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It may seem obvious, but logging kills trees. If drought and insects are already killing Douglas-fir trees, why does the BLM want to kill more?

The Medford District BLM has released the aptly named Douglas Fir Mortality Complex, a sprawling Applegate Valley timber sale of epic proportions.

Information about how to TAKE ACTION is at the end of the blog!

Logging green, living Douglas-fir trees = BLM created Douglas-fir tree mortality

With the influence of climate change, recent heat domes, and flat-headed fir borer beetes, Douglas-fir trees have died in the Applegate Valley and throughout southwest Oregon. This is a just reality, however, in many locations, the process is naturally rejuvenating oak woodlands, creating habitat diversity, and supporting habitat complexity across the landscape. Unfortunately, BLM now wants to log both the trees that died in recent mortality events that are providing exceptional wildlife habitat, and many of the last living, green, Doug-fir/mixed conifer forests left on BLM lands in the Little Applegate River, Sterling Creek, and Upper Applegate River watersheds.

In these portions of the Applegate River watershed, plant communities are already shifting in response to climate change, and Douglas-fir trees are already dying on harsh and arid sites below 3,500′ in elevation and in areas with minimal rainfall. The BLM’s response is the Douglas Fir Mortality Complex logging project, which intends to log off the area’s biological legacies (snags) and thousands of acres of forested refugia habitat that survived recent mortality outbreaks. These forests and trees demonstrated relatively high levels of drought and beetle resilience; however, BLM intends to log these forests, leaving only scattered, exposed trees and more harsh, sunbaked, windswept, and arid habitat conditions.

The Douglas Fir Mortality Complex project would log over 4,000 acres of forest and build up to 6.7 miles of new permanent road, scarring the beautiful Siskiyou Mountains surrounding the Applegate Valley, as well as the Lake Creek and Little Butte Creek areas east of Medford in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains.

In the Applegate Valley, the logging proposed would degrade forest habitats throughout the eastern portions of the Applegate Valley on lower Yale Creek, Sterling Creek, above Griffin Lane, in the Little Applegate River canyon, above the Little Applegate Valley and Buncom, up Grouse Creek, and on the flanks of Cinnabar Ridge. The logging would also impact Boaz Mountain , large areas above Eastside Road and lower Star Gulch in the Upper Applegate Valley.

The proposed logging would create Douglas-fir mortality like the Applegate has not seen since the days of clearcut-and-run public land logging that extended from the 1950s into the early 1990s. Like these previous timber sales, the Douglas Fir Mortality Complex would leave a lasting impact on the Applegate landscape by creating heavily disturbed stump fields filled with logging slash, highly flammable non-native annual grasses, noxious weeds, churned forest soils, denuded slopes, and within a few years, dense regenerating forests choked with young trees, brush, sprouting hardwoods and abundant fine fuels.

The patchwork of industrially logged habitats, newly constructed roads, historic clearcuts, and open, arid, windswept logging sites would dramatically increase fire risks, damage the scenic viewsheds of the Applegate Valley, degrade water quality, impact important wildlife habitats, and convert currently relatively resilient forest into simplified, early-seral habitats and semi-permanent shrub fields. The result would be to create conditions that tend to burn hotter, faster and with more burn severity than the closed forest stands they would convert through logging.

The process is simple and evident to anyone who has managed forests or woodlot in southwest Oregon, and to anyone who has spent time in the forests and mountains of the region. Yet it is somehow ignored by BLM timber planners and fire/fuel specialists. When forest canopy cover is dramatically reduced, dense, young, highly flammable plant communities and woody vegetation tend to regenerate and dominate for multiple decades following significant canopy and large tree logging operations.

According to BLM’s previous analysis of canopy reduction logging, “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.” (Clean Slate Timber Sale EA P. 192).

Implementation and On-the-Ground Results Matter More than the False Claims in the BLM’s Environmental Analysis

The BLM can conduct computer modeling simulations all it likes, but it does not change the physical realities on the ground. The BLM can simulate imaginary forests, run imaginary scenarios in its computer modeling programs, identify imaginary growth rates, and predict imaginary outcomes, all to claim a benefit to localized fire risks and a reduction in fuel loading; however, these computer models specifically do not include the abundant understory regeneration that occurs after logging operations, or its influence on stand level fire risks over time. This failure to analyze or model for young regenerating vegetation eliminates the single largest factor influencing future fuel development and long-term fire risks in the BLM’s Environmental Analysis and skews the analysis.

In fact, BLM modeling has consistently failed to match the realities on the ground or the repeated outcome of real-world, BLM timber sales. Timber sales recently implemented by the Medford District BLM are having far fewer positive effects than BLM modeling might suggest, and in many cases are instead reducing forest health, increasing vulnerability to drought and climate related impacts, increasing fire risks, slowing tree growth, introducing significant stress, compounding mortality events, and reducing these forest’s habitat value.

Unfortunately for the BLM, and for the public, the results of their recent logging operations are written across the landscape, in the form of gaping, denuded slopes, where vibrant green forests and diverse snag patches once stood. The most recent timber sales have steadily converted thousands of acres of mature, closed canopy forest habitats with little understory growth, into non-native annual grasslands, shrub fields, and young, highly flammable vegetation types.

The result is not to reduce mortality risks in the future, but to create mass mortality in the here and now, by logging up 80% of a given stand in habitats with as little as 10% mortality and by logging living trees that survived the recent beetle mortality outbreaks.

No matter how you look at it, BLM is adding to the mortality on the landscape and reducing forested acreage on a landscape scale. This logging is actively expanding and extending the mortality across the landscape, while creating conditions conducive to future mortality and habitat loss.

BLM Timber Sales Lead to Deforestation and Habitat Destruction

Recent BLM timber sales like the Lickety Split, Boaz Salvage, Forest Creek Salvage, Apple Saws and Holcomb Hollow Timber Sales represent textbook examples of deforestation and habitat destruction, not restoration or fuel reduction. These timber sales are now sacrifice zones, and with each successive BLM timber sale, our public forests are less resilient, less rich in wildlife habitat, less complex, and less attractive or appealing to local residents, visitors, and to outdoor recreation enthusiasts who utilize local trails and enjoy our currently spectacular public lands scenery.  

Although the BLM justifies the impact of industrial logging by claiming a reduction in fire risks, the Douglas Fir Mortality Complex Environmental Assessment (EA) acknowledges that any logging below 40% canopy cover “could contribute toward more rapid live fuel loading accumulation in the moderate term (10-30 years).” (DMC EA P. 36). Yet, the Douglas Fir Mortality Complex proposes extensive and widespread logging-created tree mortality, and a reduction of canopy cover to well below 40% canopy cover.

In fact, only in Riparian Reserves would BLM require canopy cover retention above 30% in so-called “salvage” logging units. Recent BLM logging operations in the Applegate Valley under the SOS Project have reduced canopy cover to between 5% and 20%, leaving only a handful of trees per acre and heavily altering microclimates. If implemented as proposed, the BLM’s Douglas Fir Mortality Complex would have similar impacts across thousands more acres in the Applegate.

According to the BLM, approximately 2,875 acres would be subjected to only the logging of “dead and dying trees” in “salvage” logging units; however, the definition of “dead and dying” is rather loose, and has included extensive living tree removal in recent BLM timber sales. The Douglas Fir Mortality Complex Environmental Analysis discloses that a canopy cover of between 40%-60% “is most common,” across the project area and that areas with as little as 10% mortality have been selected for “salvage” logging treatments. This demonstrates that areas with minimal mortality are now sites of significant deforestation.

BLM Claims They Can Predict Which Trees Will Die by 2055! Ha!

Just like the recent SOS Project, the Douglas Fir Mortality Complex Project would log approximately 70% and 80% of all trees in each stand, including those with no signs of significant beetle infestation, a loss of vigor, or eminent tree mortality.

The BLM claims these trees are being removed based on predictions of future mortality — as many as 30 years in the future (2055) — when in reality they are being removed to increase timber volumes per acre and produce more profits for their timber industry “partners.”  BLM cannot honestly say they can predict which trees will die by 2055 and no science supports these unfounded claims. Instead, they are being made to support increased timber production, ignore biological realities, and are contributing to widespread deforestation in our region.

Additionally, high value wildlife snags, and future downed wood are proposed for widespread removal in areas where more significant beetle mortality took place. This strips the regenerating forests of habitat complexity and natural regeneration. It also disturbs forest soils, making them far more susceptible to noxious or non-native weed spread, and far more susceptible to elevated levels of soil erosion and stream sedimentation.

During the past two years, BLM has more than doubled timber production implemented under its 2016 Resource Management Plan, while heavily utilizing this faulty narrative of “dead and dying” tree removal. They have done so with devastating consequences to the forests, watersheds, and local communities in the the Applegate Valley, and in both the Cascade and Siskiyou Mountains of southwest Oregon.

BLM Timber Sales Do Not Prevent Flat-headed Fir Borer Beetle Outbreaks

The BLM acknowledges that once “widespread FFB [flat-headed fir borer] infestation begins in a forested stand, there has not been a clear solution in stopping the damage.” Thus, BLM is not logging to reduce  further beetle mortality, they are leveraging the hysteria around recent beetle mortality events in southwest Oregon to promote increasingly severe logging treatments across bigger and broader landscapes. (Flat-headed fir borer beetles are native insects!)

The Douglas Fir Mortality Complex would include stands that are currently maintaining irreplaceable refugia habitat for species like the northern spotted owl, great gray owls, pacific fisher, Siskiyou Mountains salamanders, Klamath black salamanders, black bear, and ungulates like deer and elk. All these species require thermal cover, temperature moderation, decadence, complex habitat structures, and/or mature or late successional forest characteristics to support portions of their diverse life cycles, and these values would be heavily impacted by Douglas Fir Mortality Complex timber sales.

These same forests also support watersheds, springs, seasonal streams, and important stream flows contributing water to the Little Applegate and Upper Applegate River watersheds, and they would be heavily impacted by not only soil disturbance, erosion, and sedimentation from logging and yarding operations, but also through the 6.7 miles of new permanent road construction proposed by BLM in this project.

BLM Logging is Taking the Applegate Back to the Cut and Run Logging Era

If implemented the Douglas Fir Mortality Complex would change the face of the Little Applegate and Upper Applegate Valleys forever, converting mixed conifer forests into non-native annual grasslands or permanent shrubfields. The forests, the views, the wildlife, the watersheds, the scenic beauty, and the habitat functionality of the region is under heavy threat by BLM logging operations.

Additionally, the safety of our families and communities during wildfire events is threatened as BLM increases fire risks on public lands adjacent to our homes. Protecting these community values depends on home hardening, defensible space work, ingress/egress efforts, and a home outward approach to community wildfire protection, while logging in remote locations and on public lands far from private residences, municipalities, or rural communities has no direct benefit to the resilience of these homes or communities.

