate Reservoir, including the Elliott Ridge/Stein Butte Trail;
2. In the Wagner Butte/McDonald Peak area along the entire McDonald Peak Trail and the upper half of the Wagner Butte Trail;
3. On Sevenmile Ridge along the Sevenmile Ridge Trail and adjacent to Big Red Mountain;
4. From O’Brien Creek to Palmer Ridge in the upper portions of Carberry Creek and the Upper Applegate.

What we also know is that these proposed fuel breaks would be located on the Siskiyou Crest, and in surrounding areas far from homes or communities. They are not being proposed where they could most effectively protect communities. Yet, they are proposed in some of the most cherished recreational areas on the Siskiyou Mountains Ranger District, in some of the most intact lands, some of the most diverse plant communities, and in some of the district’s most scenic landscapes.

Below is the little we know about each individual fuel break proposed in the Siskiyou Mountains Ranger District Fuel Break Project:

Wagner Butte/McDonald Peak Fuel Break

The Forest Service has proposed turning the southern slopes adjacent to the McDonald Peak Trail into a 500′ wide fuel break for the entire length of the trail, from south of McDonald Peak to the Wagner Butte Trail. This portion of the trail extends through high elevation sagebrush clearings, montane chaparral, and montane conifer forest between 6,400′ and 6800′ elevation. This includes habitats at the headwaters of McDonald Creek, Split Rock Creek, Jim Creek, Corral Creek and Greeley Creek.

We are concerned that chaparral clearing in proposed fuel breaks would damage the area’s unique ecosystem and the protected plant communities in the McDonald Peak Botanical Area, an area specifically designated to protect the area’s unique botanical resources and rare plant species. It will also impact recreational values in a large Special Interest Area intended specifically to protect the scenic values of the Siskiyou Crest.

The proposal also includes a swath 500′ wide on both sides of the upper Wagner Butte Trail from Wagner Glade Gap to near the summit of Wagner Butte. This section contains unique plant communities with a significant “east side” or Great Basin influence in the Siskiyou Crest Special Interest Area. The area was also a candidate Botanical Area due to the usual east side plant communities, biodiversity and rare plant species.

Plant communities affected would include the trail’s charismatic mountain mahogany groves, sagebrush clearings, quaking aspen groves and montane snow forests of mountain hemlock and red fir. These plant communities are the highest elevation subalpine habitats in the Siskiyou Mountains and are not well adapted to frequent fire or manual fuel treatments. Instead, these habitats are adapted to a mixed severity fire mosaic and continue to maintain very healthy, diverse and dynamic ecosystems with relatively low fire risks and abundant fire refugia. These areas do not need and will not benefit from fuel reduction treatments.

The entire length of this proposed fuel break is also located in the McDonald Peak Inventoried Roadless Area, an approximately 10,000 acre wildland at the headwaters of Ashland Creek and the Little Applegate River. This large intact area is important for habitat connectivity, contains many rare plant populations and unique plant communities, and includes some of the most beautiful and accessible high country in the Siskiyou Crest region.

Together these two trails are among the most popular and well-loved in the region, yet the proposed fuel break would significantly impact the area’s wild, natural setting, intact scenic value and recreational qualities, while degrading unique plant communities and introducing disturbance adapted non-native plant species. It will also degrade the area by surrounding the trail in plastic covered burn piles, sterilizing the soil and destroying vegetation as the piles are burned, leaving black charcoal pits that take years to revegetate, and leaving fragments of black plastic from burn piles scattered throughout the trail corridor. This is an unfortunate, yet common site along trails in the Applegate watershed, where plastic remnants from burn piles are frequently left as garbage after “fuels treatments.”

The McDonald Peak and Wagner Butte areas have been designated specifically to promote scenic, recreational, botanical and biological values, and to many local residents they are cherished backcountry trails. They should not be managed as fuel breaks that degrade the natural habitats and scenic qualities people from across the region come to enjoy, and the agency’s Land and Resource Management Plan specifically tells the Forest Service to protect.

The McDonald Peak/Wagner Butte Fuel Break should be canceled and a more effective approach implemented that focuses directly on protecting communities, public safety and infrastructure from wildfire impacts. These efforts should be located near homes, rather than remote, high elevation, backcountry habitats far removed from the values at risk.

Elliott Ridge & Yellowjacket Ridge Fuel Break

Elliott Ridge is a long east-west spur ridge dividing the Elliott Creek and Teel Creek watersheds, and an extremely popular backcountry recreation area, accessible by the Elliott Ridge/ Stein Butte Trail system. Starting at Seattle Bar and extending for many miles through the citizen identified Elliott Ridge Roadless Area, the Elliott Ridge/Stein Butte Trail is among the most popular recreational trails in the Siskiyou Mountains Ranger District.

