The closure posted on China Gulch restricts OHV use in the area to reduce disturbance to wildlife, reduce risk of forest fire, and minimize soil erosion. The Applegate Valley OHV Monitoring Project is a grassroots public lands monitoring project focused on documenting the impact of OHV use in the Siskiyou Mountains. We are a project of the Applegate Neighborhood Network (ANN), Klamath Forest Alliance and the Siskiyou Crest Blog. Last summer we published a detailed Monitoring Report documenting OHV impacts throughout the Applegate River watershed. We monitored both Forest Service and BLM lands, documenting unauthorized, user-created routes that were impacting riparian areas, botanical resources, wildlife, roadless areas, monarch butterfly habitat and other important resource values.  One of the most egregious OHV issues in the Applegate Valley was documented to have been expanding out from the proposed, but still unapproved, John’s Peak OHV Emphasis Area. The...

The view west from the summit of Observation Peak Recently my wife and I took a backpacking trip across the eastern Siskiyou Crest for summer solstice and a spectacular full moon. This was the first full moon to land on summer solstice since 1948, and it was perhaps the only time in my lifetime that I will experience the longest summer day and a big, round, full moon. From the summit of Observation Peak, in a windswept clearing of paintbrush, buckwheat and low, creeping sage, we watched the sun sink to the west, into the rugged blue ridges of the Siskiyou Mountains, casting long shadows into the deep canyons below. Simultaneously, the low and massive full moon rose to the east over the broad ridges of the southern Cascade Mountains, reflecting moonlight on the snow-capped summit of Mt. Shasta — white glaciers were bathed in the light of the full moon and the final fleeting streaks of summer solstice sunlight. The rare and endemic Jaynes Canyon Buckwheat (Eriogonum...

Far from catastrophic, the Buckskin Fire burned at predominately low severity in the Baldface Creek watershed, a wild tributary of the North Fork Smith River in the South Kalmiopsis Roadless Area.          Each summer fires burn in the wildlands of the Klamath-Siskiyou Mountains and across the west. Each summer long-term impacts to old-growth forests, native plant communities, roadless areas, wilderness areas, endangered species habitat and salmon bearing streams are sustained. Often fire suppression activities leave more lasting impacts then the fires themselves. These activities take place with no environmental oversight, analysis, or public input. Fire suppression actions are the least regulated federal land management activity and include very little opportunity for public oversight, analysis or input.  Fire suppression is also big business; hundreds of millions of public dollars are spent every summer fighting forest...

Josh Weber and Luke Ruediger hiking the Applegate Ridge Trail. This last week Josh Weber and I, board members of the Applegate Trails Association (ATA), hiked across the ridges of the Applegate Valley from Ashland, Oregon to Grants Pass, Oregon. We traced the route of the proposed Jack-Ash Trail and the Applegate Ridge Trail. The mostly trail-less journey took us through wild forest, oak woodland, grassy ridgetop balds, chaparral, and through numerous small and unroaded sections of BLM land in the Applegate watershed. These trails provide a glimpse into the beauty and connectivity these unroaded wildlands provide. The further we hiked, the more clear the vision became. Together these trails will provide an incentive to protect these small, unroaded wildlands that link together, creating a broad corridor across the Applegate/Rogue River Divide. Each wildland flows into the next, creating a spectacular low elevation, long distance trail system that could benefit the many...

A view from the beautiful upland prairie near the summit of Wellington Butte in the Wellington Lands With Wilderness Characteristics (LWC).  The BLM recently released its Proposed Resource Managment Plan (PRMP). The plan is a template for public land management throughout BLM lands in Western Oregon. Like its former incarnation, the WOPR, the PRMP proposes to drastically increase timber production. The increased logging would include an emphasis on clear-cut logging in the moist forests of the Coast Range and Cascade Mountains, and heavy thinning in dry forests in the Siskiyous and southwestern Oregon. Heavily influenced by the timber industry and Association for O&C Counties, the PRMP will maximize timber production throughout the state, while significantly impacting other important natural resources and local communities. In southern Oregon’s Applegate Valley the BLM is proposing to manage large portions of the dry, eastern portions of the Applegate...