The fact is that backcountry logging and manual fuel reduction in remote locations only draws resources away from more meaningful efforts to address community wildfire safety.  In many cases, it also increases fire risks in the years following these logging operations as dense, woody vegetation fills in the canopy gaps and disturbed soils with even-aged young conifer regeneration, dense shrubs and stump sprouting hardwoods.  

The Douglas Fir Mortality Complex, like the SOS Project before it, proposes to embed heavy industrial logging units directly adjacent to homes and communities making them less, not more secure during fire events.  

The Douglas Fir Mortality Complex Project is not about supporting the resilience of local communities, it is about increasing the volume of timber offered to the timber industry from our public lands. It is about using the public’s fear of fire and misunderstanding of recent climate-induced, Doug-fir mortality events to log more forests, to implement increasingly more severe logging treatments, and to deliver unsustainable levels of timber to local mills .

The Medford District BLM is attempting to log every forest they can get their hands on under the Trump Administration’s pro-industry public land policies. Simply put, the Douglas Fir Mortality Complex proposal is Trump forestry in all its dishonesty, all its greed, all its arrogance, and all its indifference to the real, lasting environmental impacts.

From a biological perspective the project is incredibly misguided and would have lasting negative consequences. From a human perspective, the BLM is threatening the quality of life and the quality of habitat we enjoy here in southwestern Oregon. The Douglas Fir Mortality Complex Timber Sale would impact our communities, degrade our public lands and local watersheds, damage our recreation areas, and scar our hillsides with downright ugly logging scars.

This logging proposal is another excuse by the Medford District BLM to log off the public lands of southwest Oregon and the Applegate Valley. The agency has shown over many years to be solely fixated on the destruction of forest habitats in our region, and the production of private timber industry profit from everyone’s beautiful public lands.

During his confirmation hearings, Secretary of Interior Doug Burgham clarified that he views our public lands as a financial “asset” and referred to the resources on public lands as “America’s balance sheet.” Unfortunately, land managers at the Medford District BLM are obediently working to liquidate those assets, and they simply do not care who or what that might affect.

Recent BLM timber sales have led to landslides, debris flows, lawless, unregulated logging, type conversion to non-native annual grasslands and shrubfields, heavy stream sedimentation, dramatically increased fire risks directly adjacent to homes and communities, and real world impacts that BLM computer models and Environmental Assessments do not disclose or even consider.

The BLM is actively working to create timber sacrifice zones throughout the Applegate River watershed and we must actively oppose this destruction. Please join ASA as we fight the Douglas Fir Mortality Complex timber sales. Comments can be submitted until July 3, 2026 at the website below.

TAKE ACTION! COMMENT NOW

Talking Points:

• Maintain all live trees in “salvage” logging units. Do not log trees based on predicted or future mortality. BLM cannot predict which trees will die in 2055!
• Do not log in forested refugia habitats that survived recent beetle mortality events and maintain either closed forest conditions, late successional characteristics, mature stand conditions, natural stand development, or open forest conditions surrounded by high quality, complex early seral habitat.
• Build no new roads. No permanent or temporary roads.
• The BLM must fully disclose the impact of recent salvage logging timber sales on hardwood habitats, on soils, on slope stability, on stream sedimentation, on sensitive and endangered species, on fire risks, and on future late successional forest development. None of these issues were adequately considered in the existing Environmental Assessment.
• Maintain canopy cover and live trees in all stands. Focus any and all treatments on public safety by limiting felling operations to those that remove only true, dead standing, hazard trees threatening to fall into regularly used BLM roads, trailheads and other public infrastructure such as ingress/egress routes for local residents or the area’s recreational users.
• Implement non-commercial fuel reduction where necessary to support safe ingress/egress on BLM lands (150′ from regularly used roads).
• Do not implement “tethered assist” logging on steep, erosive slopes. Cabling on steep slopes has massive erosion impacts that impact native fisheries.
• Do not authorize Riparian Reserve logging and do not yard through any Riparian Reserves within the project area.
• Implement a 20″ upper diameter limit, to protect older, larger trees, to reflect the poor growing conditions, the lack of large diameter trees on the landscape, the significant age of relatively small diameter trees in the Applegate, and the need to maintain shade, microclimate and closed stand conditions where they have been persistent.

The East Applegate Ridge Trail is a beloved and threatened community asset

For many years residents in southwest Oregon have coalesced around a vision of long-distance, non-motorized trails extending across the Applegate River watershed and connecting communities throughout the Rogue River, Bear Creek and Applegate River Valleys of interior southwest Oregon. These residents have also built multiple organizations dedicated to building these trail systems with the ultimate goal being to link the proposed Applegate Ridge Trail and Jack-Ash Trail systems into the larger, approximately 80-mile Siskiyou Skyline Trail. The trail would extend from Grants Pass to Ashland, Oregon throughout the beautiful Applegate foothills and small portions have already been created.

Yet, since construction of the East Applegate Ridge Trail by the Applegate Trails Association (ATA) and the Jack-Ash Trail by the Siskiyou Upland Trails Association (SUTA) in 2017, residents in the area are just now realizing how vital, transformative, and popular this proposed trail system could be.

The East Applegate Ridge Trail now attracts thousands of visitors to trailheads in the Applegate Valley each year, and is just a ten-minute drive from Jacksonville at the edge of the Rogue Valley. The trail system is one of the most accessible, scenic, spectacular, and beloved trails in the region. This now iconic Oregon trail contains a beautiful mixture of oak woodland, thickets of chaparral, open grasslands, mixed hardwood forests, mature conifer forests, relatively undisturbed habitats, and colorful wildflower displays.

The area is also cherished for its incredible views across the Applegate Valley, the region’s rugged foothills, and the long, east-west tending spine of the Siskiyou Crest at the headwaters of the Applegate River. It is also popular with hikers, botanists, trail runners, and mountain bikers throughout the region and beyond.

The East Applegate Ridge Trail provides our region with a sense of pride in both the beauty of this place, and in the local community that has worked so hard to envision, promote, gain BLM approval, build, and maintain this incredible non-motorized trail.

Unfortunately, both the trail’s scenic beauty and the massive community effort that led to the trail’s creation are threatened with BLM logging under the Holcomb Hollow Timber Sale, and this logging could begin any day.

The Holcomb Hollow Timber Sale is damaging to the environment

The Holcomb Hollow Timber Sale is a 679-acre timber sale authorized by the BLM under their disastrous Ashland 2025 SOS logging project. Thus far, the Holcomb Hollow Timber Sale has logged the western face of Woodrat Mountain doing great damage to the area’s forests and woodlands. This sale also includes logging units, which have not yet been implemented, on BLM lands in the Sterling Creek area, and in multiple locations along the East Applegate Ridge Trail.

The East Applegate Ridge Trail would be heavily impacted by BLM logging

Although the BLM claims to be logging only “dead and dying” trees in the SOS project and Holcomb Hollow Timber Sale, numerous units proposed for logging contain living, green stands with mature forest canopy. A deeper dive into the timber sale’s tree removal mark also shows that many large, living, fire resilient trees that survived recent beetle mortality outbreaks are now being proposed for removal. In fact, the BLM’s own analysis shows that some stands being proposed for logging sustained as little as 10% mortality. Yet, the Holcomb Hollow Timber Sale Prospectus reveals that 73% of the trees in these stands would be removed.

Although the agency claims to be using a scalpel to selectively harvest only the most unhealthy trees, and those most likely to die, the actual outcome and on-the-ground results of the Holcomb Hollow Timber Sale has included the removal of mature, living forest canopy, large fire resistant trees, habitat rich snags, and virtually everything in between.

For example, the SOS Project claimed to “promote hardwoods,” and the Holcomb Hollow Timber Sale Prospectus “reserved” them from timber harvest; however, hardwoods have been systematically removed across hundreds of acres in both the Holcomb Hollow and nearby Apple Saws Timber Sales, leaving a few scattered, often badly damaged trees per acre in some locations, and virtually none in others.

Logging off these hardwoods, and the living, resilient conifers that survived the recent beetle mortality events in the Applegate River watershed has significant unanalyzed impacts, and creates fundamentally different outcomes than those disclosed in the BLM’s Environmental Assessment or authorized in its Decision Record.

The logging proposed along the East Applegate Ridge Trail would heavily degrade the recreational experience by logging off some of the only forested habitats traversed by the trail, and many of the forests in the trail’s immediate viewshed. The project would log stands to as low as 5-20% canopy cover, leaving a few scattered trees where living, green forests once stood. It would also eliminate the only real shade along the trail, and along this otherwise sunbaked ridgeline.

The area also supports populations of the great grey owl, which nests in conifer stands within the area. Significant effort was made during the creation of the East Applegate Ridge Trail to avoid impacts to these great grey owl habitats. Now these same mature conifer forests are being proposed for heavy industrial logging with potentially long-term impacts to this important nesting habitat.

Additionally, the controversial Bear Grub Timber Sale was proposed a number of years ago by the BLM, in the same immediate location. Yet the Bear Grub Timber Sale was canceled, in part, due to impacts to the rare Pacific fisher, and its old forest habitat. Now BLM has proposed to log these same stands, but with much more intensity, creating more damaging impacts to Pacific fisher denning habitats .

The timber sale also includes both cable yarding units in the viewshed of the trail, where currently green forests will be heavily logged and streaked with vertical cable yarding scars. This form of yarding tears up forest soils as the trees are repeatedly dragged uphill on steep mountain slopes and in long vertical corridors. Often the BLM requires one end log suspension, which allows the other end to scrape and drag across the forest floor. This creates long, vertical strips of heavily disturbed soil, significant soil compaction, soil displacement, and erosion that can create small gullies that channelize water and have been documented to contribute to debris flows and slope failures.

The units directly adjacent to the trail would be subjected to ground-based yarding where large tractors drag logs across forest soils, destroying the spectacular native wildflowers the trail is known for, gauging deep into forests soils, creating widespread soil compaction, extensive soil disturbance and often a conversion from native understory species to highly flammable non-native annual grasses and noxious weeds. Disturbance from equipment use and the degradation of native plant habitat is a significant impact along the East Applegate Ridge Trail, which is loved for its abundant native wildflower displays and high quality pollinator habitats.

The scars of Holcomb Hollow Timber Sale will also damage the scenic viewsheds and the quality of both the environment and recreational experience directly adjacent to the trail. Especially, for the first two and a half miles, east from Highway 238, significant damage will be done.

Not only will the first half mile of the trail be converted from a trail on an old, gated, overgrown roadbed to a full blown timber haul road, but landings would also be created, large soil sterilizing machine slash piles would be built and later burned, and the surrounding forests heavily logged. The first two miles of now scenic mountain canyon would be riddled with logging units devouring each major stand of conifer forest, including those with both minimal and relatively significant recent tree mortality.

Additionally, approximately 1/4 mile of trail would run directly through unit 13-2, which would log off the trail and the surrounding ridgeline. Meanwhile the BLM would log straight to the trail in unit 11-1, 13-4 and 13-5.