Generally accessible year-round, the trail climbs steeply up switchbacks above Seattle Bar at the south end of Applegate Reservoir through relatively open mixed conifer forest to the rocky spine of Elliott Ridge. The trail alternates back and forth from the forested north-facing slopes of Elliott Ridge to the rocky, sunbaked southern face covered in montane chaparral, stump sprouting hardwoods, live oak woodland, patches of mixed conifer forest and large stands of knobcone pine. The area is highly scenic, largely intact, and well-loved by local residents.

Due to the location of the trail, its steep switchbacks and its movement back and forth from the north to south facing slopes, it makes for a very ineffective and unsafe fireline, that in reality would never be used for fire containment. Fire managers simply would not place firefighting hand crews on fire containment lines with switchbacks or that alternate across the ridgeline. Thus, the ability of this fuel break to serve its intended purpose and act as a fire containment feature in future wildfires is both unrealistic and highly unlikely. From a practical standpoint, this fuel break provides almost no effective use.

Ironically, it also supports numerous plant communities adapted to mixed and even high severity fire that respond poorly to manual fuel reduction and “restoration” treatments. These are not plant communities adapted to frequent low severity fire and open grown vegetative conditions. In fact, rather than restoring habitat conditions through manual treatments, the opening of these habitats for fuel reduction has been shown to damage natural vegetative structure, increase non-native grasses and noxious weeds, impact wildlife habitats and have generally non-restorative effects. At the same time, damaging these plant communities will significantly impact the intact character of the land, its scenic qualities, and important recreational values.

This proposal would turn the entire Elliott Ridge Trail and 500′ on either side into a fuel break for approximately 7 miles from Seattle Bar, past Stein Butte and east to the headwaters of Mallard Gulch. Yet, the proposal does not end there, it would continue for 500′ along both sides of the road along Elliott Ridge, traversing the south slope of Elliott Ridge, then switching back to the northern face before winding back to Maple Dell Gap. From Maple Dell Gap the fuel break would continue an additional 3 miles along the southern face of Yellowjacket Ridge transitioning into montane conifer forests, serpentine influenced slopes below Yellowjacket Mountain, and ending up at Silver Fork Gap.

We believe the Elliott Ridge Trail section is an ineffective fuel break, would badly impact chaparral and woodland habitat along the trail, degrading the recreational experience for generations to come, and increasing fire risks when tree form live oak resprout into thickets and highly flammable non-native grasses invade previous chaparral and woodland sites. The Elliott Ridge Trail section of the fuel break should be canceled, and as one of the area’s most popular recreational trails, we hope the Forest Service can maintain the irreplaceable biological, scenic, and recreational qualities of the Elliott Ridge Trail.

Sevenmile Ridge Fuel Break

The proposed Sevenmile Ridge Fuel Break would start along the Little Applegate River, wind into Glade Creek, and climb Sevenmile Ridge to the western flank of Big Red Mountain on the old Sevenmile Ridge Trail. The proposed fuel break then switches back past Wrangle Camp to Wrangle Gap at over 6,400′ elevation on the Siskiyou Crest.

The proposal extends through mixed conifer forests and hardwood stands at mid-elevations and through high elevations and montane forest habitats, including large areas of moist meadow, high elevation bunchgrass clearings, alder glades, serpentine barrens, picturesque Jeffrey pine woodlands, and other highly fire resistant habitats near Wrangle Camp, on the western flank of Big Red Mountain.

Big Red Mountain is a broad red mound of serpentine rock and supports naturally sparse montane vegetation. Covered in snow much of the year, the area sprawls across the headwaters of Glade Creek and the Little Applegate River. Already an effective natural fuel break, these habitats and the fire refugia they create cover a large area, and have refused to burn in the 1987 Quartz Fire, the 2001 Quartz Fire and the 2018 Hendrix Fire. Each fire burned on the slopes below, but was naturally “contained” in the sparse vegetation and broad, rocky slopes extending down the flanks of Big Red Mountain. The mountain is already both a natural and highly effective fuel break.

It is also a spectacular biological wonder, known for its unique serpentine geology, unusual serpentine plant communities, rare plant species, and highly scenic natural habitats. Big Red Mountain has been designated as a large Research Natural Area in the Monogram Lakes Basin, a Botanical Area, and a Special Interest Area. These areas are intended to protect the biological values, intact natural environments, unique plant communities, and recreational values of the region.

The proposal includes a 500′ fuel break on either side of the Sevenmile Ridge Trail (1,000′ total), despite large portions of the trail having very little fire risk. Much of the upper trail is proposed to run through large bunchgrass clearings, wet meadows, seeps, springs, headwater streams and moist alder glades. Additional portions extend through beautiful, fire resilient old-growth forests, montane forest, and relatively open spaced Jeffrey pine woodland. The trail and proposed fuel break would also extend through both snag forests burned at high severity and forests underburned in the 2001 Quartz Fire and the 2018 Hendrix Fire. Neither of these areas currently support significant fire risks or are heavily altered environments in need of restoration.

We believe significant trail maintenance alone this long unmaintained trail would suffice as a fuel break along the Sevenmile Ridge Trail. This would provide as much of a fuel break as the typical handline used to suppress wildfires. Given the fire refugia and minimal fire risks on this section of trail, it would be a potentially successful and appropriate treatment for the area, while enhancing public access to the important scenic, recreational and biological values of the Sevenmile Ridge Trail.

The lower portions of the proposed fuel break would follow road systems on lower Sevenmile Ridge down to the Little Applegate River near Brickpile Ranch. These portions include both plantation stands and mature, relatively open pine, fir and cedar forests growing on serpentine influenced soils. These areas have already largely been “treated” with non-commercial fuel reduction thinning and also maintain fairly minimal fire risks. In the years since the initial treatment, shrubs and regenerating trees have recolonized the understory and could be burned in a patchy prescribed fire intended to reduce, but not eliminate this young vegetation. This would create a mosaic of vegetation, would reduce the flammable fuels in the forest floor, regenerate native herbaceous vegetation and restore fire as a long suppressed natural process in these forests.

The lower section of Sevenmile Ridge could benefit from some strategic maintenance burning and manual thinning around the private inholding at Brickpile Ranch. These areas have been logged, leaving dense patches of skinny young trees, scattered old trees and large, open spaces filled with stumps from previous commercial logging operations and dense shrub species. These areas have not burned in recent history, and having been both heavily logged and lie adjacent to the private land inholding at Brickpile Ranch, they would be a far more appropriate location for fuel reduction than the intact lands above on the Sevenmile Ridge Trail.

We recommend trail maintenance on the Sevenmile Ridge Trail and judicious, non-commercial thinning in the lower sections of Sevenmile Ridge where heavy historic logging and unnatural habitat conditions surround the residence at Brickpile Ranch.

Grayback Fuel Break

The proposed Grayback Fuel Break would start at the O’Brien Creek Trailhead on O’Brien Creek Road and extend downstream along road 1005 to its intersection with Carberry Creek Road. The proposed fuel break would then drop into Carberry Creek and climb back up road 1010 to Youngs Gap, a low saddle between Carberry Creek and Brush Creek near Steamboat Mountain. The fuel break would then again drop back into Trail Creek and extend along the Brush Creek canyon before again climbing to the ridgeline dividing Thompson Creek from the Upper Applegate.

Winding along backcountry roads, this fuel break does not follow natural, containment features that would be utilized as fireline during future wildfire events. Instead, this proposed fuel break would be ineffective and dangerous from a fire suppression standpoint, being both unsafe for fire crews and difficult to hold as fireline. In reality, no fire manager would use this fuel break as a fireline, although some portions of it could be utilized in smaller fire events.

The area contains montane conifer forests and intact mixed conifer forests on O’Brien Creek in the Kangaroo Inventoried Roadless Area, low elevation conifer forests on Brush Creek, large knobcone pine stands, live oak woodlands, mixed hardwood stands and unique chaparral communities.

The manual thinning treatments proposed would badly damage the non-forest plant communities found near Youngs Gap, in the Brush Creek watershed, and on the ridgeline divide. Like in some many other locations these plant communities are naturally dense and support a mixed severity fire regime with a significant high severity fire component. Treating these communities to open habitats for fuel break construction will degrade these naturally resilient plant communities.

Additionally, large portions of the proposal are located in Riparian Reserves along O’Brien Creek, Trail Creek and Brush Creek in locations where fire danger is already relatively low compared to the surrounding terrain.

We recommend altering this proposed fuel break to eliminate the extensive riparian reserve thinning and either exclude areas of chaparral, hardwood groves and live oak stands or treat them to maintain canopy cover and reduce stump sprouting by minimizing tree removal. In many locations, previous fuel reduction treatments on the Siskiyou Mountains Ranger District have increased fire risks, reduced scenic values, and damaged important habitats in these ecosystems. We hope the agency will not repeat these mistakes.

Conclusion:

At Applegate Siskiyou Alliance, we question the strategy and effectiveness of backcountry fuel breaks, when unprepared communities are burning to the ground. We also question the utility of fuel reduction treatments in high elevation fire refugia, areas with low fire risks, far from communities, and in some of our last intact environments. Fuel reduction and community fire safety efforts should be focused on homes, communities and critical infrastructure. This project fails to address the critical concerns surrounding home ignition and community wildfire safety during fire events. Fiddling in the backcountry while our communities burn is unacceptable, and a more effective, nuanced, appropriate approach should be taken on the Rogue River Siskiyou National Forest.

We are concerned that the Forest Service is proposing this massive, fuel break project in extremely intact areas and conservation/recreation based land use allocations on the Siskiyou Crest. We are also concerned that the agency is “scoping” all these projects at once and will not be doing either a full public involvement process or environmental analysis to analyze our concerns, disclose potential impacts and consider the potential environmental effects. This means that treatments implemented in some of the most cherished wildland habitats and most popular backcountry trails would be done with less analysis and less public involvement than regular federal land projects.

