Join us to take a stand to protect Fiddler Mountain

shelley, 02.02.2005 15:03

The Forest Service is currently logging old-growth legacy trees on Squaw Mountain as part of the Briggs Cedar logging sale. The Forest Service has recently painted over orange "leave tree" markings on many of the largest trees in the area with blue "cut" paint. As a result, the Briggs Cedar logging sale suddenly includes much more old-growth legacy tree logging than when it was originally planned. Logging is proceeding despite wet weather conditions that may increase erosion and the threat of spreading the lethal Port-Orford-cedar root disease.

A court ordered injunction that prevented logging in seven Biscuit timber sales has been lifted. As a result, sensitive old-growth reserves are now imminently threatened by the Fiddler, Steed, Berry, Wafer, Hobson, Lazy, and Briggs Six logging sales. The Forest Service is trying to saw through these sales before a court case on the legality of the logging can be heard by a judge on March 22nd. If logging proceeds, it could be completed before the court decides whether the logging is legal or not.

The Fiddler Mountain and Babyfoot Lake area, a beautiful place graced by native, unroaded forests, rare flowers, scenic views and wonderful hiking trails, is a prime example. It is also one of the areas most at risk of imminent logging. Near the Kalmiopsis Wilderness in southwestern Oregon's Siskiyou Wild Rivers area, Fiddler Mountain is loved by people locally and across the region.

Regeneration on Fiddler Mountain

Rally to Protect the Wild Siskiyou
Saturday, February 5th
10:00 AM
Selma Center in Selma, Oregon
A huge rally with people from across the region to demonstrate in favor of protecting Fiddler Mountain and the Babyfoot Lake area and against extreme post-fire logging. We will travel together to Fiddler Mountain to bear witness and make plans for future action. Bring signs and banners to make your voice heard! Bring friends & family and spread the word!

If logging begins at the Fiddler Mountain / Babyfoot lake area, a vigil and information sharing site will be located at the botanical area on the Eight Dollar Road (about a mile up Forest Road 4201 just before the first cattle guard) starting at noon the day logging begins.

