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...

The western portion of unit 27-20 is an open stand of large, old Douglas fir trees. The stand supports high quality wildlife habitat, including habitat for the northern spotted owl and Pacific fisher. The stand also supports naturally fire resilient stand conditions. Unit 27-20 The BLM’s Nedsbar Timber Sale identifies unit 27-20 as a “structural retention ponderosa pine 40%” unit, meaning the unit will be thinned to roughly 40% canopy coverage. The BLM has also proposed roughly one mile of new road construction to provide access to both unit 27-20 and nearby unit 26-20. Both units, and the entire length of proposed new road construction, are within the Dakubetede Roadless Area. The Dakubetede Roadless Area is one of the largest and most intact areas in the foothills of the eastern Siskiyou Mountains, and it is also one of the most biologically rich areas in the Applegate Valley. The Dakubetede Roadless Area lies within a vital connectivity...

Pacific fisher (Pekania pennanti)  Photo courtesy of The Center for Biological Diversity Happy New Year!  If you are a person who makes New Year’s resolutions, please consider making a resolution for 2015 to push for the fisher to be listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. Unlike some other wild places, the Pacific fisher was never extirpated from the Klamath-Siskiyou Mountains. We may have lost grizzlies, wolves, wolverines, and condors, to name a few, but we are very lucky to live in a place that still has native genetic stock of fisher. Living at the base of the Siskiyou Crest it is not uncommon for me to see fishers as I explore the canyon where I live. Many other rural folks living in the Siskiyous have reported fisher sightings to me as well: Thompson Creek, Carberry Creek, Elliott Creek, Little Applegate River, Yale Creek, Greyback Mountain, Mt. Ashland. These little predators are elusive and it always feels special to catch...

Unit 14-30 in the Nedsbar Timber Sale. The unit is located in the Buncom Roadless Area and supports open stands of Douglas fir with old-growth characteristics. Structural diversity is high in the unit and fuel loads generally quite low. The unit should be dropped from consideration in the Nedsbar Timber Sale to protect habitat values. Local Applegate residents, The Siskiyou Crest Blog, The Klamath Forest Alliance, and the good folks at KS Wild have begun monitoring Nedsbar Timber Sale units in both the Upper and Little Applegate Valleys. In our recent timber sale monitoring we have found units that are healthy, fire adapted and in no need of manual thinning whatsoever. We have also found units that are overly dense, fire suppressed stands that would benefit from a restoration based thinning approach. In our initial forays we have found numerous units which contain old-growth characteristics. Some of these units have been influenced by relatively recent wildfire,...

Unit 28-22B in the Nedsbar Timber Sale. The unit supports open, fire-adapted late seral habitat conditions due to the influence of recent, low severity fire. The stand sustained understory fire in 1987 and remains a healthy example of late seral, old-growth forest in the foothills of the Applegate Valley. The unit needs no treatment whatsoever to reduce fuels or address forest health concerns and should be canceled.            The Nedsbar Timber Sale is located in the Upper and Little Applegate Valleys on public lands administered by the Medford District BLM. The BLM has proposed a large, landscape scale timber sale focused solely on producing timber for private industry. The proposed timber sale includes over 100 units spread across thousands of acres of public land, including the Dakubetede Roadless Area, the proposed Dakubetede Primitive Area, and an important connectivity corridor connecting the foothills of the...