The Cedar Flat Timber Sale was first proposed in June 2024 by the Medford District BLM, Grants Pass Resource Area. The timber sale was located in the upper Williams Creek watershed in Late Successional Reserve (LSR) forest set aside specifically to protect, maintain and recruit habitat for the northern spotted owl, support habitat connectivity, and recover owl populations that are currently heading towards extinction. The project immediately raised concern at ASA and we went out to take a look.
Surveying the proposed units we found numerous mature and old-growth forests targeted for industrial logging in this old forest reserve, and after publicizing our findings, pressing the Medford District BLM, and opposing the project, the agency suddenly withdrew the Cedar Flat Timber Sale in the fall of 2024; however, they also announced that the project would reevaluated and reconsidered in early 2025.
Recently the Cedar Flat Timber Sale showed up in the Medford District BLM’s 2025 Timber Sale Plan as an estimated 300-acre timber sale producing approximately four million board feet of timber, and sure enough, just a few days ago, the agency announced the newest iteration of the Cedar Flat Timber Sale and have once again released a scoping notice and initial information on the proposed timber sale in the upper Williams Creek watershed.
This new Cedar Flat timber sale is proposed in the same geographic area as the last one, including units at the headwaters of Glade Fork, on Rock Creek, West Fork Williams Creek, Lone Creek, Tree Branch Creek, Goodwin Creek, Bear Wallow Creek, and small portions of Mungers Creek. The project proposes 2,588 acres of “proposed treatment areas,” including commercial timber sale units in both LSR forest and Riparian Reserves set aside to protect water quality, fisheries habitat, and habitat connectivity along streams and stream corridors.
Like the original Cedar Flat Timber Sale, this iteration includes heavy commercial logging and “group selection” logging, a form of staggered clearcut logging that removes whole stands of mature forest and regenerates young, even-aged shrubs, hardwoods and small conifer trees with little habitat value, no biological legacies, and dramatically increased fire risks. Logging would remove trees up to 40″ diameter in moist sites and 36″ diameter in dry sites, create group selection openings up to 4 acres in size, and reduce canopy cover to as low as 30%. Some alternatives in the proposal would also build new roads, doing further damage to the area’s last intact forest habitats.
Although we remain concerned by the number of mature and old-growth logging units still proposed in the Cedar Flat Timber Sale, we are also pleased to report that our collective advocacy led to numerous controversial mature and old-growth logging units being canceled, and some progress has already been made. This progress includes the cancellation of units in old-growth forests below Sugarloaf Peak at the headwaters of Rock Creek and along the Grayback Mountain Trail, at the headwaters of Glade Creek, and at the headwaters of West Fork Williams Creek.
Still included in the timber sale are mature and old growth logging units at the headwaters of Bear Wallow Creek below Holocomb Peak, at the headwaters of West Fork Williams Creek, and on Little Sugarloaf Peak that must be opposed. These units propose logging some of the last old forests remaining in the West Fork Williams Creek watershed that are the foundation for the area’s LSR forest habitat.
The BLM is accepting public comment on this project until February 20, 2025. Please speak up for the forests of Williams Creek and comment on the Cedar Flat Forest Management Project and Timber Sale. We need you to speak up for these old forests and help us stop the mature and old forest logging in the Cedar Flat Timber Sale.
Talking Points:
-Ask the BLM to withdraw all mature, primary, late successional, and old-growth forest logging from the Cedar Flat Timber Sale, including the old forests proposed for logging at the headwaters of Bear Wallow Creek, West Fork Williams Creek, and on Little Sugarloaf Peak.
-Ask BLM to maintain all northern spotted owl habitat designations, trees over 20″ diameter, canopy coverage of 60% or more and stands over 70 years of age that remain on the landscape.
-Ask BLM to build no new logging roads in the Cedar Flat Timber Sale. Road density is already extreme in the planning area. Roads in this area are spreading Port Orford-cedar Root Rot and damaging water quality.
-Ask BLM to analyze the impact of proposed logging activities on carbon storage, climate resilience, mature and old forest habitat, northern spotted owl habitats, Pacific fisher habitats, and other rare, unique or sensitive species in the upcoming EA.
-Tell BLM that all action alternatives must protect the mature, primary, late successional and old-growth habitats remaining in the planning area and work with young stands to recruit and restore LSR function and complex forest habitats.
-Ask BLM to analyze the impact of proposed logging on water quality, watershed values, and anadromous fisheries. The Williams Creek watershed is one of the most important low gradient streams and coho salmon watersheds in the Applegate River watershed. In addition, the Applegate River watershed contains only 12% of the Rogue River basin, but supports 1/3 of the coho salmon spawning in the Rogue River watershed. All action alternatives must protect threatened populations of coho salmon and the water quality on which they rely.
-Tell the BLM that the intensity of logging proposed will impact watershed values, fisheries, and old forest habitats, as well as late successional species such as the northern spotted owl, Pacific fisher, red tree vole, Humboldt marten and others.
-Ask BLM not to set back northern spotted owl recovery objectives by precluding or delaying northern spotted owl habitat development for more than 20 years in LSR forest habitat, as the current proposal does.
Comments will be accepted until Feburary 20, 2025.
For more information on this project and to provide comments follow this link: https://eplanning.blm.gov/eplanning-ui/project/2036044/510