The Forest Service is also considering the declaration of a wildfire emergency in the Siskiyou Mountains Ranger District, despite currently having no large wildfires and only two large wildland fires in the last 22 years (2017 Abney Complex and 2001 Quartz Fire. This “emergency declaration” would serve to eliminate administrative remedies, shield the project from regular legal processes and expedite the project’s implementation, while minimizing public involvement. We do not believe this approach is honest, acceptable, or collaborative and should be withdrawn from further consideration.

Please comment on this project (by October 9, 2023) at the following link, where maps and the limited information available can be reviewed: https://www.fs.usda.gov/project/?project=63141&exp=overview

Talking Points for Public Comment

• The Wagner Fuel Break along McDonald Peak and the Wagner Butte Trail should be canceled.
• The trail sections of the proposed Sevenmile Ridge Fuel Break should be canceled and trail maintenance implemented instead.
• The western portions of the proposed Elliott Ridge Fuel Break on the Elliott Ridge/ Stein Butte Trails should be canceled.
• The agency must fully analyzed and disclose the impact of proposed project activities on Inventoried Roadless Areas, Botanical Areas, Special Interest Areas, wildlife habitat, native plant communities, wildland habitats, connectivity, rare plant species and other issues of concern in an Environmental Assessment.
• Declaring a wildfire emergency to eliminate public involvement, environmental analysis and legal processes is unacceptable and creates incentives for the Forest Service to circumvent normal legal and administrative processes.
• A Categorical Exclusion would not allow for sufficient public involvement, does not adequately address the broad range of potential impacts, the importance of the lands proposed for treatment, or the consistency of proposed project activities with the regulations and land use allocations in existing management plans. At a minimum an Environmental Assessment should be prepared individually for each proposed fuel break.
• The use of emergency declarations and Categorical Exclusions for this project is inconsistent with the mandates of the Applegate Adaptive Management Area (AMA) which promotes and encourages community based collaboration and robust public involvement. The approach taken on this project is inconsistent with the mandates of the Applegate AMA and should be restructured to maximize, not minimize public involvement.
• Chaparral, oak woodland, live oak woodland and madrone stands must be protected from project activities that are not restorative and either increase non-native grasses and/or increase understory fuels through excessive stump sprouting. This requires maintaining hardwood canopies and retaining large, dense patches of contiguous chaparral.
• The Forest Service should be conducting fuel reduction near homes and communities where it is both needed and effective, not in remote backcountry habitats.

From October 2019 to August 2022, Applegate Siskiyou Alliance and residents across southwestern Oregon opposed the Bear Grub Timber Sale, a large BLM timber sale in the mountains of Sterling Creek and the Little Applegate Valley, along the East Applegate Ridge Trail, in the beloved Wellington Wildlands, and on Woodrat Mountain above Ruch, Oregon.

Much of the timber sale proposes “group selection logging,” a form of staggered clearcut logging that removes whole groves of mature trees up to 36″ in diameter. Implemented only in mature forests, this type of logging “treatment” creates “openings” or “canopy gaps” up to 4 acres in size and across up to 30% of a mature forest stand.

Group selection logging damages old forest habitat, degrades the climate refugia our wildlife depends on, and releases abundant carbon stored in the old forests and trees this form of logging targets for removal. Additionally, the removal of these large, fire resistant trees combined with increased aridity, stronger winds, and the young, dense, highly flammable growth this type of canopy removal creates has significant impacts to future fire risks. In fact, according to BLM’s own analysis, this form of logging will increase fuel loading, fire intensity, rate of fire spread, and resistance to wildfire control for a minimum of 5 to 20 years, making fires burn hotter, faster and more severely.

Yet, despite these implications, BLM approved the project and immediately sold the timber sale to Timber Products company. It also received 18 Administrative Protests from environmental organizations, including Applegate Siskiyou Alliance, and local residents in the Applegate Valley and beyond. These protests officially challenged the projects authorization and questioned the validity of the underlying scientific analysis. In response, the BLM withdrew the timber sale in August 2022, and acknowledged that they had not adequately considered the project’s effects on the Pacific fisher, a rare forest mammal that uses mature and old-growth forests for hunting, denning, and raising their young.

Although we had hoped the Bear Grub Timber Sale would be permanently withdrawn and we would never see these special places proposed for logging again, we also know all to well, unfortunately, that the Medford District BLM has a singular focus on timber production. Rather than shelve this controversial, environmentally damaging, climate change fueling project, the BLM has doubled down and Bear Grub is back. The agency simply changed some of the language in its analysis and re-proposed the Bear Grub Timber Sale in all the same inappropriate locations, in all the same mature and old forest stands, and with the same damaging group selection logging proposal.

