We’ve been keeping our eyes on threatened botanical areas during the pandemic. The focus on public lands this past year has been resource extraction with little focus on protecting what’s at stake. High elevation wetland meadows on the Siskiyou Crest and inland serpentine landscapes are what make the Klamath-Siskiyou rich in biodiversity, but these areas remain largely unprotected. KS Wild’s grassroots work of land stewardship monitoring and restoration has never been so important. 

The summer and fall of 2020, KS Wild staff and a few volunteers were hard at work conserving and protecting two of our favorite botanical areas and places of deep concern, Eight Dollar Mountain and Alex Hole. The botanical richness at both Eight Dollar Mountain and Alex Hole have inspired some to call this place, the land of wonderment and extreme botanical beauty. Our dedicated team of volunteers and staffers have been working with the Rogue River Siskiyou National Forest or on the ground restoration projects at both sites.

The high elevation wetland meadow at Alex Hole has a small portion fenced to keep trespassing grazing cows out of the most fragile part of the area. Although the fence is holding strong, the vegetation just outside the fence is not doing so great. Overgrazing and trespassing cows are still a threat to this fragile ecosystem. Photo monitoring and on the ground efforts to keep the fence repaired and in working order are saving this area from complete destruction. You can read more about Alex Hole in this previous blog post linked here.

The Eight Dollar Mountain Botanical Area was reseeded in October of 2020. A culmination of three years of restoration efforts have led us to this point of recovery in this fragile ecosystem that has endured many years of damage from off-road vehicles. We focused our reseeding efforts in a meadow that has seen significant resource damage to plant life. The seeds were a mixture of native Deschampsia species (bunch grass), Elymus glaucus (Blue Wild Rye), and a wildflower/pollinator mix of Monardella odoratissima (Coyote Mint), Eriophyllum lanatum (Oregon sunshine) and Clarkia gracilis (slender clarkia).

Thank you to KS Wild staff and volunteers who have been instrumental to both of these land restoration projects. If you’re interested in joining our volunteer team on future restoration projects, please sign up here.