PS: Ashlanders will carpool from the Shop n Kart lot at 8:30am on Saturday

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For the Record: 02.02.2005 - 16:18 The trees to which you refer as facing iminent logging are dead. DEAD, DEAD, DEAD! They've been dead for several YEARS now. It might be more appropriate to say that, after a lenghty delay, we might finally see a small percentage of the currently excessive fuel load (in the form of snags) removed from the landscape. Also, two courts have denied your request to halt salvage activities on the Biscuit, citing a lack of merit regarding your claims that restoring the Biscuit is illegal. You say it's illegal ... the courts say it's not. Gee, who should I trust? REMINDER: OVER 90% OF THE HIGH-SEVERITY BURN AREAS WITHING THE BISCUIT WILL NEVER BE TOUCHED!!! WELL OVER 90%!!! Moon Muffin> Viva Snags! 03.02.2005 - 09:50 High Grading: Biscuit Style Dead trees are great! Its about time that large snags in the wildlands got their due respect. The benefits they provide for wildlife, soils and hydrology are truly impressive. As for "fuel loading" isn't it interesting that the FIBER PLANTATIONS burned with the highest stand replacing intensity of all the age types. Yet we here no hue and cry from the trolls to stop turning old-growth forests into fiber plantations... Further, isn't it interesting that evidently only the largest diameter trees in the burn are marked for logging. Strange how trees less than 16" diameter evidently don't contribute to "fuel loading" or consititute "hazards." Indeed, Biscuit has been an exercise in ignoring the public and catering to the timber industry. Thinktivist and Curious should be dancing in their cubicles. Anyone ever heard of Silver Creek Timber Co. before Biscuit? You know, the folks who logged snags IN the Kalmiopsis Wilderness last year? Interesting how they came out of nowhere to buy up most of the Biscuit LSR volume to pass along to RFP and Superior. Here's a shout out to Orwell: "Log the big, leave the small, ignore the public, serve the industry, fire is evil, the Forest Service loves biodiversity, black is white, war is peace." I have been to the Mountain Top, and I see Christmas Trees, in beautiful even corn rows, and they go on forever, and ever and ever... Hal Salwaser> moderation 03.02.2005 - 11:27 > Dead trees are great! Yes, dead trees ARE great ... in moderation, that is. Unfortunately, there's nothing moderate about the quantity of dead material (including large dead snags) currently on the Biscuit. By very conservative estimates, 58% of the area burned had at least 75% of the forest canopy killed. 220,900 acres of high severity burn! And on most of that 58%, ALL of the trees were killed. The Biscuit wasn't a friendly, fuels reducing fire. Also, biological breakdown of organic material is NOT the primary soil-forming process in Klamath eco-region forests. The climate just isn't quite wet or warm enough for this to be the case, and historically frequent fires have served to consume excess dead material as well as organic material in the 'A' soil horizon. That's why most forest soils in this area have a very thin (or non-existant) A horizon. REMEMBER: Over 95% of the Biscuit will NEVER be salvaged! > As for "fuel loading" isn't it interesting that the FIBER PLANTATIONS > burned with the highest stand replacing intensity of all the age types. Not really. It doesn't take much heat to kill a small tree. > Indeed, Biscuit has been an exercise in ignoring the public and catering > to the timber industry. Thinktivist and Curious should be dancing in > their cubicles. One more time, Mr. Smarty Pants. I'm not agency, and I'm not industry. I just have an interest in forest ecology and environmental issues. The general public has much to gain from proactive restoration following catasrophic wildfires such as the Biscuit. > Anyone ever heard of Silver Creek Timber Co. before Biscuit? You know, > the folks who logged snags IN the Kalmiopsis Wilderness last year? > Interesting how they came out of nowhere to buy up most of the Biscuit > LSR volume to pass along to RFP and Superior. So it's a conspiracy? So someone made a mistake. I'm sure the Forest Service handed them down a hefty fine. I don't really see what this has to do with the matter at hand (whether to restore burnt landscapes or not). > I have been to the Mountain Top, and I see Christmas Trees, in beautiful > even corn rows, and they go on forever, and ever and ever... The way that federal agencies go about reforesting harvested or burned areas has changed dramatically since the 50's; however, even those areas that were planted with 800 douglas fir seedlings to the acre have grown into forests that are home to a great diversity of plant and animal life. Here's few pictures of "even-aged monoculture fiber plantations" for you ... Moon Muffin> Christmas Trees 03.02.2005 - 11:38 Merry Christmas! This forest was once comprised entirely of "christmas trees" ... then they grew big. Moon Muffin> Structure 03.02.2005 - 11:39 Snag Even this 1950's clear-cut has structure. Today, the BLM and FS leave AT LEAST 8 trees per acre (and usually many more) when they design a harvest. Moon Muffin> Sugar Pine 03.02.2005 - 11:42 She Must be Lost How'd this sugar pine make her way into this monoculture? Moon Muffin> Alder in a Seep 03.02.2005 - 11:46 Riparian When this forest was originally harvested, riparian buffers were unheard of. The alder that have propogated here are painted orange, meaning that are to be left when this plantation is thinned. Moon Muffin> Just another ugly clearcut ... 