The Bear Grub Timber Sale proposes logging stands of mature, fire resistant forest dominated by large, old trees directly adjacent to and in the immediate viewshed of the East Applegate Ridge Trail, a spectacular and extremely popular non-motorized trail built by Applegate Trails Association and the local community. It also proposes logging beautiful and spacious old stands of Douglas fir at the headwaters of China Gulch in Wellington Wildlands, a 7,526-acre roadless area located between Humbug Creek and Ruch, Oregon. The Bear Grub Timber Sale would also log the face of Woodrat Mountain, the hills of Sterling Creek, on the flank of Bald Mountain near the headwaters of the Little Applegate River, and in some of the last mature forests in the heavily clearcut mountains above Talent and Phoenix in the Rogue Valley.

Please consider commenting on this project and let BLM know that clearcutting our public forests, under misleading euphemisms like “group selection logging,” is unacceptable. Below are talking points to help inform your comments.

Additionally, in an attempt to further reduce the voice and involvement of the public, BLM has allowed only 18 days to comment on this controversial old forest logging project. Currently the comment period ends on June 26, 2023. Please contact Medford District Manager, Elizabeth Burghard (eburghar@blm.gov) immediately and ask her to encourage public involvement by extending this shortened comment period to at least the customary 30 days or more.

Talking Points

1. The Bear Grub Timber Sale is inconsistent with the Biden Administrations climate and forest policy (Executive Order 14008 and Executive Order 14072), as well as the recently proposed BLM rulemaking intended to increase conservation “use” on public lands, maximize carbon storage and encourage natural climate solutions such as intact forest habitats.
2. BLM must withdraw the controversial Bear Grub Timber Sale from further consideration and work with the surrounding communities to address fire risks, increase carbon storage, and protect important mature and old forest habitats.
3. Cancel all “group selection” logging and maintain all northern spotted owl habitat by retaining at least 60% canopy cover and implementing a 20″ diameter limit across the entire project area.
4. Cancel all timber sale units within the 7,526 acre citizen-identified Wellington Wildlands. This must include units: 8-1, 8-2, 17-1b and 17-3.
5. Cancel all timber sale units adjacent to or in the direct viewshed of the East Applegate Ridge trail. This must include units: 13-1, 13-5, 13-6, 13-7, 13-10 and 14-2
6. Cancel all timber sale units on Bald Mountain including units 27-4 and 27-8. These forests are simply to precious and are among the last mature and old-growth forest habitats remaining in the Wagner Creek drainage.
7. Build no new roads either “temporary” or permanent.

Comments can also be sent to: BLM_OR_AFO_VMP@blm.gov  with “Attention: Bear Grub VMP” in the subject line

As part of our work with the Climate Forests Coalition, Applegate Siskiyou Alliance has been working hard to encourage the Biden Administration to protect our nation’s last climate forests. These include a wide variety of carbon-rich, mature and old-growth forest habitats spread out across the country, including right here in the Applegate River watershed. These forests mitigate the worst effects of climate change by storing carbon, providing habitat and climate refugia for wildlife, protecting watersheds and water supplies, and safeguarding biodiversity.

Although the Biden Administration has technically embraced the 30X30 concept, to protect 30% of our country’s land and water by 2030, very little meaningful action to implement this ambitious proposal has occurred. On Earth Day 2022, the administration also announced its intent to conserve mature and old-growth forests as natural climate solutions, by maximizing carbon storage on federal lands. Yet, the administration has also taken no meaningful action to provide lasting protections for these forested habitats, and federal land managers are actively working in the opposite direction.

Currently, both the BLM and Forest Service are working to increase timber production and old forest logging under the guise of “fuel reduction” and/or “forest restoration.” This includes logging larger trees, removing more canopy cover and implementing these “treatments” across much broader areas. The loss of habitat, stored carbon and forest resilience associated with these federal land logging practices is expanding exponentially across the landscape with devastating consequences for our global climate, local watersheds, regional wildlife, and biodiversity.

Fortunately, in response to President Biden’s Executive Orders on forests and climate, both the Department of Interior (BLM) and the Department of Agriculture (Forest Service) finally released their first nationwide inventory of mature and old-growth forest habitats. The inventory found 110 million acres of mature and old-growth forests remaining on federal lands, include over 32 million acres of old-growth. This includes the lush rainforests of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, the dry pine forests and pinon-juniper woodlands of the interior West, the boggy forests of the Southeast and the vast, productive hardwood forests of the East Coast. These forests represent a potentially powerful climate solution and conservation opportunity. They store vast quantities of carbon and support irreplaceable habitat. Unfortunately, however, the mature and old forest inventory only identifies these important forests, it does not protect them.

