Author: Luke Ruediger

The upper portions of Dillon Creek burned at largely low severity during the Eclipse Complex Fire, moderated by recent fire footprints and atmospheric inversion layers.  The Klamath Siskiyou Fire Reports: (Click on these links to view) 2017 Salmon August Fire Report 2017 Eclipse Fire Report  The summer of 2017 was an epic fire season. The combination of widespread lightning storms and limited fire suppression resources led to significant fires throughout the region, especially in remote areas. In the remote backcountry of the Klamath River, fires burned for many months. The lack of resources and minimal homes at risk allowed fire crews to “loose herd” the fires into the Wilderness where they burned largely without suppression efforts. The result was a series of vast Wilderness fires with positive fire effects and a characteristic mosaic of mixed-severity fire. The Island Fire began deep in the Marble Mountains Wilderness Area on June 25, 2017...

This beautiful, old, fire-adapted forest at the headwaters of Rocky Gulch above North Applegate Road was proposed for logging in the Savage Murph Timber Sale. The unit has been canceled, along with the over one mile of new road construction proposed to provide logging access. For the last year, Klamath Forest Alliance (KFA) has been working with local conservation partners to oppose the Pickett West Timber Sale, a massive timber project proposed by the Grants Pass BLM. The original Pickett West Timber Sale proposed to log thousands of acres of old forest on the Wild & Scenic Rogue River, in the mountains above Selma, Oregon and in the Applegate Valley around Wilderville, Murphy and North Applegate. KFA has been opposing this sale, by conducting extensive field monitoring of proposed timber sale units and submitting extensive public comments, appeals and administrative protests. We worked very closely with local, grassroots, conservation partners, Applegate...

The Chetco River near Redwood Bar The Chetco River is one of the wildest, most spectacular and most diverse rivers in the West. In fact, 66% of the Chetco River watershed flows through remote wilderness and roadless backcountry. The fisheries and water quality of the Chetco River are fed by the countless wild streams flowing through the Kalmiopsis Wilderness and the surrounding wildlands. The fisheries of the Chetco River are among the most important on the Oregon Coast and they are currently threatened by post-fire logging on both private and federal land.  In contrast to much of the river basin, the lower Chetco River near Brookings, Oregon is far from pristine. In many locations, private timber interests and federal land managers have scalped whole mountainsides, and in some cases, whole watersheds of old-growth timber. The result has been high road densities, vast plantation forests, and simplified ecosystems highly susceptible to stand-replacing fire. The lower...

The Chetco Bar Fire mosaic from an aerial flyover. Credit: InciWeb This summer the Chetco Bar Fire burned through some of the wildest, most remote country remaining in the Siskiyou Mountains. The fire began with a lightning strike around June 24-25, but was not reported until July 12th, 2017 when a commercial airplane pilot noticed the fire in the depths of the Kalmiopsis Wilderness. The fire burned until the fall rains in mid to late October. The Chetco Bar Fire burned 191,197 acres, from the heart of the Kalmiopsis Wilderness to the coastal mountains outside Brookings, Oregon. The initial ignition was located at the heart of the Kalmiopsis Wilderness, an extremely rugged and inaccessible knot of unusually diverse mountains and deep, rocky canyons of unusually clear mountain streams. At first, the fire burned slow and cool in the Chetco River canyon in a fortress of rocky ridgelines, deep forests, chaparral, and ghostly snag forests from the massive 2002 Biscuit...

This unit in the Pickett West Timber Sale above Selma, Oregon was canceled due to the advocacy of KFA, The Siskiyou Crest Blog and other conservation partners in southwestern Oregon. Throughout the past year the Siskiyou Crest Blog and the Klamath Forest Alliance (KFA) have been working on numerous major campaigns to protect, restore, and rewild the Siskiyou Mountains. We are proud of our achievements in 2017 and look forward to doing even more in 2018. Please consider supporting our work. Pickett West Timber Sale The BLM’s Grants Pass Resource Area proposed the Pickett West Timber Sale in late 2016. The project proposed extensive old-growth forest logging, with nearly half the timber sale involving units between 150 and 240 years old. The BLM also proposed new road construction, riparian logging and severe impacts to the proposed Applegate Ridge Trail. The massive timber sale became a major focus of our work in 2017. The Pickett West Timber Sale...