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...

These large, old, fire-affected trees growing in roadless forest on the Siskiyou Crest would be clearcut if the ironically named, Seiad Horse Risk Reduction Project were to be implemented. This stand is part of a roughly 2,000-acre clearcut proposed by the Klamath National Forest near Copper Butte and Cook and Green Pass. This past summer the Abney Fire, part of the Miller Complex, burned throughout the Upper Applegate watershed, over the Siskiyou Crest and into the headwaters of Seiad Creek and Horse Creek, tributaries of the Klamath River. As the fire spread out of the Applegate watershed and up to the Siskiyou Crest, Klamath National Forest (KNF) fire crews lit backburns — under high winds and low humidity — that literally backfired and increased fire severity, sending the fire over firelines on the Pacific Crest Trail and into the Seiad Creek watershed. The fire then proceeded to burn through large plantations created during post-fire logging operations following...

The Middle Fork of the Applegate River and Cook and Green Creek with the Siskiyou Crest rising above. The Middle Fork of the Applegate River is a spectacular canyon of old, fire-adapted forest, tall peaks and steep, rocky ridges. It is the most iconic wilderness landscape remaining in the Applegate Watershed and one of the most spectacular landscapes on the Siskiyou Crest. The Middle Fork itself is a clear mountain stream, becoming a river, as it winds through its rocky canyon.  Middle Fork of the Applegate River The Middle Fork is the source of our beloved Applegate River and one of the wildest landscapes remaining in the watershed. Although portions of the Middle Fork are accessible by road, numerous of its tributary streams, including Whisky Creek, Cook and Green Creek, and the Butte Fork of the Applegate River run into wilderness quality landscapes, such as the Red Buttes Wilderness Area, the Kangaroo Inventoried Roadless Area, the Stricklin Butte...

Bark beetle mortality in the Ferris Gulch watershed. This stand was thinned in the early 1990s in the Ferris Lane Timber Sale, supposedly to increase resistance to bark beetle mortality; however, the area became the center of the 2016 bark beetle outbreak. Applegate Neighborhood Network (ANN) and Klamath Forest Alliance (KFA) have just published a detailed report examining the ecology of flatheaded fir borers, the ecological effects of the 2016 bark beetle outbreak in the Applegate Valley, and the connection between BLM logging practices and concentrated bark beetle mortality in the Applegate Valley.  In the spring and summer of 2016, a large-scale bark beetle outbreak swept through the Applegate Valley, triggered by extreme drought and warm winter temperatures. The low-elevation foothills of the Applegate Valley were particularly affected, causing mortality in Douglas fir trees throughout the watershed. In some areas mortality was very selective, in other locations...