Recommended Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument expansion to be logged

Please ask BLM’s State Director not to award the Sampson Cove timber sale before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals makes its final decision. You can help with a phone call or email and a simple message (see below). The timber sale would log and re-road areas that scientists recommend for addition to the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument (CSNM). Dave Willis and the Soda Mountain Wilderness Council have been friends and advocates for the Kalmiopsis Wildlands for decades.

Advocates of expanding the CSNM were surprised and disappointed last Friday when District Court Judge Panner overturned his magistrate’s earlier finding putting the Medford BLM’s Sampson Cove timber sale on hold.  The finding required BLM to reveal all the negative impacts of the sale.  Medford BLM now says it’s no longer bound by their pledge to give 30-day notice before allowing logging and road construction to begin.

Photo above: This grove is in Sampson Cove timber sale unit 19-3. It is Northern Spotted Owl nesting/roosting/foraging habitat, which borders the Pacific Crest Trail in the Green Springs Mountain Wild Area recommended by scientists as an addition to the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument.

As early as next week, bulldozers and large logging machines could be at work on dozens of timber sale units that pepper the forests from the Green Springs Summit on north to east of Grizzly Peak. This is a commercially-driven sale. Despite a few benign treatments, the bulk of the Sampson Cove timber sale will harm the important ecological gradient that scientists have recommended as a “Rogue Valley Foothills to Dead Indian Plateau” addition to the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument. The southern units of this imminent timber sale are very near the Pacific Crest Trail, BLM’s new and touted Green Springs Mountain Loop Trail, and in the Green Springs Mountain Wild Area.

The case is being appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, but Medford BLM wants to allow logging and road construction to begin without waiting for the 9th Circuit to rule.  It would be a beyond-sad tragedy if this timber sale was ruled illegal after BLM had already let bulldozers, chainsaws, and big logging machines loose.

Medford BLM has been unresponsive to repeated requests to cancel or downsize the timber sale. So we’re asking that you contact the Oregon/Washington State Director of BLM as soon as possible.

Please email the State Director through his Chief of Staff – c1harris@blm.gov – or call the State Director’s office at (503) 808-6026 and with this simple message:

Please do not award the Sampson Cove Timber Sale before the appeals court has a chance to make a final decsion.

 If you’re on the Soda Mountain Wilderness Council mailing list please snail-mail the green card in the mailing as soon as possible.

Don’t know the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument? Photographer Steven Johnson and writer/artist Anna Maria Johnson have put a beautiful website together about the monument  – A Season at Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument.