Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center

Rogue Riverkeeper: Over the course of 2022, the Rogue Riverkeeper program worked extensively with a local group of residents that live along the Rogue River upstream of Medford. Residents and fishing enthusiasts have been worried for some time that motorized jet boats are having a negative impact on the waterway, and Rogue Riverkeeper set out to ensure state agencies were doing their part in monitoring and overseeing the jet boat operations. More than 1,000 individuals commented on a Oregon State Parks decision about allowing commercial operations for jet boats to stage out of Touvelle State Park. While we were successful in getting the State Parks to reconsider signage and kiosks for the jet boat operation, the operators are still allowed to use the park as a stopping point on their summer-time river tours. Rogue Riverkeeper has also been tracking and following the Bureau of Land Managements revised management plan for Wild & Scenic River status along the lower Rogue and its tributaries. More than 120 miles of tributaries to the Rogue were designated as Wild & Scenic as part of legislation passed in Congress in 2019, and we are encouraging the agency to speed up the process for updating the last river management plan from the 1970s. With an increase in conflict between river users and wildlife, like black bear, more is needed from the agency to ensure the Wild Rogue is a safe place to recreate and remains a sanctuary for wildlife and biodiversity.

Climate Program: Our Climate program has been a partner in a national effort to secure administrative protections for the regions old-growth forests. In April 2022, President Biden issued an executive order focused on identifying threats to old-growth forest habitat and encouraged the US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to come up with opportunities for conservation. This Public Lands Rule has been met with opposition from the timber industry because it would elevate conservation as an equal use on multi-use BLM lands. Here in western Oregon, the Bureau of Land Management oversees management of 2 million acres of forests, which is unique in the lower 48 states. Because of an obscure 1937 law, these Oregon BLM forests are managed differently than the US Forest Service lands in Oregon. More than 1,000 supporters wrote in comments to the administration, asking them to prioritize agencies to draft new rules that protect not just old-growth forests, but mature forests, which would be the next generation of old-growth. On the forest and fire front, our climate program also hosted their first Forest Defender training series, with volunteers and community members. A half dozen individuals participated in this inaugural volunteer training series, which included field visits to local timber sales. Its our hope that these volunteers will be able to support field trips into the forests to monitor and track proposed timber sales and road-building efforts across the region. In an effort to promote wildlife connectivity in the region, KS Wild and partners at the Southern Oregon Land Conservancy and Selberg Institute hosted the first ever Cascade-Siskiyou Connectivity symposium at Southern Oregon University. The event brought together more than 50 individuals from 25 different agencies, institutions, and NGOs, with a focus on wildlife overpasses, migration patterns, and the ongoing decommissioning of 4 dams along the Klamath River. Tribal representatives, scientists, and wildlife agencies presented maps and research from their latest efforts in the region that spans from the Pacific Coast to the crest of the Cascades. The group of core planners developed a symposium report, laying out about a dozen priorities for the partnership to pursue on wildlife corridors, habitat restoration, and ongoing research/analysis.

ForestWatch Program: In 2022, the Medford Bureau of Land Management proposed a sprawling vegetation management project across 600,000 acres of its district. Largely, the project focuses on prescribed fire and tree-plantation thinning, which improves fire resiliency. However, the agency is also proposing close to 20,000 acres of commercial logging in Late Successional Reserves (old-growth stands) that offer the best habitat for wildlife. There have been several projects proposed in 2022, and we are challenging the Late Mungers and Penn Butte timber sales located near the community of Williams, Oregon. More than 600 supporters have written comments asking the agency to alter, or drop, the proposed timber sales, and KS Wild is working with CRAG Law Center on a legal challenge to those two specific timber sales. We expect a ruling in 2024. In addition to the Medford BLM district, we tracked other US Forest Service projects in the region that would have a negative impact on clean water and wildlife. More than 500 individuals commented on our Lake of the Woods action, which encouraged the Fremont-Winema National Forest to drop an RV park expansion into old-growth habitat. We have been working with local cabin owners and local concessionaires to try and find a way for the project to move forward in less impactful ways. The area has become overcrowded during hot summer months. We are also tracking the River Complex post-fire recovery actions on the Klamath National Forest in northern California. The River Complex fire burned nearly 200,000 acres of forest in 2021, and the Klamath National Forest is trying to target old-growth stands that did not burn at high severity. Many of these forested areas slated for logging require the agency to rebuild roads and culverts, which would require them to do more environmental analysis. We are concerned that the agency will fast-track the analysis and overlook impacts to sedimentation in waterways, impacting threatened salmon species in the Scott River watershed. Our restoration work in ForestWatch continued to focus on wet meadow and wetland mitigation at Alex Hole Meadow and Eight Dollar Mountain Botanical Area. Thirty volunteers contributed roughly 250 hours of time for the projects over the spring, summer, and fall of 2022, and helped restore more than 15 acres of habitat and several miles of old OHV routes.

All other conservation programs & outreach