The Medford District BLM has approved the Douglas Fir Mortality Complex Environmental Assessment and has started releasing both decision records and setting timber sale auction dates for the newest Applegate logging projects. Identified as the Lone Wolf Timber Sale, the project proposes to log off 32 units and 747 acres. It would also build 2.4 miles of new permanent road in watersheds that already suffer both from excessive logging and high-density road networks.
The Lone Wolf Timber Sale contains a high concentration of timber sale units above Griffin Lane at the headwaters of Sterling Creek on Dutch Gulch, Grub Gulch and on Deming Gulch. In total, the BLM expects to log approximately 5.6 million board feet of timber and almost 23,000 merchantable trees. The Lone Wolf Timber Sale is also a virtual give away to the timber industry with the minimum bid being set at a little over $269,000. The public will be losing huge sums of money in the planning, design, layout and administration of this timber sale.
In short, this public forest give away would permanently alter and degrade the forests, watershed, and environment of the Applegate Valley by sacrificing our forests for timber industry profits, and doing so at the public’s expense.
Like the current SOS Project, the Lone Wolf Timber Sale proposes more environmentally devastating “salvage” logging in stands of living, green trees, and in stands with significant recent beetle mortality. In both habitat types, the result is often to retain only a handful of trees per acre and virtually no canopy cover. Logging both green trees and dead standing snags has significant impacts to both the health of our local forests and the quality of habitat on the landscape for the northern spotted owl, the and the Pacific fisher.
The Lone Wolf Timber Sale would also log Riparian Reserves, build new roads, build new log landings, create extensive yarding impacts, and add sediment to local streams. Recent BLM salvage logging projects have triggered large landslides and debris flows that filled seasonal streams with mud, debris and sediment. They have also logged off Riparian Reserves, bulldozed seasonal streams, completely filled in stream channels, and converted Riparian Reserves into skid trails. These impacts are severe, long lasting, totally avoidable, and have become routine on our BLM lands.
The Lone Wolf Timber Sale also proposes to log off healthy, functional forest habitats, including LSR forests, mature and late successional stands, and stands that sustained minimal to no significant mortality during the previous drought and beetle mortality events. By logging the survivors, the BLM is permanently degrading the forests of the future, and is proposing to log off the majority of forested habitats remaining in the Sterling Creek watershed.
The project is a continuation of the BLM’s massive deforestation agenda in the Applegate Valley, with the agency devastating forest environments throughout the region. The Medford District BLM has unleashed a series of extreme logging projects that have converted previously forested landscapes into non-native annual grasslands or simplified early seral habitats packed with young, dense, even-aged vegetation, and extremely high fire risks.
How does logging increase fire hazards?
The photo on the left was taken in 2016 just after implementation of the Sterling Sweeper Timber Sale on BLM lands above Sterling Creek. Before timber sale implementation, this was a closed stand dominated by Douglas fir and relatively clear in the understory due to canopy shading. The photo on the right shows even-aged young tree and shrub regeneration and fuel development ten years later in 2026. Also take note of the mortality and continued canopy loss following timber sale implementation. The big pine retained at the center of the photo in 2016 has died and fallen over by 2026. At the same time, most of the Douglas fir retained during the Sterling Sweeper Timber Sale have also died, leaving a young, even-aged stand with a few remnant mature trees. This is deforestation and forest degradation that leads to an increase in fire risks and a loss of habitat, it is not forest restoration or fuel reduction.
The BLM is currently attempting to log off as much mature, late successional, and old-growth forest as they they can during the Trump era, under permissive regulatory environments, with as little public involvement or accountability as possible, and, like much of the Trump Administration’s tactics, by using a false narrative filled with misinformation, disinformation and outright lies.
No longer serving the public interest, the BLM is logging off our forests in the Applegate Valley, threatening our communities with increased fire risks, threatening our watersheds and fisheries with increased sedimentation, destroying our viewsheds, hiking trails, and recreation areas, and impacting our local economy by turning once beautiful landscapes into stumpfields and ugly logging scars.
Who wants to come to local vineyards to sip wine and look out over damaged environments and devastated viewsheds? Who wants to hike local trails through logging scars and look out over denuded forest habitats? What does deforestation do to our property values, rural economy, and quality of life here in the Applegate Valley?
How does this logging affect stream flows, fisheries, wildlife, native plant communities, the health of our river, the beauty of our environment, the resilience of our forests, and the pride people feel of living in this spectacular place?
The impact to our region is profoundly negative both to local communities and the natural environment. This Trump era logging will change the Applegate River watershed forever, offering future generations a less vibrant, less beautiful, less abundant environment than we enjoy today.
Butchers, not stewards of the land, the Medford District BLM will take our timber, sell it to the highest bidder (which in this case is not all that high), ravage our mountainsides, and leave our watersheds, forests, and scenic character permanently degraded, heavily impacted, disrespected, and defiled by those we have entrusted to manage our public lands.
This rush to log off our public lands is motivated by the greed of industry, the greed and indifference of the Trump Administration and the policies of the Department of Interior, led by Secretary of Interior Doug Burgum, who has identified our public lands as the “balance sheet” of the country. On a local level the BLM has begun that liquidation of assets, by logging off the mature and late successional forest throughout our region.
Collectively, the public land timber sales being implemented and proposed in the Applegate Valley are the biggest threats we have seen on our public lands for many decades. Currently, the powers that be, both on a local and national level have little to no concern for the health of these lands, or our communities.
The logging proposed in the Lone Wolf Timber Sale will not benefit the people, the wildlife, the forests, or the watersheds of the Applegate River watershed. In fact, it will have the opposite affect, sending the profits off to timber companies and investors, while leaving our communities to live with the mess.
The Medford District BLM works everyday to destroy the forests we love with new roads and industrial logging scars. In turn ASA works everyday to oppose the timber sale that threaten the land we call home.
Please join ASA as we work to protect these forests! The future of our region depends on protecting our forests today!
Take Action!
Tell Senators Wyden and Merkley that you want them to help save the forests of the Applegate! Tell them to push back on the Trump Administration’s public lands logging agenda, and to stop the Lone Wolf Timber Sale!
You can send an email to Senator Wyden at:
https://www.wyden.senate.gov/contact/email-ron
(Click “Share Your Opinion”)
You can send an email to Senator Merkley at: