Brown’s peony (Paeonia brownii) growing in the Little Grayback Roadless Area in the foothills of the Siskiyou Crest. The Siskiyou Chapter of the North American Rock Garden Society is hosting a presentation by Luke Ruediger about the rock garden plants of the Siskiyou Crest. Luke’s talk will focus on flowering plants in the high mountains of the Siskiyou Crest and the Applegate foothills. Tuesday, November 11, 2014  7pm Location UCC/Lidgate Hall at 1801 E. Jackson in Medford (just north of Hedrick Middle School).

Bigelow Lakes in the Grayback Range Luke Ruediger will give a presentation about the Siskiyou Crest as it extends from the Coast Range of northern California to the southern Cascade Mountains near the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument. Renowned for its biodiversity and the amazing connectivity corridor  this unusual east-west tending mountain range provides, the region also offers miles of backcountry trails and wildland habitats. This lecture is part of The Siskiyou Field Institute’s  Friday Evening Free Lecture Series. Friday, November 14, 2014 6:30 pm Location: Deer Creek Center in Selma, OR For more information, visit thesfi.org or call 541-597-8530

Linderman Lake in the South Warner Wilderness in Modoc County, California         The Shaw Historical Library — an affiliate of the Oregon Institute of Technology in Klamath Falls, Oregon — is a bioregional archive of human and natural history for the “Land of the Lakes,” a large bioregion encompassing south central Oregon, southeastern Oregon, northeastern California, and northwestern Nevada. Published annually, this year’s Journal of the Shaw Historical Library commemorates the passage of the 1964 Wilderness Act for its 50th anniversary. Titled, Why Wilderness…50 Years of Wilderness in the Land of the Lakes, the journal — more of a book, really — explores wilderness areas of the region with personal accounts, essays, maps, and beautiful color photography. Why Wilderness… features essays from local ecologist and professor emeritus of biology at SOU, Frank Lang; executive director of Oregon Wild, Sean...

Red Butte, the namesake of the Red Buttes Wilderness, is only nominally protected. Unfortunately, the entire roadless south slope of the mountain was precluded from the 1984 wilderness designation.           September 3, 2014 marks the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act. Lyndon B. Johnson signed this landmark conservation bill into law in 1964, creating the National Wilderness Preservation System (NWPS). Initially the NWPS set aside 9.1 million acres of wilderness; however, with the support of the American public, Congress has added over 100 million acres over the past fifty years.           The Wilderness Act of 1964 states, “In order to assure that an increasing population, accompanied by expanding settlement and growing mechanization, does not occupy and modify all areas within the United States and its possessions, leaving no lands designated for preservation and...

The forested portions of Trillium Mountain in the Dakubetede Roadless Area are being proposed for logging in the Nedsbar Timber Sale. This photo was taken from the popular Sterling Ditch Trail where Trillium Mountain dominates the skyline for many miles. Commercial logging units in the Dakubetede Roadless Area should be canceled and the area protected for its scenic, recreational and ecological values. The Medford District BLM has recently proposed a large timber sale in the Applegate Valley of southwestern Oregon. This is the result of recent litigation won by Swanson-Superior Lumber based in Glendale, Oregon. The Medford District BLM has been given a court order, currently under appeal, to drastically increase timber production for corporate logging interests at the expense of regional wildlands, communities and wildlife. In response to the litigation the agency proposed the Nedsbar Timber Sale, encompassing 3,400 acres, or 5 square miles of proposed units spread across...