According to the Biden Administration, protecting mature and old-growth forests would be achieved by implementing the recently published draft “conservation” rules meant to create new public land policy on both BLM and Forest Service lands in the United States. Both agencies have initiated comment periods on new planning rules emphasizing forests as natural climate solutions and a need for new management and protection strategies. This blog will focus on the BLM planning rule with a second post to follow that will cover the Forest Service process. Both the BLM and Forest Service are accepting comments until June 20, 2023, so get your comments in as soon as you can to take action to protect mature and old-growth forests.

The Proposed BLM Planning Rule

The initially released BLM draft planning rule includes numerous positive things, some that are so basic that much of the public likely believes such rudimentary conservation measures are already in place; some that could be used to support broad-scale conservation across federal lands; and some, that if not properly implemented could do more harm than good. Other provisions are downright concerning, and are likely to encourage poor land management practices and a more pronounced corporate influence on federal lands.

Interestingly, for the first time, this draft planning rule finally proposes to put conservation “on par” within the agency’s multiple use mandate, in theory, making the protection or preservation of these lands as important to BLM land managers as the extractive industrial uses they have historically encouraged, including logging, mining, grazing and oil development. Some might be surprised that for the very first time conservation could actually be part of the BLM’s mission, rather than something that can be considered only after their logging, mining, grazing and oil development priorities are met.

Although very basic, this new mandate could lead to significant improvements on federal land, but only if we speak up during this comment period, demand meaningful change, and work to make this planning rule more robust and effective.

According to the BLM, the proposed planning rule would:

1. Move forward the BLM’s multiple use mandate by prioritizing the health and resilience of ecosystems across BLM lands.
2. Protect intact landscapes, restore degraded habitats, and encourage science-based management.
3. Apply land health standards to all BLM-managed public lands (currently this applies only to so-called rangelands).
4. Elevate conservation as a valid “use” of BLM lands within the multiple use framework.
5. Implement existing, long standing, but underutilized regulations by prioritizing the designation and protection of Areas of Critical Environmental Concern on BLM lands
6. promote the use of so-called conservation leases, allowing industry groups, corporations, non-profits and other entities to lease and manage federal lands for supposed “restoration” and to mitigate otherwise damaging projects

While many of these proposed changes sound positive at face value, they also depend heavily on the strength of the final federal rulemaking and on the integrity of implementation by the BLM and local land managers. Unfortunately, neither local, regional or national BLM managers have historically, voluntarily applied conservation measures or implemented conservation mandates. For example, nearly the entire BLM Conservation Lands System has been designated by Congress or by Presidential decree under the Antiquities Act, and very little, if any meaningful conservation-based protections have been implemented by local BLM districts.

Unfortunately, this proposed rulemaking would leave implementation up to local land managers during Resource Management Planning (RMP) processes, but in places like western Oregon, where the BLM’s most carbon rich mature and old-growth forests still exist, an RMP was approved in 2016 that is encouraging heavy industrial logging in mature and old-growth stands. This includes both the Timber Harvest Landbase and so-called “reserve” designations, such as Late Successional Reserve (LSR) forests which were set aside to protect and restore old forest habitat for the imperiled northern spotted owl. Currently, these LSR forests are being logged at an alarming rate and with particularly damaging levels of intensity under projects like the Medford District BLM’s IVM Project.

Although we can support some of the general concepts put forward, we are concerned that the necessary protections will not be put in place to achieve the true conservation and climate benefits envisioned, and we are also concerned that some of the most important benefits of this rulemaking will not be realized.

Additionally, although the BLM claims to be focused on achieving ecosystem resilience, they completely fail to mention the major contributors to ecosystem declines, biodiversity loss, and carbon pollution on BLM lands in the proposed rulemaking documents. These major contributors include logging, mining, grazing and oil development, and it remains extremely dubious that BLM is proposing to prioritize the health and resilience of ecosystems, protect intact habitats, restore degraded habitats, and elevate conservation to a valid use of public lands, without addressing the very practices that created many of the problems in the first place. Sadly, these damaging extractive uses continue to degrade BLM lands, but are not directly curtailed or adequately addressed in this proposed rulemaking.

Area of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC) designation

This proposed rulemaking would encourage an increase in Area of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC) designations. ACECs have historically been designated on federal lands to both protect intact landscapes and provide special management for historical, cultural and scenic resources, high quality fish and wildlife habitats, dynamic natural processes, and to protect natural hazards such as geologically unstable areas. Currently, on the approximately 1.2-million acre Medford District BLM, only 3% or 36,194 acres are protected as ACECs.

While we support the increased use of ACEC designations and have proposed a comprehensive network across the Medford District BLM as part of our comments on this proposed rule, we are also concerned that the current rulemaking will water down their protection. Currently, the Federal Lands Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) gives “priority to the designation and protection of Areas of Critical Environmental Concern,” and proposes this designation to “protect and prevent irreparable damage to important historic, cultural, or scenic values, fish and wildlife resources or other natural systems or processes, or to protect life and safety from natural hazards.”

