The online Wild & Scenic Film Festival brings together community to celebrate KS Wild’s work to protect the Klamath-Siskiyou wildlands and restore clean water in the Rogue Basin.
KS Wild Side: “Prescribed fires are also known as controlled burns. This is the practice of intentionally setting fire by an expert team under identified weather conditions to restore fire-dependent ecosystems.”
KS Wild Side: “(The Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument) contains an extraordinary array of plants, animals, and distinct ecoregions, all with increasing needs for protection.”
KS Wild Side: “Middle Rogue tributaries like Bear Creek flowing through Ashland, Talent, Phoenix, Medford and Central Point often have Chinook spawning through the end of October into the beginning of November.”
KS Wild Side: “States and local municipalities need to start addressing issues facing home and business owners in the Wildland-Urban Interface by imposing tighter restrictions on future development to ensure greater protections for communities against wildfire when it does arrive. These restrictions might include mandatory “defensible space” and updating building codes.”
KS Wild Side: “KS Wild’s Public Lands And You Stewardship Program has built a strong seven-year partnership with the USFS’s Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest to help protect Alex Hole, a proposed botanical area at a wetland meadow nestled into the mountains of the Klamath-Siskiyou range at around 7,100-foot elevation.”
KS Wild Side: Rogue Riverkeeper works with volunteers and partner organizations to collect water samples weekly from more than 15 recreation sites and other locations where people commonly enjoy streams, rivers, and lakes, and posts results on the Swim Guide webpage and on the Swim Guide app.
Nicknamed the “Klamath knot,” the Klamath-Siskiyou region ties together many major and diverse ecosystems of the West: Cascadia to the north, deserts to the east, coastal redwoods to the west, and California’s Central Valley to the south. Whether you were already aware of the special biodiversity of the Klamath-Siskiyou or you are feeling newly inspired to get out and explore, consider visiting these four of KS Wild’s favorite spots.
Joseph Vaile: “Currently the USFS and BLM in southwest Oregon are planning timber sales that threaten our old-growth forests. One example is the Medford District BLM. They are about to implement Poor Windy, which targets old-growth trees near Grants Pass along the I-5 corridor. Trees well over 100 years old are marked to be logged.”
To catch a glimpse of the rare Green’s Mariposa Lily in bloom, you can visit the Mariposa Preserve in the early summer around mid-June to the beginning of July. It’s just a short drive south from Ashland to the 222-acre Mariposa Botanical Area, a designated conservation area within the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument.
If passed as is, an ordinance put forward by the Rogue Action Climate Team on Tuesday would prohibit the construction of any new buildings with fossil fuel infrastructure in Ashland. If passed, the ordinance would require the city to deny any permit applications that include piping for fossil fuels, primarily natural gas.
As a bipartisan $200 million package intended to help hundreds of homeless Oregonians find housing heads to Gov. Tina Kotek for her signature, state lawmakers say they’re shifting focus from triaging a homelessness emergency to building more homes.
The Rogue Valley Times has filled two important roles with the hiring of a publisher and an advertising sales manager. Long Beach Post publisher David Sommers will take the helm as the first publisher of the Times, while Cheryl McKenzie, a former advertising executive with the former Mail Tribune, will build the ad department “from the ground up.”
Ashland New Plays Festival will launch its 31st season with spring workshops of two new plays Saturday and Sunday, March 25-26 and April 29-30, at Southern Oregon University’s Main Stage Theatre, 491 S. Mountain Ave. in Ashland.
Following a presentation of the budget realignment plan by Southern Oregon University President Rick Bailey on Friday at SOU, the university’s governing board questioned him on details of the plan, which he says will eliminate a multimillion-dollar structural deficit and change the fiscal model for the university moving forward.
Reader photo: Rain, rain go away, so we can play pickleball another day. Douglas R. Smith captured this photo of the courts in Lithia Park between February storms.
(It’s free)
