So. Oregon Old Growth to be Sold Off Sept. 29th!

Friends of Southern Oregon?s forests are asking you to join us for a festive rally on Sept 29th outside the BLM office in Medford while they sell off vast areas of our public forests to the highest bidder inside.

The Medford BLM (Bureau of Land Management) is moving forward with their largest sale of old growth forests in years. They are auctioning off thousands of acres of low elevation public forests across the Applegate and Illinois Valleys, the Cascade Foothills, as well as forests around Glendale and the Rogue River- for pennies on the dollar.

Carpools will be leaving from Evo?s Coffee Lounge in Ashland and the Ruch Country Store in Ruch at 7:45 am SHARP! It is important to be at the BLM office at 3040 Biddle Road by 8:30 am- in time to greet the bidders as they arrive.

Residents of the Applegate and Illinois Valleys will be joined by supporters from Eugene, Ashland and across southern Oregon for a peaceful, theatrical rally that will include our own mock-auction where we will be selling off other pieces of America?s heritage at dirt cheap prices!

This is a rare chance to spend just a couple of hours to show your opposition to old growth logging while the decision makers and logging companies are gathered together behind closed doors spending taxpayer money to subsidize the destruction of our last native forests.

This is an important and historic moment for the future of Oregon?s remaining intact forests- please come out and bring a friend to have your voice heard!

Organizations sponsoring this event include the Little Applegate Neighborhood Network, the Oxygen Collective, KS Wild, Cascadia Wildlands Project, TELAV, Sisters of the Siskiyou and Orville and Mary Camp.

Contact Laurel@o2collective.org to find ways to contribute and get involved or to find out more about the threats to our forests and efforts to save them, visit www.kswild.org and www.o2collective.org.

More information on individual timber sales below:

MEDFORD BLM 2005 OLD-GROWTH TIMBER BONANZA

?The projects I've been out on, they are leaving all the big trees and going in for the smaller ones - that is standard practice out there now."
BLM Director Kathleen Clarke misleading the Medford Mail Tribune on August 27, 2002.

While the Bush-appointed BLM National Director would like you to believe that the BLM doesn?t log old-growth anymore, the timber planners in the Medford BLM have been busy targeting thousands of acres ancient forests in Southwest Oregon for logging.

The Medford BLM has planned a number of controversial old-growth timber sales in Southern Oregon despite requests from numerous communities to spare their watersheds and ancient forests from destruction. Citizens from the Applegate Valley, Ashland, Cave Junction, O?Brien, Glendale, Grants Pass, Medford, Takilma, Williams, and Wolf Creek have all asked the BLM to save our remaining ancient forests and focus logging and restoration on the second-growth tree plantations that dominate the landscape.

All of these requests have fallen on deaf ears. Simply put, the BLM does not care what you think about their old-growth logging program.

While the BLM?s own inventory indicates that out of 2.6 million acres of Federal lands within the Rogue Basin, 770,000 acres consist of dense young second growth fiber farms. Instead of targeting our last ancient forests, the BLM should repair the damage that it has already done.

Rather than bring communities together to restore the forest, the BLM has proposed the following timber sales that will log our ancient forests and divide our communities. The BLM has responded to community requests for protection of these forests, and for more time to comment on these timber sales, by claiming that they intend to offer all of these timber sales to the timber industry by the end of the 2005 fiscal year and that environmental impacts and community concerns will not alter their plans in the slightest.

Please stand up with your neighbors to demand that the BLM provide sustainable jobs in the woods repairing the consequences of their past logging and fire suppression policies. The old-growth that still stands belongs to all of us, not just the BLM?s friends in the timber industry.

Medford BLM Timber Sales for the Fall of 2005:

Bald Lick Timber Sale
Applegate Watershed, Ashland Resource Area.
77 logging units across 2,126 acres totaling 13.8 million board feet.
Requires 4.5 miles of new road construction.
The BLM refuses to agree to a diameter limit to save big trees, and also insists on building new logging roads into currently roadless forests.

China Keeler Timber Sale
Applegate Watershed, Ashland Resource Area.
33 logging units across 1,082 acres totaling 6.1 million board feet.
Requires 0.7 miles of new road construction.
The BLM refuses to protect large trees in Spotted Owl habitat in this forest.

Deadman?s Palm Timber Sale
Applegate Watershed, Ashland Resource Area.
22 logging units across 1,283 acres totaling 5.6 million board feet.
The BLM refused to survey for rare old-growth species before authorizing logging in this delicate watershed.

Camp Cur Timber Sale
Central Big Butte and Lost Creek Watersheds, Butte Falls Resource Area.
39 logging units across 800 acres totaling 6.2 million board feet.
This timber sale calls for ?regenerating? (clearcutting) older forests and removing forest canopy in important wildlife habitat.

Slick Sand Timber Sale
West Fork Evan Creek Watershed, Butte Falls Resource Area.
20 logging units across 223 acres totaling 1.8 million board feet.
Slick Sand would ?regenerate? (clearcut) older stands and log many large trees.

Pickett Charge Timber Sale
Pickett Creek Watershed, Grants Pass Resource Area.
15 logging units across 337 acres totaling 2.7 million board feet.
The Pickett Charge timber sale targets unusually botanically diverse old-growth forests.

South Deer Timber Sale
Deer Creek Watershed, Grants Pass Resource Area.
21 logging units across 377 acres totaling 3.1 million board feet.
The BLM refuses to protect Spotted Owl and Bald Eagle habitat in these forests.

West Illinois Timber Sale
West Fork Illinois Watershed, Grants Pass Resource Area.
614 acres of logging producing 4.3 million board feet across an undisclosed number of logging units.
Important salmon and steelhead spawning area.
This watershed contains more rare and endemic plants than any other watershed in Southern Oregon.

Five Rogues Timber Sale
Graves Creek Watershed, Glendale Resource Area.
664 acres of logging by regeneration, group select, selection cut and commercial thinning. Approximately 115 acres of regeneration logging will completely remove spotted owl habitat, and 549 acres of suitable habitat will be downgraded through commercial thinning and selection cuts. Construction of a helicopter-landing pad would occur inside of a riparian reserve and 1.1 miles of new road would be built to access timber.

Willy Slide Timber Sale
West Fork Cow Creek Watershed, Glendale Resource Area.
52 acres of regeneration logging, 6 acres of selection logging, 139 acres of thinning are proposed. The project would remove 27 acres of suitable spotted owl habitat, while downgrading 9 acres. It would remove or downgrade a total of 161 acres of spotted owl dispersal habitat. 1.5 miles of new road would be constructed in this Key Watershed for salmon recovery.

For more information on these and other old-growth timber sales please visit www.kswild.org

Posted by laurel at September 25, 2005 11:10 AM | Category(s): Forest Defense/Environmental Activism