Please contact BLM and let them know you love the East Applegate Ridge Trail and do not want to see it logged!

You can sign onto a quick letter and send it to elected officials and BLM land managers here.

Please add into the letter that you want to see the logging along the East Applegate Ridge Trail CANCELLED!

Better yet, send the BLM a personalized message extolling your love for the unlogged East Applegate Ridge Trail and your desire to see the Holcomb Hollow Timber Sale canceled.

Medford District BLM Field Manager, Elizabeth Burghard:

eburghar@blm.gov

Ashland Resource Area Manager, Lauren Brown

lpbrown@blm.gov

Which do you prefer on your favorite local hiking trail?

Relatively natural forests and intact plant communities?

Or… heavily logged and disturbed landscapes impacted by BLM timber sale operations?

The Trump Administration’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has set their sights on Western Oregon forests and has started the process to revise the BLM’s 2016 Resource Management Plan (RMP). The goal is to dramatically increase timber production on 2.4 million acres of BLM lands, “to provide a sustained yield of timber production consistent with the maximum productive capacity of the lands.”

The BLM intends to quadruple timber production in Western Oregon from the already too high 250 million board feet per year, to approximately 1 billion board feet annually.

Like so many of the administration’s regressive policies, these RMP Revisions propose to take us back to the wildly unsustainable timber harvest levels of 1960-1990 when whole watersheds of old-growth forest were being liquidated in vast clearcuts, roads were being punched into remote habitats, wildlife populations were plummeting, watersheds across the state were failing and fisheries were collapsing in unison across the Pacific Northwest.

According to a recent blog by long-time environmental advocate, Andy Kerr, at the peak of cutting in 1988 the BLM was logging 3.6 square miles of old-growth forest per month in its Western Oregon holdings, and 3 square miles per week on both Forest Service and BLM lands. The BLM also acknowledged implementing 22,414 acres of clearcut logging and 6,212 acres of “partial cut” logging in western Oregon in 1988 alone, with the highest number of acres occurring on the Medford District BLM.

In practice, what the current RMP Revision will do is strip the region of environmental, watershed, and habitat protections and facilitate widespread clearcut logging and new road construction on the vast majority of the agency’s land in Western Oregon. This would impact beautiful BLM lands and important habitats between the Columbia River and the California border in the Coast Ranges, on the western slope of the Cascade Mountains, and in the Siskiyou Mountain of southwest Oregon, including the Applegate River watershed and broader Siskiyou Crest region.

This level of harvest can only be described as deforestation and wholesale environmental destruction. A return to this level of industrial timber harvest will lead to a dramatic expansion in clearcut logging, the development of highly flammable plantation stands across broad landscapes, high-graded and heavily logged stands with virtually no biological integrity, enormously detrimental watershed effects, and scenic Oregon viewsheds riddled in unsightly logging scars and new road cuts.

Ironically, these issues have been resolved in the courts and both BLM and big timber’s interpretation of the 1937 O&C Act, as a timber-only mandate has been thoroughly rebuked. Unable to accept these limitations on their plunder of public lands the BLM, the timber industry, the O&C Counties (such as Jackson, Josephine, and Curry County is southwestern Oregon), and the Trump Administration are intent on increasing timber production, regardless of the enormous impacts.

Representing the politics of corruption, greed, and unsustainable excess, the BLM has been fully captured by the timber industry and is prioritizing short-term profits for wealthy shareholders, over the health of our forests, watersheds, and communities in Western Oregon.

Many of the rural communities in the region have transitioned from unsustainable timber-dependent economies to more balanced economies centered around tourism, outdoor recreation, fisheries, agricultural enterprises and amenities. In this way, the beauty of the region is central to its economic vitality, and the shift away from heavy, industrial scale resource extraction also supports a higher quality of life for local residents, maintains a beautiful, healthy environment for the benefit of surrounding communities, and provides cold, clean water to regional farms, ranches, vineyards, and river ecosystems.

Western Oregon is known for its beautiful coastlines, towering forests, verdant streams, wild rivers, world-renowned fisheries, intact mountain vistas, and abundant wildlife. Many in the region take pride in where they live, the natural beauty it offers, and its incredible biodiversity. We feel blessed to live in such spectacularly scenic landscapes and value them immensely.

The BLM’s RMP Revision is a threat to what we love in Oregon and must be stopped. We implore our neighbors, residents throughout the state, visitors who love the region, conservationists, hikers, hunters, fishers, whitewater rafters, botanists, birders, elected officials, and all who love Oregon’s public lands to speak out for its defense.

Please comment on the Scoping Notice for the RMP Revision and tell BLM:

1. The proposed increase in logging is unsustainable, irresponsible, and will degrade public resources like clean water, fisheries, intact forests, wildlife habitats, and public wildlands.
2. Timber production in the Annual Sale Quantity (ASQ) should be adjusted downward to compensate for the 2021 Labor Day Fires, recent beetle outbreaks in southwest Oregon, and mortality related to climate and drought effects.
3. Oregon’s public lands should be managed for public values, not private timber industry interests.
4. The courts have confirmed that O&C Lands should be managed for multiple uses, including conservation, wildlife, watersheds, recreation, and others. These lands do not have a timber-only mandate.
5. Maintain and expand all current conservation-based Land Use Allocations, including Areas of Critical Environmental Concern, Lands with Wilderness Characteristics, Wild and Scenic Rivers, Wilderness Areas, Late Successional Reserves, Research Natural Areas, and Riparian Reserves.
6. Heavy commercial logging, as proposed by the BLM in the RMP Revision, will dramatically increase fire risks by removing large fire resistant trees, altering microclimate conditions, and regenerating dense, highly flammable young growth. This creates conditions that are conducive to hotter, more fast-moving fires.
7. Many rural communities have transitioned away from public land timber production and into more sustainable, balanced economies. These economic activities will be significantly harmed by increased timber production.
8. The BLM has proven themselves so irresponsible in their management of public lands and has so thoroughly violated the public’s trust, that I support the transfer of all BLM lands in western Oregon to the adjacent National Forests.

Note: Our own Medford District BLM Manager Elizabeth Burghard, is the official Oregon/Washington BLM contact for this RMP Revision and Western Oregon clearcut logging plan. After increasing timber production here on the Medford District in the past two years, apparently the Oregon/Washington Office and the Trump Administration took note, putting her in charge of the largest BLM Timber Grab in recent history! She is the official contact for this project and all communications should be addressed to Elizabeth Burghard, the individual most responsible for the current logging impacts in the Applegate, and the point person for the destruction of forests across the state!

Take Action!

Provide comments to the BLM through the following methods:

• Website: https://eplanning.blm.gov/Project-Home/?id=a591dee8-500c-f111-8406-001dd8029ed0 click on the participate now tab on near the top of the page to comment.
• Email: BLM_OR_Revision_Scoping@blm.gov.
• Mail: Attention BLM OR930: 1220 SW 3rd Ave, Portland OR 97204.
• Sending in your own letter is the most powerful way to have your voice heard, but you can also send a quick letter through the Center for Biological Diversity‘s letter campaign here:

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Documents pertinent to this proposal may be examined online at Northwestern and Coastal Oregon and Southwestern Oregon Resource Management Plan Revision

Click play to watch a short video from on-the-ground monitoring of the Apple Saws Timber Sale on Ben Johnson Mountain above Ruch.

Ben Johnson Mountain rises like a broad, forested dome directly above the popular Cantrall-Buckley County Park and its swimming holes along the Applegate River. The mountain is visible from residences, vineyards and farms across the Ruch area, and from nearby hiking trails like the East Applegate Ridge Trail.

On New Year’s day, the Medford District BLM and Estremado Logging began logging off the mountain’s eastern face, desecrating our beloved mountain with logging scars. Although the BLM claims to be logging only dead and dying trees in this timber sale, the forests on these slopes contain very little recent tree mortality. In fact, these forests survived the 2022-2023 flat headed fir borer outbreak as refugia habitats, and relatively little tree mortality has occurred.

Ironically, the BLM admits that some stands in the Apple Saws Timber Sale may contain as little as 10% mortality, and some appear to have far less when surveyed on the ground, and yet, astoundingly the BLM proposes to log 82% of the trees in these forests, leaving little but scattered trees, vertical skyline yarding scars, and soils churned, compacted, and displaced by heavy equipment use.

Additionally, the BLM is allowing the logging contractors to exceed authorizations in the applicable BLM documents. What we have found in the Apple Saws Timber Sale is the myth presented by the BLM in their timber sale approval documents, and the realities, which are demonstrated clearly on the ground.

Much like the recently implemented Boaz Salvage Timber Sale, which ended in landslides, debris flows and permanent damage to forests, riparian areas and streams, the Apple Saws Timber Sale is being implemented with disregard for public resources and the agency’s own regulations, and it is having tragic consequences.

The BLM has woven a narrative about reducing fire risks, mitigating environmental effects, and implementing Project Design Features (PDFs) to protect public resources, but these are myths, not supported by the evidence on the ground. The Apple Saws Timber Sale is a disaster in the making, and like the Boaz Salvage Timber Sale implemented last winter, it is being implemented in a manner that dramatically exceeds the environmental impacts analyzed or authorized in the Ashland 2025 SOS Environmental Analysis (EA), the Ashland 2025 SOS Decision Record #3 for the Apple Saws Timber Sale, or Apple Saws Full Timber Sale Prospectus.

Apple Saws Timber Sale: The Myth and the Reality

Only the first few units have been implemented in the Apple Saws Timber Sale, but already both the myths of the BLM’s analysis and impacts of the project are becoming crystal clear. Currently, the agency is not just looking the other way while authorizations are violated, they are knowingly allowing, and excusing the lack of compliance on the ground, leading to impacts that exceed those authorized by the BLM.

Myth #1 – Only dead and dying trees are being cut and removed

“Retain all healthy trees which show no signs of insect infestation or decline unless removal is required for safety or operational purposes.” (Ashland SOS EA P. 11)

“Within stands experiencing mortality, healthy living trees are not the target of salvage harvest.” (Ashland SOS Decision Record #3 P.8)

“Area units are RETENTION MARKED in WHITE for salvage harvest. All unmarked Douglas-fir trees meeting minimum merchantability specifications have been deemed dead or dying.” (Apple Saws Full Timber Sale Prospectus P. 2)

“Reserve all healthy, green trees in all DXP-LF units” (Timber Sale Prospectus P. 5)

Reality #1 – Significant living, green trees are being felled and removed across the Apple Saws Timber Sale

Whole stands of living, green, non-beetle infested trees are being logged all across the Apple Saws Timber Sale. In fact, the Ashland 2025 SOS EA allows for logging in stands with as little as 10% mortality, and the timber sale prospectus reveals that 82% of the trees in these stands will be logged, in the timber sale if fully implemented.

