Private Alerts
Document Actions
The Cow Creek watershed has been heavily degraded
by private industrial and federal management.
Photo by Dang Ngo.
Clearcutting the Future, At-Risk Critters on the Chopping Block
The Boney Skull timber sale calls for logging 1,654 acres of native forest in the severely abused Middle Fork Cow Creek Watershed. 858 acres of this logging would be accomplished through “regeneration” (clearcutting) whereby ancient forests are cut down and replaced by even-age fiber plantations for the benefit of the timber industry. Even the remaining “thinning units” could reduce forest canopy down to a paltry 30%. 4.8 miles of new logging roads would be punched into the forest to facilitate the proposed old-growth logging.
Until recently the dwindling Coho salmon population of the Middle Fork Cow Creek Watershed were listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. While the future of these salmon are more at-risk than ever, by using procedural trickery to count hatchery salmon as wild, the fish have been removed from the endangered species list. The proposed “regeneration” (clearcut) logging, tractor yarding and logging road construction will harm the watershed values that the remaining wild Coho rely on.
Coho aren’t the only at-risk species that the BLM hopes to harm; the timber sale calls for logging 780 acres of “connectivity” blocks for the Northern Spotted Owl; these are intact forests that currently allow for owls to move across the landscape. Even more outrageously, the BLM hopes to log 230 acres of old-growth that serves as “critical habitat” for the survival and recovery of the Spotted Owl.
In the physically adjacent Westside old-growth timber sale, the BLM acknowledged that:
“On approximately 11,648 acres within the planning area, regeneration harvest on federal lands, and clearcutting on non-federal lands has converted generally more fire resistant mature stands into young plantations that are typically more prone to fire due to their horizontal continuity.” - Westside EA 91.
And now the BLM want to further accelerate the conversion of fire resistant old growth to fire--prone plantations through the Boney Skull timber sale...
“An aggressive effort should be made to reduce open road densities in the watershed through decommissioning, barricading and gating.” - Middle Cow Watershed Analysis at page 67.
Rather than follow its own advice, the BLM plans to build 4.8 miles of new logging roads in this heavily roaded watershed.
Please Write a Letter
Please take a moment to write a letter to the Glendale Resource Area opposing the Boney Skull Old-Growth timber sale. Your letter will be most effective if you also send a copy of it to Representative Peter Defazio.
Suggested Talking Points:
1. The old-growth forests of the Middle Cow Creek Watershed are more valuable standing than cut down. This watershed has already done its part for our nation’s fiber production needs. Past clearcutting on private and BLM lands has severely fragmented the remaining forests.
2. The Glendale Resource Area is out of step with the social consensus that we should focus timber management on stands that have already been logged, rather than creating more young, flammable, fiber plantations on the landscape.
3. The Middle Cow Creek Watershed is severely degraded. Tractor yarding, regeneration logging and new road construction will further harm watershed values.
4. The Glendale Resource Area should stop targeting endangered species habitat for logging. Their insistence on degrading critical and suitable habitat for at-risk Northern spotted owls and Coho salmon must cease.
Mail letters to:
Katrina Symons, Field Manager
Glendale Resource Area, Medford BLM
2164 NE Spalding
Grants Pass, Oregon 97526
Honorable Peter Defazio
U.S. Representative
612 S.E Jackson Street, Room 9
Roseburg, OR 97470
Click here to download a double-sided action alert to pass around (1.8MB).