03.02.2005 - 11:54 Mossy Log ... 30 years later. Moon Muffin> These poor bears ... 03.02.2005 - 11:59 Bear Cub ... are filling up on native berries growing in a recently thinned "monoculture plantation." Moon Muffin> Those are coastal sites 04.02.2005 - 03:45 Big ferns, lush moss, and tall, straight Douglas fir boles - those plantations must be west of the Illinois River. Reminds me of the Siuslaw, in fact. Curry County maybe? What's the plantation thinning project? Apples and oranges. Plantations do not establish in the climate and soils of the interior Klamath Mountains as easily as they do in the Coast Range. Fuel loads? You can't be serious! Biscuit sales lop and scatter slash, which creates an immediate short-term spike in fire hazard. 1000-hour fuels like big logs may smolder for a long time, even produce lots of smoke when they burn, but they do not fuel the intense fire behavior seen at Biscuit. That's the smaller stuff like twigs and canopy foliage. Any plantations created at Fiddler or Squaw or up Silver Creek will not survive to maturity if the agencies' descriptions of local fire regimes are correct. They will burn and they will die. Then hardwoods will sprout, and we will fight over herbicides and new planting. Humidity> why yes they are 04.02.2005 - 11:57 Young Clearcut Yes, those are coastal forests. Coos River basin. I'm not sure what the name of the thinning project is. > Apples and oranges. Plantations do not establish in the climate and soils > of the interior Klamath Mountains as easily as they do in the Coast Range. I didn't intend those pictures to serve as an example of Klamath forests specifically, but rather to dispell the myth of the 'even-aged monoculture fiber plantation.' If a monoculture were to establish anywhere, it would be in the lush growing conditions of the coast range. In spite of the fact that these sites (in the above photos) were planted with a high density of only one tree species, and then treated with herbicides, they are anything but monocultures today. Currently, the FS and BLM plant a variety of tree species at a lower initial density, and they don't use herbicides to supress native plants. The fact that trees do not establish as easily in the Klamath would only make it harder to establish an even-aged or monoculture forest. When sites with harsh growing conditions are planted with one species, they tend to loose their heterogeneity very quickly as other plant species move in and compete for limited resources. In regards to fuel loading ... It's true that extreme fire behavior is dependant on the presence of fine fuels, but your assertion that 1000-hour fuels only smolder leads me to believe that you've never actually seen a wildfire in action. If 1000-hour fuels are dry enough (as was the case in the summer of 2002) and fine fuels are sufficient to ignite them (which is pretty much the case in any forest environment), they will burn very hot for long periods of time. In such a scenario, large logs will ABSOLUTELY contribute to extreme fire behavior, will ABSOLUTELY complicate controll efforts, and will ABSOLUTELY result in further long-term degradation of forest and aquatic environments. Here's a picture of a 1980's era clearcut in the Klamath (Little Applegate area). Given it's age, this plantation was likely treated with herbicides ... yet it's anything but an even-aged monoculture. Moon Muffin> A Plantation Near Biscuit 04.02.2005 - 15:38 Plantation Near Briggs Just for kicks, and then I'm done, this is an actual plantation adjacent to the Biscuit highgrading currently taking place at Briggs. Notice that its all D-fir, its super dense, and its in pretty little corn-rows. Perfect for pulp-farming, useless for anything else. While the timber-thug photos from the coast range are real pretty, they don't reflect what the USFS and BLM pulp-farmers are doing to your native forests on a daily basis. Next time someone tells you the agencies give a damn about biodiversity take them up to the Upper East Kelsey units at Kelsey Whisky. You have to pass about 5 replantation failures to get there, yet they keep on clearcutting like it ain't no thang... Timber Pimp> Snapshots of a Dynamic Process 04.02.2005 - 16:28 > While the timber-thug photos from the coast range are real pretty, they > don't reflect what the USFS and BLM pulp-farmers are doing to your native > forests on a daily basis. If by saying that, you mean that the BLM and FS no longer clear-cut as they did up untill the early 90's, then you're absolutely correct. ALL of the