Fight the Pickett West Timber Sale!
The Medford Bureau of Land Management’s 6,000-acre “Pickett West” timber sale targets low elevation forests in Oregon's Rogue River, Illinois River, and Applegate River Watersheds for extensive logging. Worse still, while the BLM is still taking public comments, it is already marking old-growth trees to sell to the highest bidder.
Pickett West is not a light-touch restoration or thinning project. Rather it is an old-school timber grab that will harm wildlife and watersheds. Native forests on public lands will be reduced to 30% canopy cover without protections for old-growth forests, riparian areas, or large fire-resilient trees.
We should support the thinning of small trees near homes and communities to create defensible space for wildfire. But fire hazard will instead be increased through the removal of native forests and the establishment of dense tree farms. The size of streamside forest buffers to protect water quality and aquatic species will be slashed in half.
Please take action now to the tell the BLM to stop the destruction of the best of what is left in our BLM backyard forests.
KS Wild invests significantly in forest and landscape restoration. We are technical advisers on the Ashland Forest Resiliency Project that has helped restore forests and protect communities in southern Oregon. We promote restoration projects in dozens of locations, have helped write technical prescriptions for restoration projects, and seek funding for projects that would restore forests throughout the region. We have done this across tens of thousands of acres and we support active management. Yet, the science shows us that more old-growth logging and clearcutting will make matters worse. Industry and their political champions that propose more to log the remaining big trees and to replace them with high production forests are not investing in solutions to restore forests.