Under this rulemaking, BLM would alter these clear directives to designate, protect, and prevent resource damage, and instead proposes to prioritize the “designation and management” of ACECs. In western Oregon, we know what BLM management means, and it almost always translates to heavy commercial logging.

We support the designation of a more robust ACEC network on BLM lands, including the original emphasis on “protecting and preventing irreparable damage” to natural, cultural or historic resources. Our proposal includes the expansion or designation of 36 ACECs on 208,065 acres of BLM land. With the existing 28 ACECs, this would bring the total ACEC network to 244,259 acres, or 20% of Medford District BLM lands. Additionally, we propose that all old-growth and mature forests inventoried by the federal government be protected with ACEC designation. This would start to put conservation “on par” with other extractive uses on public lands and would enable the BLM to sufficiently focus on their climate and conservation mandates for the first time since it was established in 1946.

Under this proposal protecting at least 30% of BLM lands would be achievable and would include the most intact and diverse landscapes, with rare and unusual plant species or plant communities, along with all mature and old-growth forests, significant climate refugia, and important habitat connectivity corridors. The designation of these ACECs directly addresses President Biden’s policy support for the 30X30 concept, the biodiversity crisis and the climate crisis in one robust, comprehensive action. If done across BLM lands it could become one of the most consequential conservation action available to the BLM, preserving our imperiled environment and climate. We strongly urge high level officials at the BLM to direct local BLM land managers to protect at least 30% of all BLM lands with robust, well connected ACEC networks.

Conservation Leases

This rulemaking also proposes “conservation leases,” which are both a privatization scheme and appear to get the BLM off the hook for management actions that BLM is already required to take. It would allow entities with enough money to lease federal lands, “for the purpose of ensuring ecosystem resilience through protecting, managing, or restoring natural environments, cultural or historic resources, and ecological communities, including species and their habitats.” These leases would be for “conservation use” that would involve either “restoration or land enhancement” or “mitigation.”

These so-called conservation leases would be used to justify environmental damage by mitigating the impact to intact environments by other land management activities. The stated goal would be to “restore” habitat and encourage management activities under the guise of restoration. We are concerned that many of these activities would have the opposite effect.

For example, we know that logging mature and old-growth forest with staggered clearcuts (e.g. “group selection”), down to 30% canopy cover and trees up to 36” diameter in LSR forest is identified as “restoration” by the Medford District BLM in their IVM Project. Yet, once these so-called “restoration” projects are implemented, the public can and will only identify these “treatments” for what they are: commercial logging projects focused on producing timber for the agency’s industrial partners.  The “restorative effects” of this commercial thinning on BLM lands often does not materialize, and in many cases the loss of large, fire resistant trees and canopy cover is actually increasing fire risks.

That is not to say that positive and regenerative management activities could not take place on some previously damaged BLM lands, but as long as BLM refuses to acknowledge the disproportionate impact of its own extractive management practices, fails to require local land managers to protect these important landscapes, and promotes a shameless greenwash of their current management activities, that potential is minimal at best. You simply cannot make positive steps forward while you refuse to acknowledge the problem and you continue contributing to it.

Please help us make this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity the best it can be, and comment on the BLM’s draft planning rule. We hope to improve the final rule and we need your support to do so.

Talking points:

• Require local land managers to meaningfully curtail extractive or damaging land management activities such as logging, mining, grazing, oil development and off-road vehicle use on BLM lands.
• Curtail these damaging activities by codifying robust permanent protections for mature and old-growth forests and trees through ACEC designation. This is required to comply with President Biden’s recent Executive Order 14008 and 14072.
• Require land managers to upgrade existing Lands with Wilderness Characteristics areas to Wilderness Study Area designations, and in particular, re-inventory all wilderness quality lands in western Oregon with President Biden’s recent Executive Orders on climate and land protection, as well as this proposed rulemaking in mind. The previous inventory in the 2016 RMP for SW Oregon was not conducted in a manner consistent with the agency’s new policy direction.
• Follow the above-mentioned upgrade and reinventory with recommendations to Congress for Wilderness Designation in all Wilderness Study Areas.
• Increase the use of Area of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC) designation by mandating specific levels of protection (a minimum of 30%) rather than limiting it to the discretion of local BLM managers.
• Require that all lands protected as ACEC or other conservation-based designations be withdrawn from mineral entry to protect them from future mining impacts.
• Support and designate an ACEC network on the Medford District BLM, as proposed by Applegate Siskiyou Alliance and Klamath Forest Alliance.
• Specifically identify additional conservation based “uses” in the BLMs multiple use framework, including carbon storage and sequestration, quiet landscapes, darkness, archeology, biodiversity, connectivity, intact lands, backcountry, old forest reserves, climate refugia, etc.
• Discontinue the proposed Conservation Lease program and instead create policies to encourage conservation on BLM lands and adequately fund them.
• Ensure that all conservation activities apply to O&C Lands in Western Oregon. Recent court rulings surrounding the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument have affirmed that conservation is a valid use of O&C lands.  

