Evans Creek: A Watershed on the Brink

Question: If you owned a severely degraded watershed that provided crucial habitat for at-risk salmon and was fragmented by poorly built logging roads and hammered by clearcuts, how would you manage the few remaining patches of intact old-growth forests?

This is a trick question! You do own such a forest. The portion of the Evans Creek watershed administered by Medford BLM belongs to every American…but it is being managed solely for the benefit of the timber industry.

A visit to the Evans Creek watershed can be a profoundly depressing experience. Every other square mile is owned by industrial timber companies who have slicked-off all of their native forests and replaced them with fiber plantations. The publicly owned BLM forests in the watershed haven’t faired much better. Less than 13% of Lower Evans Creek still retains old-growth forests. A maze of logging roads routinely dumps sediment into the streams.

But all is not yet lost. Fall Chinook still spawn in Evans Creek. Neotropical migratory birds still utilize the few intact forest stands. Rare plant species are regularly found in the deep organic duff layer that exists only in the watershed’s old-growth forests. Even a few Northern spotted owls are (barely) hanging-on in what remains of their habitat.

The BLM Wants to “Finish Off” Evans Creek

The timber industry and the BLM are not content with logging only the 75% of the watershed that they’ve already converted into fiber plantations. They want it all. And they want it now.

The BLM acknowledges that the ocean of small-diameter tree farms that dominate the landscape present a much higher risk of stand replacement wildfire than do the remaining old-growth forests. Unfortunately, this knowledge hasn’t influenced their behavior in the slightest.

The agency recently proposed logging an additional 3,420 acres in Evans Creek. Some of the logging would occur in riparian “reserves.” More of the logging would occur in forests set aside for wildlife connectivity. And over 2,100 acres of the logging would consist of regeneration harvests - the BLM euphemism for clearcutting. KS Wild recently submitted "scoping" comments on this project and we anticipate an "Environmental Assessment" in 2008.

Stay tuned for more information on this and other BLM timber sales.