Currently, the first few units have been logged and have included predominantly the removal of living, green trees, as well as extensive trees marked white for “retention,” but logged by Estremado Logging throughout the timber sale.

In response to our complaints that many living, green trees and retention trees are being removed, BLM has responded by stating, “The Apple Saws Timber Sale is removing dead and dying Douglas-fir trees as analyzed in the Ashland 2025 SOS Environmental Assessment and authorized in Decision Record 3.” They also claim, “Conifer trees that were reserved marked and cut for operational purposes (yarding corridors) have been swapped with conifer trees that were not reserve marked to maintain adequate post-harvest residual densities.”

What we can see on-the-ground in the Apple Saws Timber Sale is the widespread removal of living, green, non-beetle infested trees. In fact, almost none of the trees we have seen felled throughout this timber sale were dead standing snags. Additionally, large Douglas fir trees clearly marked for “retention” have been cut at scale across unit 32-7, and it does not appear they were replaced with comparable trees or “swapped” out as the BLM suggests.

We are also concerned that canopy cover and density targets are not being met and northern spotted owl habitat development is being “precluded and delayed” for more than 20 years in violation of the BLM’s 2016 Resource Management Pland and its management direction for Late Successional Reserve (LSR) forests. The flanks of Ben Johnson Mountain and the surrounding areas are LSR forest and should be managed for the maintenance, enhancement, and recruitment of late successional forests. This timber sale is having the opposite affect and will set back LSR habitat values for many decades to come.

Myth #2 – Hardwoods are not being cut and removed across the Apple Saws Timber Sale

“Retain all hardwood species unless removal is required for safety or operational purposes.” (Ashland SOS EA P. 11)

“The Ashland SOS project proposes to retain healthy living trees, leave snags in proposed units, and promote hardwood species.” (Ashland SOS Decision Record #3 P. 25)

“Hardwood regeneration is important for providing species diversity, varied age classes, and structural layering. Hardwoods will be retained except where operationally infeasible.” (Ashland SOS Decision Record #3 P. 34)

“Reserve all cedar, pine, hardwoods, and Pacific yew in all units as shown on Exhibit A, except where falling is necessary for safety or operational reasons. If such trees need to be cut for safety or operational reasons, retain cut trees in the stand.” (Apple Saws Full Timber Sale Prospectus P. 1 of 29)

Reality #2 – Significant hardwood populations are being felled and removed across the Apple Saws Timber Sale

Hardwoods, including at least 80% of the madrone and black oak on site are being felled and removed across the Apple Saws Timber Sale. This includes large mature madrone trees by the thousands, many of which are being felled, yarded to the road, sorted, decked, and hauled off in log trucks despite not being authorized for felling or removal.

The wholesale removal of hardwood trees for firewood was explicitly not allowed under the timber sale contract or BLM NEPA documents. Yet, the systematic removal of hardwoods is occurring throughout the timber sale area.

The felling, yarding and removal of hardwoods for firewood is occurring openly throughout this timber sale, despite the fact that Estremado Logging did not buy the hardwoods and is not authorized to fell, yard or remove them from the site at this scale.

The Apple Saws Timber Sale is completely decimating, rather than “promoting” and “retaining” the hardwood component as the EA, Decision Record, and Timber Sale Prospectus suggest. Additionally, the retention and promotion of hardwoods was required to meet canopy cover, basal area, and Northern spotted owl habitat targets identified by BLM during the planning process.

The removal of hardwoods at scale renders the EA analysis invalid and demonstrates that BLM logging operations dramatically exceed the impacts analyzed, authorized, and disclosed to the public in the applicable BLM documents. The retention and promotion of hardwoods in the Apple Saws Timber Sale is a myth untethered from reality.

Myth#3 – No wet weather logging will occur

“No road construction, landing construction, skid trail construction, road renovation, road reconstruction, road decommissioning, road blocking/barricade construction, rocking, water bar construction, soil ripping, shall be conducted within contract area between October 15th of one calendar year and May 15th of the following calendar year, both days inclusive, or when soil moisture exceeds 25%, as determined by the Authorized Officer.

No ground-based yarding or soil decompaction operations shall be conducted within contract area between October 15th to May 15th, or when soil moisture exceeds 25%.” (Apple Saws Full Timber Sale Prospectus P. 7 of 29).

“Restrict non-road, in-unit, ground- based equipment used for harvesting operations to periods of low soil moisture; generally from May 15 to Oct 15. Low soil moisture varies by texture and is based on site-specific considerations. Low soil moisture limits will be determined by qualified specialists to determine an estimated soil moisture and soil texture” (2016 RMP, p. 183).

Reality #3: – Ground-based wet weather logging and hauling has occurred.

Last winter the BLM allowed wet weather logging to occur (despite ASA’s complaints) until landslides, heavy sedimentation and debris flows occurred in the Boaz Salvage Timber Sale. This winter, in the Apple Saws Timber Sale on Ben Johnson Mountain, Estremado Logging requested a wet weather waiver on December 16, 2025, and BLM immediately authorized that waiver three days later on December 19.

Wet weather logging is generally restricted during the winter months to protect soils, reduce sedimentation into local streams, and mitigate the impact of logging, yarding, and hauling activities. The waiver BLM provided for the Apple Saws Timber Sale allows the logging company to ignore the Project Design Features identified in the BLM’s Resource Management Plan, and the authorizations in the Timber Sale Prospectus that limit wet weather logging and hauling activities from May 15th to October 15th.

However, even this wet weather waiver states, “no work will occur during rain events.” Despite these restrictions crews moved in equipment on Christmas eve and began logging during a rain storm on January 1, 2026. Logging continued in the rain until January 5, 2026 in violation of the Wet Weather Waiver provided by the BLM.

Throughout the timber harvest activities ground-based yarding has created excessive soil damage, deep rutting, heavy soil compaction, damage to coarse downed wood, and the potential for significant surface erosion, and stream sedimentation in nearby seasonal streams. This disturbance also destroys native vegetation and will undoubtedly encourage noxious weeds and non-native annual grasses that can dramatically increase fire risks.

Myth #4 – No ground based yarding will occur in unit 32-7

The Ashland 2025 SOS Decision Record #3 for the Apple Saws Timber Sale identified unit 32-7 as a 50.8 acre unit with the logging method identified as “cable/heli.” (Ashland SOS Decision Record #3 P. 2)

The Apple Saws Timber Sale Prospectus identified unit 32-7 as a 69-acre skyline cable yarding unit.

There is no BLM document either analyzing or authorizing ground-based yarding in unit 32-7.

Reality #4 – The lower half of unit 32-7 was subjected to ground based yarding

Unauthorized ground-based yarding using a large harvester occurred in unit 32-7 for multiple weeks, including from January 1 to January 5, 2026 during an active rain storm in clear violation of all BLM documents pertaining to this sale.

The unauthorized ground-based yarding also created skid trails likely 4-5 times the size allowed in the Timber Sale Prospectus and on slopes greater than 35%. It also created far more soil damage, compaction and Detrimental Soil Disturbance, damage to vegetation and potential for erosion and stream sedimentation than was allowed in the Apple Saws Timber Sale Decision Record and Timber Sale Prospectus.

BLM was notified of the unauthorized activities and has continued to look the other way, allowing similar activities to occur and has taken no action to address this clear violation of their authorizing documents.

Myth #5 – Logging will not occur in the Inner Zone of Riparian Reserves, and will retain higher retention levels in adjoining Middle and Outer Riparian Reserve buffers

The Ashland 2025 SOS EA identified a 50′ no cut buffer along Riparian Reserves surrounding intermittent or seasonal streams. (Ashland 2025 SOS EA P. 17)

The SOS EA was revised to clarify that retention levels in riparian reserve middle and outer zones must retain at least 30 percent canopy cover and 60 trees per acre, and that only likely or imminent hazard trees may be felled in inner zones, with all other trees retained. (Ashland SOS Decision Record #3 P. 39)

Reality #5 – Logging has occurred in the inner zone of Riparian Reserves in unit 32-7

Logging has occurred in the inner zone of the Riparian Reserve in unit 32-7 of the Apple Saws Timber Sale. In fact, a portion of this Riparian Reserve was clearcut in a large group selection opening with virtually all trees felled and cable yarded to the road above.

Additionally, canopy cover and basal area retention targets in adjoining middle and outer Riparian Reserves are also not being met, leading to decreased stream shading, degraded wildlife habitat values, compromised Riparian Reserves and degradation to aquatic habitats.

Myth#6 – New road construction would be limited to segments less than 1/4 mile in length and no new construction was authorized in unit LF-33

“Temporary roads would be limited in length per road segment (< 1⁄4 mile) when accessing units.” (Ashland 2025 SOS EA P. 172)

Additionally, neither the Timber Sale Prospectus nor the Decision Record authorize new road construction in unit LF-33 of the Apple Saws Timber Sale.

Reality #6 – New road segments larger than 1/4 mile have been proposed despite limitations identified in the Environmental Assessment and an unauthorized road was built in unit LF-33

New road segments over 1/4 mile are proposed to access unit 32-1 and would cut across steep slopes, leaving scars on the mountain for decades to come and creating permanent lasting impacts to the viewshed, hydrology, slope stability, and habitat on Ben Johnson Mountain and the surrounding ridges. The new road construction authorized in the Apple Saws Timber Sale includes one contiguous road segment approximately one mile long, and over four times the distance allowed in the EA.

Unauthorized new road and landing construction has also occurred on the ridgeline in unit LF-33. The unauthorized new road in unit LF-33 has been illegally created by logging crews, while BLM looks the other way. This new road segment is approximately 1/4 mile long and was not analyzed or authorized in any of the applicable BLM documents.

Myth #7 – Apple Saws Timber Sale and the larger SOS Project will prevent fires and reduce fire risks

The BLM claims that the SOS Project and Apple Saws Timber Sale are focused on reducing fire risks associated with dead standing trees. The assumption is that excessive dead and dying trees will fall to the forest floor and increase fire risk by building coarse woody debris and large downed trees as surface fuels.

Reality #7 – The Apple Saws Timber Sale will dramatically increase fire risks in all affected forests

Although the project claims to be a “salvage” logging project, the Apple Saws Timber Sale is logging off predominantly living, green stands of mature mixed conifer forest. This logging includes the removal of dominant conifers and hardwood species, as well as significant canopy cover reduction. The science is clear that removing mature forest and replacing it with dense, even-aged, highly flammable, young vegetation and logging slash will dramatically increase fire risks in affected stands.

In 3-5 years, significant woody vegetation will grow up through the logging slash dramatically increasing fire risks. Additionally, significant alterations in habitat will create hotter, drier, more windy habitats with conditions highly conducive to fast moving, high severity fire.

In the case of the Apple Saws Timber Sale, the lands subjected to industrial logging, canopy and large tree removal, heavy ground disturbance, and the associated increase in fire risks also surround residential communities and homes in the Applegate Valley.

