Plan looks at wildfire risk, recreational opportunities, environmental protection and more
By Shaun Hall, Rogue Valley Times
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has released a draft plan for managing the 113,507-acre Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, including plans for fuel-reduction activities that would take place within a quarter-mile of at-risk communities.
Fuel-reduction activities could include thinning, brush-reduction and low-intensity fire. Wildfire was one of the top issues cited last summer when the agency received 189 formal comments during an initial planning phase.
The 618-page plan, including supporting documents, addresses a range of topics, including environmental protection and recreation. It calls for the creation of two new “areas of critical environmental concern” for protection, though not as many such areas as some would have liked. It also calls for a quarter-mile-wide management corridor to protect resources on each side of the Pacific Crest Trail, which crosses the monument.
In addition, the plan calls for minimal changes to livestock grazing, suggests reductions in cross-country snowmobile use and leaves open the possibility of road closures to protect and restore resources.
The agency is taking public comment on the plan through July 5 and has set four public meetings in May. A final proposed plan is due out in the fall.
In developing its plan, the BLM considered four alternatives, ranging from no change (Alternative A) to one with little active management (Alternative D). Alternative C, the preferred alternative, “promotes a moderate level of active management,” while Alternative B “promotes intensive, active management to protect monument resources.”
The BLM is required by regulation to identify a preferred alternative. “It is simply the BLM’s starting point for gaining public feedback,” according to the agency.
“We appreciate how unique and important this landscape is, not just for Oregon, but for the entire United States,” Barry Bushue, BLM Oregon/Washington state director, said last week. “We look forward to hearing from the public about how we might better manage this landscape.”
Like Bushue, Dave Willis, chairman of the Ashland-based conservation group Soda Mountain Wilderness Council, issued a written statement.
“We know BLM has been working hard on this draft document,” Willis said. “We look forward to thoroughly digesting and examining the fruits of their significant preliminary effort.”
“Managing public land to truly respect ecosystem processes and remaining wildlands is still a relatively new and novel challenge for BLM’s long-standing commodity-oriented custom and culture,” Willis said, referring to the agency’s history of involvement with logging, livestock grazing and mining. “We sincerely hope the draft plan will point toward BLM being up to their not-business-as-usual task here.”
The release of the plan follows a March 22 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to let stand the 2017 expansion of the monument. Timber interests and others, including the Jackson County Board of Commissioners and U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz, R-Ore., opposed the expansion and urged the court to reject it as executive overreach.
President Bill Clinton created the monument in 2000 under authority granted him by the Antiquities Act of 1906. President Barack Obama expanded it in 2017 under the act. The original monument was about 52,000 acres, while the expansion included about 48,000 more acres, all federal land. Another 13,131 acres were acquired from willing sellers.
“With towering fir forests, sunlit oak groves, wildflower-strewn meadows, and steep canyons, the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument is an ecological wonder, with biological diversity unmatched in the Cascade Range,” the original proclamation stated in its first sentence.
The monument’s first and only management plan was released in 2008. The new plan will guide decisions for the next 15-20 years. All alternatives must meet the direction in the proclamations to protect the monument objects, including the convergence of the Cascade, Siskiyou and Klamath ecoregions.
While Alternative C suggests two new areas of critical environmental concern, it rejects designating other areas that had been suggested as possible ACECs or as research natural areas, including Buck Prairie, Jenny Creek, Lost Lake, Moon Prairie, Old Baldy, Oregon Gulch, Scotch Creek and Tunnel Creek.
The two proposed areas are the 115-acre Cottonwood Glades area located northwest of Hyatt Lake and the 239-acre Mariposa Lily area located west of Interstate 5 near the California border, near where a wildlife overcrossing is proposed. The Cottonwood area would protect native fish, meadows, springs and fen soils by possibly restricting vehicular use and cattle. The Mariposa area would protect oak savanna and rare plants with possible management activities that include prescribed fire, removal of invasive yellow star thistle and restoration of native grasses and forbs.
Statements in the plan include the following:
• Drought and insect damage has resulted in substantial mortality within some forest ecosystems in the planning area, increasing fuel loadings and reducing resilience to fire.
• Long-term drought has led to declining stream flows and historically low reservoir levels, which affect aquatic habitats and species.
• Rivers and streams throughout the planning area have lost connections to their floodplains through beaver trapping, water diversion, road construction, timber harvest and livestock grazing.
• Habitat fragmentation and loss from uses such as timber harvest, road building, livestock grazing and fire suppression have led to degraded ecosystems.
• Habitat fragmentation from timber harvest and road building reduces habitat size, isolates plant and animal populations, limits their movement and diminishes ecological processes.
• Checkerboard ownership patterns increase the challenge of maintaining habitat connectivity.
Reach Rogue Valley Times outdoors and environmental reporter Shaun Hall at 458-225-7179 or shall@rv-times.com. This story first appeared in the Rogue Valley Times.
