Liquidating the assets of the Applegate Valley on BLM lands

In some ways, my column in the Applegater has become a quarterly update on BLM logging projects either proposed or implemented in our watershed, along with their mounting environmental impacts. Trust me, this is not by design. I would rather be writing about wildflowers, rare conifer species, biodiversity, old-growth forests, hiking trails, and the importance of the Klamath-Siskiyou bioregion. 

Yet, the region I have loved my entire life is more threatened than it has been in many decades as the BLM attempts to log off our natural heritage, our viewsheds, our watersheds, our beautiful forests, and our favorite recreation areas.

Forests on the eastern face of Ben Johnson Mountain in the Apple Saws Timber Sale, and on the western face of Woodrat Mountain in the Holcomb Hollow Timber Sale, are being heavily impacted by the BLM’s Strategic Operations for Safety (SOS) logging project. This project has permanently damaged the skyline of Ruch, as it has logged green forests and left deep yarding scars on the slopes above Cantrall Buckley Park. Similar impacts are occurring on the face of Woodrat Mountain near the area’s world-famous paragliding sites. Further operations are slated for the community's beloved East Applegate Ridge Trail and areas above Sterling Creek.

Yet, the SOS Project is unfortunately just the beginning, as the agency has already proposed another 8,000 acres of similar logging in the Douglas Fir Mortality Complex logging project. This project would log virtually all remaining mature forests, along with trees affected by recent beetle mortality, on Sterling Creek, in the Little Applegate River canyon, on lower Yale Creek, Grouse Creek, and in the Upper Applegate Valley above East Side Road and McKee Bridge.

Additionally, the BLM is proposing to revise the current Resource Management Plans for western Oregon and intends to quadruple timber production and increase clear-cut logging to levels not seen since the 1980s. Nationally, the BLM has also proposed two new Categorical Exclusions (CEs) that, together, would rubber-stamp virtually any logging project they choose to implement without environmental analysis, public comment, or public disclosure of environmental impacts.

These CEs would allow the BLM to authorize logging projects on up to 5,000 acres, or 7.8 square miles at a time. They would also allow the agency to build up to five miles of new permanent road and up to 12.5 miles of “temporary” road per project. The BLM could then use these Categorical Exclusions an unlimited number of times, and on an unlimited number of acres, logging living, green trees and forests, as well as forests affected by fire, beetle, or drought-induced mortality.

Under a CE, the agency claims its project will have “no significant impacts on the human environment,” which would require a more detailed analysis and public involvement process. Yet recent projects implemented in the Applegate Valley under the current CE for salvage logging, which limits logging to 250 acres and 0.5 miles of new “temporary” road per project, have created significant, long-lasting impacts. These include clear-cut logging scars, extensive living-tree removal, new road construction, the implementation of unauthorized yarding techniques, and the triggering of major landslides. The CE also included the conversion of whole Riparian Reserve Zones into skid trails where stream corridors were bulldozed, filled with debris, and denuded of all vegetation. The agency is now proposing projects 20 times the size of these recent, highly damaging Applegate Valley timber sales, and it proposes doing so with less transparency, less accountability, and less public involvement than at any time in recent history.

During the confirmation hearings for Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgham, he clarified his views on our public lands as financial “assets,” referring to the resources on public lands as “America’s balance sheet.”

Clearly, the agency views the forests of the Applegate as part of that balance sheet, and the Medford District BLM has begun logging at a scale and intensity not seen in decades, quickly liquidating the “assets” of our region. This increase in industrial logging has real impacts on the environment, on fire risks, and on economies like ours in the Applegate. Those impacts are not being adequately considered by high-level BLM bureaucrats in D.C. or local land managers at the Medford District BLM.

Luke Ruediger

luke@applegatesiskiyou.org

Photo 1: Applegate residents on an Applegate Siskiyou Alliance field trip to the BLM's Apple Saws Timber Sale above Cantrall-Buckley Park.