BLM has itself concluded that creating openings of the size proposed in the Apple Saws Timber Sale will increase fire risks for 5-20 years; however, we believe it will increase fire risks for far longer than that.

“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.” (Clean Slate EA, Fuel Analysis)

The Apple Saws Timber Sale will not make our valley more fire safe, it will regenerate dense, vegetation in areas directly adjacent to homes and residential communities, making them more at risk in the coming fire seasons.

Conclusion

The implementation of the Apple Saws Timber Sale, like the Boaz Salvage Timber Sale before it, demonstrates that BLM regularly builds mitigation measures and restrictive Project Design Features into the environmental (NEPA) analysis, and then relies upon them to make their projects appear benign or even helpful. This myth of BLM benevolence is shattered by the realities on the ground, and by the BLM’s clear refusal to enforce or implement environmental regulations that protect public resources.

The Apple Saws Timber Sale is a tragedy in the making, and we continue to work to stop it. Please contact your elected officials and the Medford District BLM

Take Action!

Tell BLM to stop the logging at the Apple Saws Timber Sale and submit the first logged units to a compliance review.

Tell BLM that community monitoring of this timber sale demonstrates that significant compliance issues have arisen in recent weeks, leading to unacceptable impacts that were not analyzed or authorized in the Ashland 2025 SOS EA, the Ashland SOS Decision Record #3 for the Apple Saws Timber Sale or the Apple Saws Full Timber Sale Prospectus.

Tell BLM that the Apple Saws Timber Sale is sacrificing local habitats, seasonal streams, scenic values, and community fire safety for public land timber production, and private industrial profits. Our public land should be managed for the greatest good, not the greatest greed!

Contact local BLM land managers

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

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

Contact your Elected Officials

Senator Ron Wyden: https://www.wyden.senate.gov/contact

541-858-5122 and 202-224-5244

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

541-601-9102 and 202-224-3753

Click on the video above to watch Luke Ruediger’s presentation about the Cedar Flat Project.

Over the holidays, the BLM released an Environmental Assessment (EA) for the Cedar Flat Project above Williams in the western portion of the Applegate Valley. Originally proposed in June 2024, the project included a significant old forest logging component targeting stands high on the face of Grayback Mountain. Immediately, residents and conservation organizations like ASA pushed back and by January of 2025, the BLM had restructured the project and withdrew numerous of the most controversial old forest logging units.

Pleased by this initial restructuring and the cancellation of these mature and old forest logging units on Grayback Mountain, ASA went out to the field again and found additional old forest logging units on the eastern flank of Holcomb Peak at the headwaters of Bear Wallow Creek, scattered throughout the West Fork Williams Creek watershed and on the summit of Little Sugarloaf Peak.

We again made our concerns clear, and BLM responded by withdrawing all Nesting and Roosting habitat for the Northern spotted owl from project units in the Environmental Assessment (EA). This meant that these units of concern shrunk still further, and more of the project became focused on the vast plantation stands found in the area.

With the EA now out for public comment, we have reviewed the appropriate BLM documents and ASA’s is now OPPOSING BLM’s Alternative D, due to the heavy logging prescriptions proposed, and is instead PROMOTING a community alternative we call, Amended Alternative B.

Below are the details of both proposals, followed by talking points and information to help provide substantive comments on the BLM’s Cedar Flat EA.

ASA is Opposing BLM’s Alternative D

The Cedar Flat Project is proposed in Late Successional Reserve (LSR) forest that was set aside to protect, maintain and enhance old forest habitat for the northern spotted owl. In these areas, the agency must not implement logging prescriptions that “preclude or delay” the development of northern spotted owl habitat for more than 20 years, or are driven by purely economic incentives.

Yet, the evidence in the Cedar Flat Project EA demonstrates that numerous mature and old forest units would be logged in a manner that damages northern spotted owl habitat, and these impacts would be most severe under the BLM’s Alternative D. This alternative proposes the heaviest logging treatments, the removal of the largest diameter trees, the most canopy removal, and the largest “group selection” clearcuts of any proposed Action Alternative in the EA.

Our analysis shows that Alternative D would not only damage northern spotted owl habitat, but it would create the most pronounced impact on local watersheds through significant new road construction and more widespread logging operations. It would also increase fire risks by removing large fire resistant trees, degrading canopy conditions, creating large canopy gaps, and making slopes hotter, drier, more windy, and more fire prone. The removal of canopy will, in turn, regenerate a dense, highly flammable layer of young, even-aged shrubs, young conifers and stump-sprouting hardwood species increasing fire risks and encouraging more intense, fast moving fires.

Alternative D allows for the removal of trees up to 36″ DBH for conifers and 24″ DBH for hardwood trees; the retention of as low as 30% canopy cover; the downgrading or removal of foraging and dispersal habitat for the northern spotted owl; group selection logging clearcuts up to 2 acres in size and on up to 25% of each unit, and for up to 5.1 miles of new road construction.

ASA is Promoting Amended Alternative B

The Amended Alternative B was created by merging the BLM’s Alternative B and C, and amending these alternatives to make them more consistent with LSR standards. This action alternative has been fully analyzed in the Cedar Flat EA, has been shown to meet the purpose and need, and is currently decision ready.

Amended Alternative B would withdraw all mature and old forest logging units and limit commercial logging treatments to relatively young plantation stands under 70 years of age, where thinning trees may have more benefit. It proposes a 24″ DBH limit for conifer removal and 10″ DBH limit for hardwood trees. It focuses non-commercial thinning adjacent to homes and communities, and builds no new roads, while requiring the retention of at least 50-60% canopy cover in Douglas fir and true fire plant communities, and as at least 40% canopy cover in ponderosa pine stands.

Additionally, our Amended Alternative B proposal would not create openings in the canopy or utilize group selection logging techniques. Instead, openings would be created through natural process and prescribed fire, allowing for a more natural, irregular patch mosaic.

Cedar Flat Project Public Comments are Due January 25, 2026

Use your voice for the forests of Williams Creek and provide substantive public comments on the Cedar Flat Project. Below are talking points to help inform your comments and support a healthy environment in the Williams Creek watershed

1. Support ASA’s Amended Alternative B which promotes plantation thinning, retains large diameter trees, retains adequate canopy cover, does not create canopy gaps, and would both enhance habitat values in heavily altered plantation stands, and reduce fire risks.
2. Oppose Alternative D and its heavy commercial logging proposal. Alternative D removes too many trees, removes too much canopy, creates too many canopy gaps, and will both impact habitat values and increase fire risks if implemented.
3. LSR forest is intended to promote, enhance and maintain northern spotted owl habitats. All northern spotted owl habitat designations should be maintained and units currently proposed in mature or old forest habitats should be canceled, including units 30-01, 12-0, the south half of 23-01, 03-03, 01-01, 21-01, 21-02, 25-01, 34-01, 34-02, & 34-03.
4. Build no new roads, temporary or permanent. This area is already suffering from extreme road density, the associated watershed impacts, and Port Orford Cedar Root Rot, which is being spread along roads throughout the planning area.
5. Promote Late Successional Reserve (LSR) values by retaining large trees over 24″ diameter, retaining canopy cover levels sufficient to maintain northern spotted owl habitat and suppress shrub/understory fuel development, and allowing logging treatments to occur only in plantation stands under 70 years of age.

Addressing threats, documenting biodiversity, public lands stewardship, and building a foundation for future protections.

In 2025 Applegate Siskiyou Alliance has been busy across the Applegate Siskiyou region opposing damaging federal land management projects, discovering rare conifer populations, and supporting a vision for the future in what sometimes feels like bleak times. While our federal government focuses on viewing federal lands as a “balance sheet” and as “assets” to liquidate, we are focused on protecting, defending, appreciating, restoring, rewilding, and connecting with our public lands.

Although the Trump administration sees our backyard forests as resources to exploit, these public lands mean a lot more to the folks who live in this region. Public lands provide clean water, wildlife, native fisheries, healthy environments, outdoor recreation opportunities, scenic beauty, and significant economic benefits as intact habitats.

Protecting public lands in the Applegate supports local farms, vineyards and tasting rooms, strong real estate values, and businesses in the valley and beyond. This includes restaurants, vacation rentals, hotels, grocery stores, and other tourism, amenities or recreation related businesses.

Together the attractions of southwest Oregon create a unique experience for visitors and residents alike, and outdoor recreation in the mountains of the Applegate is one of the region’s most cherished destinations. The Applegate has world-class paragliding, hiking, mountain biking, backpacking, bird watching, and sightseeing, which can be leveraged for economic benefit while simultaneously maintaining the intact wildlands on our public lands, and the quality of life for surrounding communities.

Public land logging is currently degrading the viewsheds, recreational trails, and water supplies of the Applegate region, impacting our quality of life, undermining our economy, increasing fire risks around our communities, and negatively impacting the lives of local residents, especially those with new clearcuts in their backyards or within view of their properties.

During these unprecedented and regressive times, a couple of things are becoming increasingly evident: 1) Currently we cannot depend on the federal government to sustainably or responsibly manage public lands. 2) The only way our local public lands will be protected and managed for public good and biological integrity, is if residents and visitors who love this region stand up to defend them.

YOU can help protect public lands by working with ASA in 2026 as we stand up as a voice for the Applegate Siskiyou!

Below are issues and projects we worked on in 2025, and some we expect to continue working on in 2026.

Addressing Threats

BLM Salvage Logging: SOS Project and other Timber Sales

The view of public lands coming out of Washington DC is one of “asset” management, which sees the publicly owned resources found on these lands as part of America’s “balance sheet.” Local land managers are being told to drastically increase timber production and to industrialize our public lands for short-term profits. This has led to a frenzy of logging proposals by the Medford District BLM in the Applegate Valley and recent timber sales implemented by the BLM have led to disastrous impacts in the Applegate River watershed.

Using blatant misinformation, BLM is selling a false narrative that nearly all Douglas fir forests below 3,500′ elevation will die within the next 3-5 years. This false logic is being used to justify the logging of nearly all living and dead standing trees, and the agency has been logging in mature, living stands with as little as 10% tree mortality.

The BLM’s narrative that all Douglas fir forests are going to die in 3-5 years actually started two years ago, so at this point, if their narrative is correct, all Douglas fir forests below 3,500′ in the Applegate will be dead within a couple years from now. This fear-based narrative is not only dishonest and hyperbolic, it requires us all to ignore the reality that the interior or many stands, north-facing slopes, east-facing slopes, and canyon bottom fir forests are surviving, and the recent flat headed fir borer outbreaks have largely subsided.

In the past two years, BLM has clearcut the slopes above Lick Gulch and the Little Applegate River in the viewshed of the Sterling Ditch Trail system in the Lickety Split Timber Sale. They have logged off the slopes of Forest Creek in the Forest Creek Salvage Timber Sale, and have devastated the face of Cinnabar Ridge on the lower end of both the Little Applegate and Upper Applegate Valleys, triggering landslides, debris flows, heavy stream sedimentation, and denuding previously green forests of nearly all commercially viable trees in the Boaz Salvage Timber Sale.