stands in the photos that I have posted once consisted of "pretty little corn-rows" of douglas fir. In a short ammount of time (30-60 years), they have developed into very diverse forests. ONCE MORE: ALL OF THE PICTURES THAT I HAVE POSTED IN THIS THREAD ARE PAST CLEARCUTS THAT WERE PLANTED WITH A SINGLE TREE SPECIES. I admit that those rows aren't the most 'natural' looking thing in the forest ... but do you really think that the forest critters give a damn whether the trees that they use are in rows or not? Regardless, the row-like appearance will go away after that stand is thinned and underplanted in another 30 or so years, and as more structure developes in the stand over time. Also, the BLM and FS no longer plant in corn-rows, mainly due to concerns from people like you and me that it looks unnatural. Forestry is a process, not a result. You can't just take a snapshot of an area right after it was harvested and say, "Here, this is forestry." You have to view the results of forestry as an ongoing process. Moon Muffin> Monoculture & Unicorns 07.02.2005 - 16:21 You have used most of the tired clichés…monoculture, pulp farming, timber thugs, highgrading, and timber pimps. Some how you forgot to use timber baron or my favorite "the last best"...fill in the blank. All the clichés and not a lot of substance. Once again it’s all in the framing (cropping) of the picture. You freeze your vision in both space and time. Tsk tsk tsk. The picture begs more questions than answers. First if you could travel back in time to the turn of the last century with an airplane and were to fall out of that airplane in Western Oregon, chances are you would land in a Douglas Fir tree. It was and is the most widely occurring species of tree in western Oregon. It would stand to reason that, there would be more of this species planted than any other. Monoculture is a myth. Even your example of corn rows has a Sugar Pine in the foreground. The Sugar Pine does look like it has been stressed and from the looks of all the snags, is probably a survivor from fire. These stressed trees generally have a tendency to produce massive amounts of seed cones. That is a built in mechanism that insures survival, which precludes the possibility of monoculture. As for mans impact, more often than not these "off species" are the ones that are left in the highest numbers. That's why Moonies Sugar Pine is so much bigger than the surrounding fir trees. It's older. By the way, I can’t believe he mentioned the Sugar Pine and ignores the two large cedars that are also marked in orange (leave trees all). It is understandable given your contempt for ….well it would appear everything, that you wouldn’t consider the fact that these legacy trees would be left on purpose to seed in where mans direct effort left off. South West Oregon does not have a robust pulp market. The nearest pulp mill is either in Coos Bay which has converted to a recycled fiber product or Springfield. These mills can get all the raw materials they need from residuals of sawmills. NOBODY GROWS PULP PLANTATIONS IN SOUTHERN OREGON. Douglas fir does not lend itself to pulp production. Although it does have some properties that are favorable to blending with a recycle paper it is not what you would grow if you wanted to maximize pulp production. Douglas fir is used in Kraft paper ie. Paper bags and cardboard boxes. These are low end products. If you wanted to maximize pulp production, Red Alder, Hemlock, and True Firs are much cheaper to manufacture into high end paper products. Those young Douglas Firs if allowed to grow and if allowed to be harvested would be way too valuable as either saw or veneer logs to be wasted on pulp. Pulp wood for pulpwood sake has little or no value in SW Oregon. Get a new mantra. Given your obvious level of hostility, you might try Om. It can be very therapeutic. Curious> Legacy trees? 08.02.2005 - 00:42 Dear Shelly, Legacy trees? Legacy trees? Do you mean the dead snags? Oh, I get it. The white needles towering over the tick brush remind the awestruck viewer of the now extinct forest that used to be there. Is that what you mean? Or is your meaning deeper? The jagged spires of decay reaching to the clouds seem to say, “Strike me, strike me, oh Lightning.” The congealed pitch lightly dusted with insect frass, the bituminous pile of bark at the base, the excelsior shavings of the pileated woodpecker, the aromatic haze of hydrocarbons in the August heat, all seem to whisper, “Ignite me, ignite me.” They await, even lust for, the re-ascendance of the God of Fire and his blast furnace breath, the Purifier, the Sterilizer, the Wasteland Maker, the Sire of Ticks. Is that what you mean? Is that the legacy your wish to leave, personally? The Kalmiopsis Forest is destroyed, thanks to you and your ilk. Please stand aside while responsible adults attempt to resurrect it. Still Grieving> Flat-Headed Wood Borers Unite! 08.02.2005 - 18:57 Flat-Headed Wood Borers Unite! The only good tree is a standing-dead Legacy Tree! Burn Woodsy, Burn! Tick Brush Forever! Tick Bob>