In recent years Applegate Siskiyou Alliance (ASA) has been refining our vision, creating new connections, and bringing our advocacy to new levels. Our goal is to permanently protect the wildlands, old forests, biodiversity and wild rivers of the Applegate Siskiyou region. We have been working towards these goals by monitoring federal land management projects and filing lawsuits, objections and appeals, by organizing our community, joining national grassroots coalitions, advocating for legislative protections, supporting administrative policy changes that protect old forests across the board, educating the public, and traveling to Washington DC to lobby elected officials and federal agencies for these changes.

The citizens of the Applegate Valley and southwestern Oregon have a long tradition of forest activism and environmental advocacy, and their successes are written across the landscape wherever old forests still stand, unroaded landscapes still exist, and wild streams still run clear, cold and unencumbered by dams or other impediments. In recent years, residents in the area have worked tirelessly to oppose a seemingly endless barrage of BLM timber sales targeting old forest habitats across the Applegate River watershed and beyond. Yet, we have also found that as important and necessary as this activism is for the forests that surround us, we also need to adopt a more proactive approach advocating for stronger environmental policy, regulations, and habitat protections in our region.

Although we have been relatively successful in recent years in stopping numerous damaging timber sales throughout the region, from the Little Applegate River and Upper Applegate River watersheds, to Thompson Creek, Ruch, Murphy, Grants Pass, Selma, and along the Wild and Scenic Rogue River. We understand that sustaining this level of success through community-based activism under the land management mandates of the Medford District BLM, means a continual battle over timber sales, old-growth forests and unroaded wildlands. We also understand that our successes are temporary when a timber sale is canceled or withdrawn and our losses are permanent when a timber sale is logged.

With both of these realities and the incredible scenic, biological, recreational, biodiversity and connectivity values of our region in mind, we have gathered a coalition of local advocates and non-profit organizations together to form the Siskiyou Crest Coalition, with the goal of advocating for durable habitat protections in the spectacular Siskiyou Crest region.

The Siskiyou Crest Coalition strives to build the grassroots and political support necessary to achieve these goals, by sharing our love for the region, documenting its exceptional biodiversity, demonstrating its biological importance as one of the Pacific Northwest’s most important connectivity corridors, and generating a sense of pride in place that enables us to sustain our efforts and achieve our long-term goals.

For more information on the Siskiyou Crest Coalition, please visit the beautiful new webpage exploring the Siskiyou Crest region and highlighting our work!

Celebrating the Siskiyou Crest: A Festival of Arts, Culture & Science

Additionally, the Siskiyou Crest Coalition is organizing a Celebration of the Siskiyou Crest Festival to highlight the art, science, ecology and culture of the Siskiyou Crest region and its many important attributes. The event will include a series of regional hikes and field trips on July 14, as well as a Siskiyou Crest themed art show, panel discussions by respected local ecologists, keynote speakers, music, food, libations, and a good time with neighbors and supporters of the Siskiyou Crest on July 15-16. The art show, speakers, and other activities on July 15-16 will take place at the beautiful Pacifica Gardens in Williams, Oregon.

Festival organizers are currently accepting Siskiyou Crest inspired art for the juried art show portion of the festival, including poetry, music, video, dance, visual, textile, ceramic and sculpture arts. For more information and the application form, follow this link.

Help us bring our advocacy to the next level!

At ASA we believe advocating for the land or simply opposing the next public land timber sale is not enough, we also need to provide a vision for the future of the region and its human communities. We believe this vision must include protections for the world-class biodiversity, connectivity, and wildlands of our region. It must also include strong expressions of love for the region and a broad-based community of advocates who will act as its voice and support the protection of the Siskiyou Crest for future generations. Join us at the Siskiyou Crest Coalition and become a voice for the region!

Please support ASA as we strive to bring our work to a new level, provide a vision for the future of the Siskiyou Crest region, and organize our communities. Our goal is to both defend against immediate threats to our region and support its permanent protection. A generous donation, or recurring donation can help us build the capacity to achieve both these goals and continue leading the conservation community forward. Leave a lasting legacy for the Siskiyou Crest!

Applegate Siskiyou Alliance and our partners at Klamath Forest Alliance just released a short video about the Applegate Headwaters Wild and Scenic River proposal. The video highlights wild streams previously proposed for protection under Senator Wyden’s River Democracy Act, including the Middle Fork Applegate River, Butte Fork Applegate River, Cook and Green Creek, Whisky Creek, and Elliott Creek.

Unfortunately, Senator Wyden recently released a new version of his legislation and removed many streams in the Applegate River watershed from proposed protections, including all streams at the headwaters of the Applegate River in northern California. We are working to restore these streams to the River Democracy Act and support their protection as new Wild and Scenic River Segments.

Please sign our petition to protect these streams at the following link.