Recently, the scale of this logging has increased, with BLM approving additional timber sales under their massive SOS Project. These timber sales, which could log over 5,000 acres, are proposed across the Applegate Valley, from Thompson Creek to Sterling Creek and all in between. This includes the Thom Bone Timber Sale on Thompson Creek and Ferris Gulch, the Holcomb Hollow Timber Sale on Woodrat Mountain, above Sterling Creek and along the East Applegate Ridge Trail, and the Apple Saws Timber Sale on the eastern face of Ben Johnson Mountain above Cantrall Buckley County Park.

ASA is vigorously opposing these new projects and this new approach of logging off living, green, mature forests under the guise of “mortality salvage.” We will continue that work in 2026.

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Douglas Fir Mortality Complex

Yet another timber sale in the Applegate!

A brand new BLM logging project, apparently modeled off the SOS Project, but even larger, is targeting so-called “dead and dying” trees in the Applegate Valley. Yet, just like recent BLM timber sales, the project would also log trees that are both dead and alive across thousands of acres. This project is called the Douglas Fir Mortality Complex, and is currently subject to a BLM public comment period until January 14, 2026.

This additional timber sale area includes potential units all up and down the Little Applegate Valley, from the scenic river canyon near the Sterling Ditch Trail’s upper trailheads, to Sterling Creek, lower Yale Creek, Grouse Creek and down to the Upper Applegate Valley where units are proposed on lower Star Gulch, on the west face of Boaz Mountain, and on the slopes of Cinnabar Ridge in forests already streaked in clearcuts from the Boaz Salvage Timber Sale.

In total, approximately 8,000 acres of logging has been proposed in the eastern portions of the Applegate Valley, and as we have seen in previous “salvage” logging projects in the Applegate Valley, more tree mortality would be created in BLM timber sale units from logging than all other forms of natural mortality combined, including drought, and beetle infestations.

We will vigorously oppose this audacious BLM timber grab in 2026 and defend the forests of the Applegate from the BLM who “manages” them!

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Cedar Flat Timber Sale

ASA has been working on BLM’s Cedar Flat Timber Sale since the summer of 2024, and we have successfully advocated for the cancellation of numerous old-growth units on the flanks of Grayback Mountain, on Holcomb Peak, and on Little Sugarloaf Peak. We are excited these units have been canceled and removed from the Cedar Flat Timber Sale, and that the BLM has responded positively to community feedback and concern.

The Cedar Flat Timber Sale is being proposed in Late Successional Reserve (LSR) forest, set aside to protect old forest habitat for the northern spotted owl. We intend to advocate for the protection of mature, late successional and old-growth characteristics throughout the Cedar Flat Timber Sale area and this large LSR forest at the headwaters of Williams Creek. An Environmental Assessment (EA) and public comment period could be initiated any day now, and we expect to be working on the Cedar Flat Timber Sale into 2026.

Join us on a field trip to the Cedar Flat Timber Sale with representatives of BLM on December 18, 2025 9:oo AM to 1:00 PM. Meet at the Williams Grange to carpool.

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Documenting Diversity and Public Lands Stewardship

Subalpine Fir discovery

In the summer of 2024, ASA led the Siskiyou Crest Conifer Field Trip Series, which visited every conifer species found in the Siskiyou Crest region. This exploration of the region’s conifer diversity and backcountry included eight field trips visiting conifer forests and habitats of all sorts.

We visited lush forested canyons filled with old-growth Port Orford-cedar, dry mixed conifer forests to see a single gray pine tree near Little Grayback Mountain, and the high country of the Siskiyou Crest to see subalpine relicts like Alaska yellow-cedar at Whisky Peak, lodgepole pine at Tamarack Meadows, Engelmann spruce and subalpine fir at Mt. Ashland, and more.

In July, 2024 we visited a robust population of prostrate common juniper creeping over high elevation rock outcrops northeast of Dutchman Peak on the Siskiyou Crest. During this field trip, ASA executive director, Luke Ruediger saw a low krummholz mat (naturally shaped bonsai form) of blue-green conifer growth. It appeared to be subalpine fir and he took note of its location. This past summer, we brought a group of expert botanists to the site to verify this rare conifer population, and voucher specimens have now been submitted to the Oregon State University Herbarium and the Cal Poly Humboldt Herbarium.

The population is indeed rare, being one of only three populations of subalpine fir in the Siskiyou Crest region and the only population in the Applegate River watershed. This newly documented population of subalpine fir would most likely not have been discovered without the conifer field trip explorations sponsored by ASA in 2024, and our further work to document the population with expert botanists and herbarium submissions in 2025.

A Siskiyou Crest White Paper will be published in 2026 about subalpine fir in the Siskiyou Crest region.

Nick Wright Flat Pollinator and Native Plant Restoration

In 2025 ASA continued our long-standing efforts to restore native pollinator habitat with native plants at Nick Wright Flat, a rare valley bottom Forest Service parcel along the Applegate River. For eight years ASA has worked with the Forest Service planting and seeding native herbaceous plants in a large weedy river terrace adjacent to homes and ranches in the Upper Applegate Valley. The site contains existing native plant habitat with some important and robust native plant populations. ASA has also pulled noxious weeds, like yellow star thistle, to help control invasive plants, and we have been planting containerized native nursery stock and sowing native seeds collected in nearby habitats.

Over time native plant populations have begun taking hold in small self-sustaining populations throughout the large riverside terrace. We hope to continue planting nursery grown native plants, sowing native seeds, and restoring native plants at Nick Wright Flat in 2026.

THANK YOU to all the volunteers that have contributed to this native planting and seeding effort! We can’t do it without you!

Turtle Tales: Pond Turtle Field Trip & Online Webinar

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 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 and are monitored yearly.

Game Camera Wildlife Monitoring

ASA monitors wildlife in the Applegate Siskiyou region using game cameras to document wildlife populations, wildlife movement and wildlife behavior. Below is a series of awesome video clips of a black bear mama and cubs at a local spring and bear wallow. This video has had over 10,000 views on ASA’s facebook page and has been shared widely because it’s pretty amazing footage. Check it out, it might just make your day! We could watch it over and over again.

Building a foundation for future protections

Siskiyou Crest Coalition

ASA is proud to be an active member and fiscal sponsor for the Siskiyou Crest Coalition (SCC), a collaboration of non-profit organizations, businesses, and individuals promoting permanent habitat protections for the Siskiyou Crest region.

SCC has been working on many foundational projects in 2025, increasing our outreach capacity both in southern Oregon and northern California. We have been making presentations around the region about the wonders of the Siskiyou Crest and have been organizing some exciting projects to explore the science and the biodiversity of the Siskiyou Crest region.

In 2026 SCC will host another Siskiyou Crest Artist in Residence at Acorn Woman Lookout and will sponsor the Siskiyou Crest Moth Project.

For more information visit the Siskiyou Crest Coalition website and sign up for email updates and sign our petition for the Siskiyou Crest.

Other Notable Events

ASA led a public wildflower hike to see the fire induced super bloom in the 2024 Upper Applegate Fire footprint. Leading the hike a year later in the spring of 2025 flowers and grasses had colonized the burned soils and stump sprouting shrubs and hardwood trees had already begun their recovery.

Although we visited the area slightly early for the super bloom, the flowers were still great and we did have the pleasure of viewing the rare Gentner’s fritillary in full bloom!

In spring 2025 the Ruch Library hosted a public panel presentation about conservation in the region. Luke Ruediger from ASA was a featured panelist at the presentation.

ASA and the Siskiyou Crest Coalition also made presentations in Mt. Shasta and for the Friends of Ahart Herbarium in Chico, California. We also participated in an EcoNews Report radio interview with Tom Wheeler, Executive Director for northern California’s Environmental Protection & Information Center (EPIC).

ASA pushed back in coalition with conservation groups across the country to oppose the Trump Administration proposals to eliminate the Roadless Rule. The Roadless Rule protects millions of acres nationwide, including large unroaded swaths of intact forest and woodland across the Applegate River drainage and across the Siskiyou Crest.

We also hosted a wonderful presentation with Robert Kentta from the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians. Robert’s great-grandfather was born in the Applegate and was orphaned during the Rogue Indian Wars before being forcefully removed on the Oregon “Trail of Tears.” His presentation covered tribal history of the Applegate area. We learned a lot and were both honored and grateful to host Robert and so many of his relatives at this large public presentation at Pacifica Gardens in Williams.

2026: Storms brewing on the horizon

The Applegate Siskiyou is threatened like never before, and more than ever before we need a strong grassroots response. ASA is committed to providing a strong response on behalf of the wildlands in this spectacular, diverse, and regionally important landscape. We know the beauty and the biological value of this incredible region, and we see the storms brewing on the horizon.

Our goal is to weather the coming storm, while maintaining the biodiversity and beauty of the wildlands in the Applegate Siskiyou. We will fight for this region in 2026, defending old forests, intact habitats, wildlife, watersheds, and wildlands, while working to support a vision for the future that protects, respects, restores and rewilds the spectacular Applegate Siskiyou region.

Join us in 2026 and consider a generous year end donation!

The BLM’s latest in a slew of timber sales focused on the Applegate is called the Douglas Fir Mortality Complex Project. And there are even more logging projects on the horizon!

The Medford District BLM has been proposing increasingly large and damaging timber sales in the Applegate Valley, and the region many of us know and love is about to change forever. That is unless we organize and protect our BLM forests!

If the BLM had it their way, they would log off every living, green forest they could get their hands on, and if unchecked the series of timber sales currently proposed would log much of the mature forest remaining on BLM lands in the eastern Applegate Valley.

Currently, the BLM has either sold, or will soon auction off timber sales in portions of Sterling Creek, on the East Applegate Ridge Trail, and on the face of Woodrat Mountain in the Holcomb Hollow Timber Sale, on the eastern face of Ben Johnson Mountain in the Apple Saws Timber Sale, and in the Thompson Creek/Ferris Gulch area in the Thom Bone Timber Sales. Together these timber sales make up large portions of the massive SOS Project which constitutes around 5,000 acres of logging.

Now the BLM has proposed a new and even larger project, the Douglas Fir Mortality Complex Project which proposes to scale this logging up even further and log off vast portions of the Little Applegate Valley and Sterling Creek, as well as portions of the Upper Applegate Valley.

In total, 9,000 acres are proposed for logging in the Douglas Fir Mortality Complex Project with the vast majority proposed in the Applegate watershed. This is not only the largest individual timber sale in recent memory on BLM lands in the Applegate Valley, but it will also continue the implementation of the BLM’s so-called “salvage” logging operations, and the most damaging timber sale agenda since the heyday of old-growth logging in our region.

