KLAMATH NATIONAL FOREST PROPOSES MASSIVE POST-FIRE LOGGING PROJECT IN 2014 FIRES

View of the fire mosaic from the Happy Camp Fire in the Grider Creek Roadless Area. Numerous salvage logging units proposed in the Westside Fire Recvoery Project can be seen in this photo. All salvage logging in the Grider Creek watershed should be canceled as it is an important wildlife connectivity corridor.

The wildfires this past summer on the Klamath River burned in the Marble Mountains Wilderness, Russian Wilderness, Salmon River, Lower Scott River, and along the Klamath River between Happy Camp and Hamburg. In all, 215,371 acres burned in the Mid-Klamath watershed, creating a mosaic of mixed severity fire. The fires burned in a characteristic pattern, including roughly two-thirds low to very low severity fire. Many areas burned in the understory, clearing back fuel beneath a canopy of trees; some areas burned in a mixed pattern, thinning the overstory, while others sustained canopy fire, creating snag fields of fire-scorched timber. The result was the landscape-scale restoration of fire in a region with one of the west’s most intact fire regimes.


Despite the regenerative nature of this summer’s fires, the Klamath National Forest has proposed a massive salvage logging project — the Westside Fire Recovery Project (WFRP) — that would log over 40,000 acres of important post-fire habitat on public lands. The treatments proposed would log both green, live trees and fire killed trees. According to the agency’s scoping notice, it is anticipated “that the majority of trees within salvage units will be harvested,” including trees that survived the fire but the agency has decided are likely to die.


In my initial field research I have found numerous WFRP units that include high elevation species adapted to high to moderate severity fire, and stands that sustained less than 50% mortality. In many of the units I have visited, many large, green trees have survived the fires of 2014, but will they survive the logging frenzy to follow? 

Unit 511-Proposed for salvage logging in high elevation mountain hemlock (Tsuga mertensiana) forest adjacent to the Lake Mountain Botanical Area and the world’s northern most stands of foxtail pine (Pinus balfouriana). The unit burned at low to moderate severity.

Unit 508- Partially burned red fir (Abies magnifica) forest at over 6000′ proposed for salvage logging

Unit 508- A very large unit on the south face of Tom Martin Peak. Much of the unit burned at low to moderate severity, including this interesting transition zone between serpentine woodland and high elevation forest.

Unit 535- This unit in the Grider Creek watershed and adjacent to the Grider Roadless Area contains many live, old-growth trees of fire adapted species such as jeffery pine and incense cedar. Much of the unit burned at moderate to low severity and natural fire effects helped to maintain an open, fire adapted condition.