Unit 27-20 in the Nedsbar Timber Sale, the destination of the upcoming public hike sponsored by Klamath Forest Alliance and the Siskiyou Crest Blog. The Klamath Forest Alliance and the Siskiyou Crest Blog will be organizing public hikes into the Nedsbar Timber Sale this spring. We plan to lead one hike per month into wild forests proposed for logging in the Nedsbar Timber Sale.  The first hike will be on February 28, 2015. We will be meeting at 10:00AM at the intersection of Yale Creek Road and Little Applegate Road, near the long row of mailboxes.  The hike will explore a wild portion of the Dakubetede Roadless Area; we will follow the route of a proposed new road the BLM intends to construct in lower Lick Gulch to facilitate logging in the Nedsbar Timber Sale. The proposed road winds through beautiful oak woodland across currently unroaded slopes to the ridgeline dividing Lick Gulch from the Little Applegate River.  The proposed road would...

Nedsbar Community Monitoring Program volunteers in unit 28-10A on the western face of Bald Mountain. This unit, and numerous other proposed logging units in the Nedsbar Timber Sale that support old, fire-resilient forests, would be dropped in the Community Alternative. Throughout the last few months, the Siskiyou Crest Blog, Klamath Forest Alliance, and local Applegate Valley non-profits and community organizations have organized the Nedsbar Community Monitoring Program (NCMP). The goal of this effort was to walk and evaluate all 93 units in the proposed Nedsbar Timber Sale, to not only educate the public, but also to inform the proposed Community Alternative to the Nedsbar Timber Sale. The Community Alternative has been developed by a committed group of local Applegate Valley residents —known as the Community Alternative Working Group—to address what many in the community see as the timber sale’s numerous design flaws and unbalanced prescriptions. The Community...

Complex, fire-resilient, late-seral forest in unit 25-22 of the Nedsbar Timber Sale. The unit lies on a north-facing slope directly above the Little Applegate River. Recently I hiked through a beautiful portion of the proposed Nedsbar Timber Sale. I began on a clear January morning, drove up Little Applegate Canyon and parked at the old bridge abutments where the Little Applegate Campground was once located. Below is an account of my hike: I take off my shoes and ford the icy river, reaching a flat, forested river bar on the Little Applegate River’s southern bank. Once across the river I find myself amongst large, old fir trees in spacious, closed-canopy stands. Reaching the slope I climb quickly toward unit 25-22 in the Nedsbar Timber Sale. Entering the unit, the stand is at first dense with understory fir and scattered overstory trees, but to the west the stand opens into fire-resilient groves of old pine and fir. It is clear that the unit needs fuel reduction and...

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...