The impact of these logging projects would be unprecedented and would forever scar the mountains of the Applegate Valley with clearcuts and biologically sterile plantation stands, where mature, complex forests once stood. The result would be widespread deforestation across the Applegate Valley, logging off many large, fire resilient, relatively intact, mature, late successional, and even old-growth forests, as well as mature stands with recent beetle mortality. In total, the BLM is proposing approximately 13,000+ acres of “salvage” logging in the Applegate Valley, which will devastate forests and watersheds across our region.

The logging in “green” stands would permanently lock the door on northern spotted owl recovery across vast swaths of the Applegate River watershed, rendering currently suitable habitat useless to the owl by thoroughly degrading habitat conditions and leaving it unsuitable for many decades to come. The project proposes to create a long-term deficit in late successional stand characteristics by removing nearly all large diameter trees, standing snags, and large downed wood recruitment.

These same structurally simplified conditions would also impact species like the Pacific fisher, Siskiyou Mountains salamander, and great gray owls that nest, den, and/or rear young in the Applegate River watershed. The logging and yarding operations would also spread noxious weeds, damage soils, and degrade local streams and watersheds.

The net result of these logging activities would lead to increased fire risks across the eastern Applegate Valley, threatening communities, lives, and public safety. In stands with living overstory canopy, logging would remove large fire resistant trees and virtually eliminate the moderating effects of canopy. This in turn, would dramatically alter microclimate conditions by transitioning closed, relatively cool, moist habitat conditions with minimal understory growth into hotter, drier, more windy environments that are conducive to fast moving, high severity fires.

Additionally, within 1-5 years these stands would also include far more fine fuels on the forest floor where it is more accessible and volatile during fire events. This is because logging slash left behind during logging operations would mix with the dense, young, regenerating vegetation triggered by the large tree and canopy removal operations proposed throughout the Douglas Fir Mortality Complex Project. This will create an explosive fuel bed across thousands of acres.

According to BLM documentation, creating openings far smaller than the clearcuts proposed during BLM “salvage” operations would increase fire risks in both the short and long term.

“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.” (BLM Clean Slate Timber Sale EA P. 192)

The impacts of the Douglas Fir Mortality Complex Project will only be more severe because the size of the openings would multiply wind speeds and the stand drying effects. The scale of the openings would also increase the scale at which young, even-aged vegetation occurs on the landscape, allowing for more intense fire behavior, faster rates of spread, and fires that are more difficult to contain or control.

Additionally, removing dead standing snags in salvage logging operations creates all the same impacts as green tree logging, if not more, due to the heavy handed logging operations and minimal tree retention in so-called “salvage” logging sales. The plantation-like stands created after “salvage” operations both resemble and operate like clearcuts, while the yarding, logging and hauling operations create significant downstream watershed effects. Snag forest logging releases vast quantities of carbon and degrades wildlife habitats filled with important biological legacies. Snag removal also impacts biological diversity, and simplifies the structural conditions found in regenerating stands.

Both the mainstem of the Applegate River and the Little Applegate River below the logging units contain important steelhead, chinook and coho salmon spawning habitats, and the logging proposed in the BLM’s Douglas Fir Mortality Complex Project, would lead to extensive watershed, fisheries and water quality impacts. In the recent Boaz Salvage Timber Sale seasonal streams were filled in to create skid trails for unauthorized ground-based yarding, Riparian Reserves were logged, and landslides were triggered by clearcut “salvage” logging in previously living, green stands. These landslides led to debris flows that filled streams with thick mud and logging slash, and continue to do so each time it rains.

Finally, if implemented, the logging proposed would further degrade the viewsheds of the Applegate Valley, turning one of Oregon’s most beautiful valleys and one of the region’s most unique habitats into a vast expanse of clearcuts. Recent BLM “salvage” sales have logged tens of thousands of large, mature, living trees while retaining as little as 0.9 trees per acre in some units, and as little as 4.6 trees per acre on average across entire timber sales.

What does this mean for the Applegate Valley?

It means we get to live with the impacts of BLM logging everyday. It means incredible harm to the community and to our environment for generations to come. It means habitat destruction, stream sedimentation, impacts to fisheries, damage to scenic qualities, and irreplaceable harm to outdoor recreational opportunities.

For residents of the Applegate, it means losing some of what we love, as we transition from living in a beautiful, relatively intact natural environment, to an industrialized, freshly damaged landscape filled with sunbaked slopes, noxious weeds, non-native grasses, dense young growth, denuded forests, extensive stump fields, new roadbeds, log landings, the deep vertical scars of skyline yarding systems on steep slopes, and dramatically increased fire risks.

For businesses owners in the Applegate, it means damage to the viewshed surrounding your tasting rooms, vineyards, farms, bed and breakfast, vacation rentals, restaurants, farm stands, and cottage industries. It means damage to the scenic qualities for visitors and residents alike, as they drive through our region, hike or mountain bike our local trails, camp in local forests, and participate in our local economy. We all know it is the beauty of the Applegate Valley and the nearby public lands that bring residents and businesses to our region, and also keeps visitors coming back.

The BLM has proposed to wipe out the forests of the Applegate Valley as obedient servants of the Trump Administration. Claiming to be logging only “dead and dying” trees, the BLM has, in fact, been mowing down living, green forests in the Applegate River watershed for the past two years, logging off the very trees and stands of trees that survived the recent beetle mortality outbreaks.

The future of the Applegate hangs in the balance and it will take significant community-based activism and advocacy to protect our backyards. Please comment on the Douglas Fir Mortality Complex and let the BLM know how you feel about turning the beautiful Applegate Valley into an ugly, biologically sterile stump field, with enormously elevated fire risks.

Talking Points For Your Public Comment

1. The BLM is targeting extensive stands of living, viable, green forest with no sign of significant beetle mortality or infestation and is implementing clearcut salvage logging. Many of these forests are located in refugia habitats, including canyon bottoms, north-facing slopes, east-facing slopes, areas with deep soils, and in stand interiors where forest conditions moderate the impact of drought, heat, and beetle mortality events. These stands should be retained.
2. Snags and downed wood are important habitat components necessary for forest development, vegetative regeneration, and resilience. They are also some of the most important wildlife habitats in our forested landscapes and should be retained to the largest extent possible on the landscape.
3. No living trees should be removed, and only dead standing hazard trees within 100′ of regularly used BLM roads should be considered for removal. This action alone would meet public safety objectives, while maintaining more biological diversity, habitat resilience, and effective stand regeneration.
4. The logging proposed in the Douglas Fir Mortality Complex Project would damage important habitat for the threatened northern spotted owl, the Siskiyou Mountains salamander, the Pacific fisher, great gray owls, and numerous native fisheries, including the threatened coho salmon in the planning area or areas downstream of the project area.
5. The logging proposed in the Douglas Fir Mortality Complex would badly damage scenic qualities, local communities, viewsheds, and outdoor recreational activities, including Recreation Management Areas, forests along popular trails, in the viewshed of popular trails, in proposed trails systems associated with the Siskiyou Skyline Trail system, and within view of communities, residential properties, businesses, wineries, vineyards, tasting rooms, vacation rentals, event centers, etc., that thrive on the area’s scenic qualities and intact viewsheds. These would be profoundly negative impacts to this community and to recreational values in the area.
6. The cumulative impacts associated with “salvage” logging in recent years have created enormous impacts not analyzed or authorized in the BLM’s 2016 Resource Management Plan. These impacts include dramatically increased fire risks, damage to important wildlife habitats, the degradation of water quality, stream habitats, water supplies, recreation opportunities and experiences, and scenic qualities. These cumulative impacts should also preclude the agency from further “salvage” activities due to already severe affects in the Applegate River basin.
7. “Salvage” logging has no scientifically valid benefits and causes significant harm to the environment by removing biological legacies, starving future stands of snags, large living trees and large downed wood recruitment.
8. Removing snags and living trees in areas affected by natural disturbances, like beetle outbreaks, is damaging to wildife, watersheds, outdoor recreation, local communities, natural environments, and increases fire risks by generating even-aged young, highly flammable vegetation and increased logging slash with little stand complexity, heterogeneity, or biological diversity.
9. The results of “salvage” logging proposed in the Douglas Fir Mortality Complex Project will be the creation of widespread “regeneration” harvest, or clearcut logging units in dry forest habitats where these practices are not allowed in the BLM’s 2016 Resource Management Plan.
10. Ask the BLM to cancel the Douglas Fir Mortality Complex Project and work with communities on real fire risk reduction adjacent to rural communities.

Submit comments at the BLM eplanning website by following this link and clicking on “participate now”

A Flurry of BLM Timber Sales in the Applegate Valley

It has become customary in the Applegate Valley for the BLM to spoil our holiday season by putting out timber sales just before and during the holidays. This year is no exception, as the BLM has approved a series of timber sales that threaten the forests surrounding our homes and communities, including the BLM’s latest, the Thom Bone Timber Sale, that is slated to be auctioned off on December 18th.

Authorized on September 25, 2025 under the larger Ashland 2025 Strategic Operations for Safety (SOS) Environmental Assessment (EA), the Medford District BLM initially auctioned off three timber sales as part of the larger SOS Project, centered around Sterling Creek, Woodrat Mountain, Ben Johnson Mountain, along the East Applegate Ridge Trail, and in the Wellington Wildlands at the headwaters of China Gulch just one month later.

Two of these timber sales sold to the highest bidder, including the Apple Saws Timber Sale above Cantrall Buckley Park and on the face of Ben Johnson Mountain, which sold to Estremado Logging from Gold Hill, and the Holcomb Hollow Timber Sale on Woodrat Mountain and Sterling Creek, as well as along the beloved East Applegate Ridge Trail. The Holcomb Hollow Timber Sale sold to local loggers, Parker Excavation and Forestry, and together these timber sales will be impacting the forests, fire safety and viewsheds of the Ruch and Sterling Creek areas, and along the extremely popular East Applegate Ridge Trail.

As if that was not enough, on November 18, 2025 the BLM announced the approval of the Thom Bone Timber Sale, and almost immediately put this timber sale up for auction to the BLM’s timber industry partners, announcing an auction coming up on December 18, 2025.

Thom Bone Timber Sale

Watch ASA’s video about the Thom Bone Timber Sale, just click on the video above.

The Thom Bone Timber Sale consists of 530 acres of logging treatments, including 284 acres of “unit” or area “salvage” treatments and 246 acres of “linear” treatments along ridges and roads in the Thompson Creek watershed. Creating an estimated 8.9 million board feet of timber, and removing trees that have an average of 18.1″ diameter at breast height, the logging proposed in the Thom Bone Timber Sale is neither focused on dead and dying trees or small diameter fire prone trees as the BLM has previously suggested. In fact, the BLM would log 24,083 trees, while retaining only 5,139 trees, the equivalent of only 9.7 trees per acre.

