Month: January 2015

Old-growth Douglas fir trees in unit 28-10C This week a group of Little Applegate residents joined me for a day of monitoring of the Nedsbar Timber Sale. We drove up Little Applegate Road and up BLM logging roads to the western flank of Bald Mountain. Our goal was to survey units 28-10A, 28-10B, 28-10C, and 28-11B. The units sit in a cluster and border one another making a roughly 65-acre timber harvest area. Together they also support a contiguous swath of old, complex forest. Much of the 65 acres has never been logged — except a narrow strip along the road that was selectively logged many years ago — and the forest still functions as refugia for old-growth dependent species such as the Pacific fisher and northern spotted owl. In fact, the area lies within close proximity to an “owl core,” designated to protect a documented spotted owl nesting site. Much of the area was identified in the Bald Lick Timber Sale — which also proposed to cut this area, but did...

Local residents looking at canopy closure in Unit 28-22B, a regeneration harvest unit. Today seventeen adults, two young children and one dog braved the cold of the north-facing slopes above the Little Applegate Valley to walk a forest just above private land at the junction of Yale Creek and the Little Applegate River. This forest contains old-growth and late seral forests, however, the BLM has included the area as part of the Nedsbar Timber Sale. The area we walked today included three units: 28-22A, a thinning unit, 28-22B, a regeneration unit and 28-22C, another thinning unit. All three units would be accessed by a proposed new road on the ridgeline above the area. The proposed new road construction and log landings would facilitate cable yarding from the ridge above. Log trucks would then haul the trees from this old-growth stand past many of these residents’ homes. Pointing out the fire resiliency and healthy stand structure of Unit 28-22B All local...

Boaz Mountain in the Boaz Mountain Roadless Area. The area is a mixture of chaparral, white oak woodland and conifer forest. The forested slopes at the center of this photo are unit 34-30 in the Nedsbar Timber Sale and would be reduced to 40% canopy closure.  Boaz Mountain rises from the banks of the Applegate River near Eastside Road. The mountain dominates the eastern horizon from Star Ranger Station to McKee Bridge on Upper Applegate Road. The slopes of the mountain are roadless on three sides, providing a natural backdrop to many Upper Applegate Valley residences. The Boaz Mountain Roadless Area provides connectivity between the Little Applegate and Upper Applegate watersheds. It also provides connectivity between the Little Greyback Roadless Area and Buncom Roadless Area on the ridgeline dividing the Little Applegate and Upper Applegate Valleys. Units 33-30 and 34-30 lie within the Boaz Mountain Roadless Area on the mountain’s western slope. 34-30...

Unit 36-20 consists of mostly closed canopy, mid-seral forest that provides habitat for the northern spotted owl; the unit is adjacent to an owl nesting site. Unit 36-20 is located on a west facing slope in the Left Fork of Lick Gulch. The unit is also located within the Trillium Mountain portion of the Dakubetede Roadless Area. The unit begins high on the ridge and drops into the Left Fork of Lick Gulch. Roughly one mile of new road construction is proposed under the BLM’s preferred alternative (Alternative 4) to access unit 36-20. The proposed new road construction would be located within approximately 100′ of the Left Fork of Lick Gulch and would severely impact riparian function, hydrology, and sediment delivery regimes. A significant portion of the old, currently closed road would also have to be reconstructed  to provide logging access. The reconstruction of this road would also create high levels of sediment and erosion into Lick Gulch. In fact,...

The good folks from Speak for the Trees and Birch Creek Arts & Ecology Center, Little Applegate Valley based non-profits, teamed up with the Klamath Forest Alliance and the Siskiyou Crest Blog to survey units last weekend. Speak for the Trees board members are pictured here in Nedsbar Timber Sale unit 17-12 near Chelsea Spring up Rush Creek, a tributary of the Little Applegate River. The unit is proposed by the BLM as “group selection 40%,” meaning the stand will be thinned to 40% canopy coverage by removing groupings of trees. The prescription calls for creating half-acre clearings that should not exceed 25% of the stand. The large Douglas fir tree in the photo was marked for removal in the BLM’s previous Bald Lick Timber Sale, which did not sell and has now been reworked into the current Nedsbar Timber Sale.    Pictured here is Chelsea Spring in the Rush Creek watershed. Chelsea Spring is surrounded by the proposed...