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...

Open, fire-adapted mixed conifer forest in unit 15-30 of the Nedsbar Timber Sale. The unit is located within the Buncom Roadless Area, a portion of the proposed Dakubetede Primitive Area. Logging this unit would impact habitat and ecological values while increasing fuel risks. The unit should be canceled and eliminated from the sale.  The Nedsbar Timber Sale is a large BLM timber sale located in the Upper and Little Applegate Valleys. The planning area includes some of the last roadless terrain in the foothills of the Applegate Valley. It is also located in an important connectivity corridor the leads from the Rogue Valley, near the towns of Talent and Ashland, Oregon, across the Applegate Valley to the Siskiyou Crest, and into the wilderness complex of the Marble, Salmon, and Trinity Alps of Northern California. Environmentalists and local citizens in the area have begun working to either stop or significantly alter the project as it is currently proposed. ...

             Applegate Dam and Reservoir           The tale of the proposed hydropower generation facility on the Applegate Dam is one of corporate mergers, joint ventures and acquisitions, and less about actually generating electricity.              Symbiotics LLC originally obtained the license and permit from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in 2009, then later Ag Hydro LLC took over the license. Symbiotics and Ag Hydro are now both subsidiaries of Riverbank Power Corporation. Based in Toronto, Canada, Riverbank Power is a developer, constructor and operator of hydropower generation facilities in North and South America, with offices in Toronto, Oregon, Utah, Idaho and Lima, Peru.             After all the efforts of the federal...

View of the fire mosaic from the Happy Camp Fire in the Grider Creek Roadless Area. Numerous salvage logging units proposed in the Westside Fire Recvoery Project can be seen in this photo. All salvage logging in the Grider Creek watershed should be canceled as it is an important wildlife connectivity corridor. The wildfires this past summer on the Klamath River burned in the Marble Mountains Wilderness, Russian Wilderness, Salmon River, Lower Scott River, and along the Klamath River between Happy Camp and Hamburg. In all, 215,371 acres burned in the Mid-Klamath watershed, creating a mosaic of mixed severity fire. The fires burned in a characteristic pattern, including roughly two-thirds low to very low severity fire. Many areas burned in the understory, clearing back fuel beneath a canopy of trees; some areas burned in a mixed pattern, thinning the overstory, while others sustained canopy fire, creating snag fields of fire-scorched timber. The result was the...