Posts in Forests
Medford BLM Poised to Log Old-Growth Reserves

"Integrated Vegetation Management for Resilient Lands" (IVM) sure sounds great doesn't it? Unfortunately, those flowery words are agency-speak for logging old-growth forest reserves down to 30% canopy cover and creating four-acre mini-clearcuts across the landscape in southwestern Oregon.

Read More
Oregon Forest Practices Act: Agreement Reached

After nearly a year of negotiations, an agreement over new rules for the Oregon Forest Practices Act has been reached between timber and environmental groups to overhaul management of 10 million acres of private forestlands in Oregon. These changes will update Oregon's forest practice laws and provide significant new protections for our imperiled salmon, recreational and commercial fisheries, and for the communities that rely on these resources.

Read More
Oregon's Forest Reform

As part of a team working on a state-wide effort to update Oregon forest practices through a historic agreement with the timber industry, KS Wild and Rogue Riverkeeper are working to fight clearcut logging that leaves behind flammable logging slash, causes sediment that fills salmon streams, and minimizes forest carbon storage that contributes to climate change.

Read More
Protect forests as a natural solution to climate change

The State of Oregon needs to outline steps to reduce climate change pollution and promote carbon storage in forests. We are asking that the Oregon Global Warming Commission step in and work with ODF to craft realistic solutions to climate change. ODF and the Commission need to begin a science-based process to reform Oregon's forest practices to store more carbon, protect water quality, and prevent pollution.

Read More
Creating a Forest Plan

The U.S. Forest Service is beginning an update of the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan that will lead to new forest plans for our region. These new forest plans will significantly impact our region, defining how nearly 8 million acres of national forest in our region will be managed into the future. KS Wild will be engaging in these new plans—with several forest plans in the Klamath-Siskiyou set to be the first out the gates.

Read More
The Year Ahead: KS Wild's Priorities for 2020

To be the eyes and ears of public lands defense requires KS Wild’s ForestWatch staff to be diligent in how we approach the scope of our work. Read about our plans for 2020, which defending public lands in a number of vital ways.

Read More
Fire and Climate Change

Instead of continuing the century-old practice of trying to suppress wildfires, we need to learn from the our native American forebears how to use controlled burns to keep our Klamath-Siskiyou forests healthy and biologically diverse.

Read More
New Perspectives on Wildfire Management in Mixed Ownership Landscapes

For the second talk in KS Wild’s Summer Speaker Series on Fire Management, Dr. Christopher J. Dunn focused on five key things we need to remember in our fire-prone landscape, and a new method derived from his research that may alter how we fight fires in the future.

Read More
Did the Forest Service learn from the Biscuit fire (2002)?

What have we learned since the 2002 Biscuit fire aftermath, and how will it affect land management decisions in the post-Chetco Bar burn area of southwest Oregon?

...with the passage of time it is now possible to look back more objectively at Biscuit fire and the political firestorm that followed in its wake.

Read More
The damage of post-fire logging, the Hoax of 'salvage'

A forest after fire is not a tragedy; it’s simply a stage in the life of the forest. Post-fire logging is  often framed as focused on fire prevention. In reality, important biological characteristics are removed from post-fire forests. Because of this, salvage logging acts as an unnatural human disturbance to the sensitive post fire landscape.

Read More
Healthy Watersheds, Resilient Forests

Following decades of fire suppression and logging that created dense young forests, a return to ecosystem resiliency requires thinning second-growth plantations, retaining large trees and forest canopy, and returning the role of fire to these fire-dependent forests.

Read More
Logging in the Klamath-Siskiyou

Increasingly timber interests, conservationists including KS Wild, scientists and federal land management agencies are coming together to focus logging activities on thinning previously logged plantations and in fire-evolved forest stands in which fire suppression has resulted in encroachment by less resilient off-site conifers.

Read More