The Thom Bone Timber Sale, just like the Apple Saws and Holcomb Hollow Timber Sales, proposes logging in a variety of habitats, including both stands with significant levels of beetle induced mortality and stands of living, green forests that demonstrated resilience and vigor, by surviving recent beetle mortality events.

The project calls for logging stands with as little as 10% mortality, meaning they could log forested stands where 9 out of 10 trees survived the recent droughts and beetle mortality events. The BLM wants to log the resilient survivors.

According to the BLM’s Thom Bone Timber Sale Prospectus, the agency also intends to log off 82.5% of the existing trees in the timber sale. The result would be to create far more mortality through logging than the previous beetle mortality events, leaving only a few scattered trees where a forest once stood.

Although the BLM claims in the Ashland 2025 SOS EA that the Thom Bone Timber Sale is removing only dead and dying trees, the Timber Appraisal Summary used to described the project to potential timber industry purchasers specifically lists all volume as “green” tree logging, rather than a “salvage” harvest. This same document also discloses that all 530 acres proposed for logging are being characterized as “regeneration” harvest units, meaning the existing overstory trees will be largely removed, triggering a new “cohort” or generation of young, highly flammable vegetation.

Increased Fire Risks

By removing these large trees and mature closed forest canopies with relatively cool, moist stand conditions, and replacing them with the hotter, drier conditions characteristic of BLM logging units, fire risks will dramatically increase. This transition will create higher surface temperatures, higher surface wind speeds, drier fuels, and significantly more dense, young, even-aged, and highly flammable vegetation, mixed with the logging slash of the BLM logging units.

According to BLM’s own analysis in previous timber sales, this transition from closed forest to early seral post-logging vegetation represents an increase in fire risks for extended periods of time. “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.”

Although we believe this description above significantly underestimates the amount of time these logging treatments will increase fire risks, the influence on severity, spread and resistance to control has been confirmed in numerous scientific studies conducted across the West. Regeneration or clearcut logging, as proposed by the BLM in the SOS Project has many impacts, including a dramatic increase in fire risks.

The Impact of Salvage Logging

Although large portions of these timber sales are living, green stands that survived recent drought and beetle mortality events, in other locations stands with significant tree mortality are also being targeted for logging. This would remove what scientists call biological legacies, including snags and future downed logs that are important in building forest complexity and maintaining late successional habitat conditions on both the individual stand and landscape scale.

These stands are more than just dead trees, they are habitat for innumerable species, they play a significant and important role in maintaining biodiversity, they store carbon, add structure to regenerating forests, and fall to the forest floor adding carbon to forest soils, retaining moisture on the landscape, stabilizing slopes, enhancing stream habitats, and supporting mycorrhizal associations necessary for the regeneration of conifer forests. Following logging operations all these values will be impacted and the biological legacies they depend upon will be diminished for decades to come.

Residual hardwoods and unaffected conifers within these stands also support heterogeneity, biodiversity and genetic resistance to drought and beetle mortality; however many of these same trees are proposed for logging in the BLM’s salvage timber sales. Hardwoods and non-target species like madrone, black oak, white oak, or live oak are often damaged beyond repair during logging, tree felling, and skyline yarding operations.

No matter the disturbance agent, the salvage logging of natural processes like wildfires and beetle mortality events has profoundly negative consequences for wildlife, for future wildfire behavior and effects, for soils, for watersheds, for the maintenance of biodiversity, and for the regeneration of forest habitats in wake of these natural disturbance agents. Mortality is part of the natural process; it produces biological legacies and biodiversity, and sustains numerous vital biological inputs to soils, streams, wildlife habitats and forest complexity that provide benefits for hundreds of years into the future. However, these same trees and snags are being logged for short-term industry profits and to satisfy BLM’s insatiable appetite for public land timber sales.

Impacts to Late Successional Reserve habitats

Ironically, the Thom Bone Timber Sale is located in a large block of Late Successional Reserve (LSR) forest habitat, where forests were set aside for the development of old forest characteristics and Northern spotted owl habitat. Because of this focus, both “salvage” logging and “regeneration” harvest are prohibited outside rather narrow exemptions surrounding public safety.

Regeneration logging and “salvage” logging as proposed in these timber sales will preclude the development of late successional forest habitat characteristics for more than 20 years, and the heavy handed LSR logging units proposed in both the Apple Saws and Thom Bone Timber Sales are direct violations of the BLM’s 2016 Resource Management Plan. These treatments have more to do with the BLM’s unending desire to increase timber production, than the maintenance, enhancement and long-term recruitment of mature and old forest habitats as the LSR designation intends.

Economic and Scenic Impacts

It is the beauty of this place that defines it, and in turn supports our local economy. Local residents are filled with pride and dedication to this spectacular place, while visitors are often blown away by the diversity of the landscape, its stunning scenery, and its wide variety of outdoor recreational opportunities.

Known for its hiking, mountain biking, and wineries, the area is also great for backpacking, boating, camping, swimming, paragliding, trail running, botanizing, bird watching, recreational backcountry driving,and other outdoor activities.

The Applegate’s spectacular quality of life is directly tied to the environment of the surrounding public lands and the recreational opportunities that attract visitors, residents and small businesses that support the community and local economy, which often depend on an intact natural environment in the region to thrive. For example, public lands and public streams keep cold water pouring into the Applegate River during the summer months, and contribute irrigation for our local farms, vineyards, ranches and homesteads. Additionally, the beautiful, largely unspoiled scenery attracts hikers, mountain bikers, wine aficionados, residents, tourists and others to our region.

The timber sales currently proposed by the BLM would damage scenic values throughout large portions of the Applegate Valley, spoiling the area’s spectacular viewshed, unique natural beauty, intact environments, and outdoor recreational activities. BLM lands surround many of the homes, vineyards, farms, ranches and communities here in the Applegate and people often come to the region specifically to enjoy the scenery it provides and the natural beauty of the place.

Imagine the mountains of Sterling Creek, above Cantrall Buckley Park, on Woodrat Mountain, and Ben Johnson Mountain, along the East Applegate Ridge Trail, and all around Ruch scarred with clearcuts, stripped of greenery, and converted into regenerating stump fields. That is the impact of BLM “salvage” logging in our valley and the cumulative impact of the SOS Project.

Together the Thom Bone, Apple Saws, and Holcomb Hollow Timber Sales would leave the lasting scars of logging and greed across the mountains of the Applegate, degrading viewsheds, damaging habitats, impacting water quality in nearby streams, spreading non-native and noxious weed species, and threatening many of our neighbors with significantly increased fire risks adjacent to homes in the Applegate Valley. The Trump Administration has promised an increase in logging on federal lands, and in the Applegate Valley, this is what that increase looks like: barren slopes, landslides, increased fire risks and significant impacts to the scenic character of our landscape.

Please help Applegate Siskiyou Alliance oppose the SOS Project and the numerous timber sales the BLM has approved under it.

1) Make a donation

Donate to ASA to support our work challenging these timber sales, and our work to SAVE APPLEGATE FORESTS!

https://donate.applegatesiskiyou.org/donate

2) Help organize.

Help us organize our community against increased BLM logging, and work with us to oppose the renewed push for clearcut logging across the Applegate Valley in the SOS Project.

3) Get educated on this issues.

Start out by reading this article titled “Removing dead trees will not save us from fast moving fires”

4) Contact your elected officials and ask them to oppose these sales.

https://www.wyden.senate.gov/contact

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

5) Contact the BLM

Demand that the Holcomb Hollow, Apple Saws, Chopper Styx and Thom Bone Timber Sales be withdrawn due to unacceptable impacts to wildlife, to Late Successional Reserve forests, to Riparian Reserves, to the spectacular East Applegate Ridge Trail and Wellington Wildlands areas, and to our community’s fire safety. Both the logging of mature, living stands and the logging of dead standing trees will degrade habitat values, encourage young, highly flammable tree and shrub development, increase fire risks, damage scenic values and impact our community and economy.

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

6) Go out and see the timber sales for yourself.

-Drive the Cantrall and Ben Johnson BLM access roads above Cantrall Buckley Park. The paved road will lead through numerous proposed logging units in the living, green forest on BLM lands.

-Walk the East Applegate Ridge Trail. From the upper trailhead walk about halfway out the trail to the rock outcrops overlooking Ruch. Shortly after entering the trees you will walk through proposed logging units. Additional units are located on the slopes across from the trail as you drop down into Highway 238, and on the north slope of the ridge on the upper portion of the lower road segment. Units are mostly living stands with some patches of recent beetle mortality.

-Drive the Woodrat Mountain access road west from the summit on Sterling Creek Road. You will enter proposed logging units as soon as you reach BLM lands. These units are living, green forests adjacent to rural residential property on Sterling Creek Road.

-Drive up the west face of Woodrat Mountain by turning east off Highway 238 on Bishop Creek Road. Turn right onto the Squires Peak Road leading to the lower Woodrat Mountain Paragliding sites. This road will pass through units with significant mortality. Turn right onto road 38-2-23.1 and follow it through proposed units with a mixture of dead standing snags and living, green trees.

Watch this video to see the tragic results of the BLM’s Boaz Timber Sale.

The Medford District BLM approved and sold the Boaz Salvage Timber Sale in the Applegate Valley in southwest Oregon in 2024. The Mineral Creek Logging company logged the timber sale throughout 2024 and 2025 with devastating effects to the forests, water quality, wildlife habitat, and fire resistance of the area. Beautiful, green, living forests in the Upper Applegate and Little Applegate watersheds were logged, and many of them were clearcut.

High priority habitat for the endemic Siskiyou Mountains salamander was logged, where salamanders have been documented to live. Logged trees were dragged along the ground in long yarding corridors that created scars across the landscape that greatly damaged Siskiyou Mountains salamander habitat, hydrology and native plant habitat.

Seasonal streams were filled in with sediment and used as logging corridors. A massive landslide was triggered by wet weather clearcut logging, filling in the stream channel with mud and debris.

Huge amounts of logging slash have been left throughout the area, greatly increasing fuel loads in the area and putting the homes below at increased risk of wildfire.

The massive amounts of ground disturbance have already increased the amount of invasive and noxious weeds in the area, degrading pollinator habitat by displacing native plants with non-native plants.

Habitat for northern spotted owls and Pacific fisher in the area has been negatively impacted. Logging scars are now visible from many areas of the Upper Applegate and Little Applegate, marring the beauty of the valley that relies on recreation and tourism for economic vitality.

The rural, Applegate-based conservation organization, Applegate Siskiyou Alliance (ASA), was one of the only environmental organizations to fight this egregious timber sale, but were unsuccessful in the battle to save these important Applegate forests. At the same time, the fight continues as the BLM has sold more timber sales under its current SOS Project, and ASA hopes to succeed in stopping some of these new timber sales. We need your support to SAVE APPLEGATE FORESTS.

Donate to Applegate Siskiyou Alliance today by clicking on the button below.