Applegater Fall 2014
21
MY OPINION FROM BEHIND THE GREEN DOOR
Consider community
by chris bratt
We residents of the Applegate live
in a unique and inspiring place, but far
greater community involvement and
action on our part will soon be required
to protect the beauty, natural diversity
and environmental health of the public
forests that surround us. Presently some
disturbing actions and trends stand in
the way of continued development of our
community well-being and threaten our
ability to participate as a public voice in
forest management decisions. Our ability
to work together with the local public
land management agencies to help develop
the future conditions we need for our
watersheds is being curtailed. If we don’t
act to sustain our public forests, we won’t
be able to sustain our communities.
Most of the forest management
problems our community is now
facing derive from the impasse over
a series of complex Bureau of Land
Management (BLM) issues. The BLM is
under intense political pressure to supply
more money for distressed counties and
more logs to the timber industry. This
can be accomplished only by loosening
environmental regulations and imposing
limits on the innovation, creativity and
collaboration of the public.
As I reported in the last Applegater,
two extreme legislative proposals have been
introduced in Congress. One bill exempts
BLM forest plans from judicial review (no
appeals of any timber sales), and the other
bill gets rid of the BLM entirely by dividing
its forest lands between the US Forest
Service and a private trust (clear-cutting
allowed for sure). Passage of either bill will
dramatically increase logging and reduce
public participation on these BLM lands.
In addition, the BLM has recently
resurrected that part of the 1937 Oregon
and California Act that governs their
interpretation of sustainable timber
production. Consequently, once again the
BLM is dictating that timber production
(volume) is the “primary purpose” and
“dominant use” of our public forest
lands. Also, with new BLM Resource
Management Plans (RMPs) in the making
(2015) and in response to a recent federal
court order, the BLM is planning to double
timber sale volumes on all the forest lands
they manage. It is apparent that the BLM
is abandoning science-based management
Harvest Fair to be held
in October at the Grange
by janis mohr-tiPton
Greetings! We want you to mark your
calendar for the next community event!
The Applegate Valley Community Grange
is planning to hold a Grange Harvest Fair
on Saturday, October 18, from 10 am to
4 pm in the hall and on the grounds. We
would love to have the community join us
for this festive event.
As you know, for the past two years
we have had a very successful Harvest
Brunch at our Grange. This year, instead of
brunch, we would like to invite members
of the community to participate as
vendors, volunteers, sponsors/supporters,
or fairgoers. Let’s create a true celebration
of the harvest in the Applegate Valley!
Vendors of prepared foods,
locally grown produce, food and agricultural
products, arts and crafts are all welcome to
set up a booth to sell their wares and shake
hands with their community. Booth spaces
(indoors and outdoors) will be 10 feet by
10 feet at a cost of $20. Vendors are to
provide covers and tables.
Update from the
Applegate Food Pantry
by arlene and claUde aron
Good news!
Thanks to the plea we made in the
last Applegater, we now have a new regular
driver for the food pantry. Richard Mikula
has generously stepped up to help in this
capacity. Thank you, Richard, for your
service to our community!
Schedule Update: Our summer
hours are Mondays from 9 - 10:30 am.
On October 6, we will revert to our regular
schedule, which is Mondays from 11:30
am – 1 pm. We will be closed on Monday,
September 1, and Monday, September
29. If there are any further changes to our
hours, we always post notices at the Ruch
and Applegate stores.
As we announced in the last
Applegater, the Applegate Food Pantry has
begun distributing all the food collected
through the Neighborhood Food Project
directly to local residents rather than
merging it with the Medford Food Project.
We were encouraged by the initial response
in which almost 50 participants took
green bags to fill, but on our last pickup
(June 13) we received only about half
of them back. We appreciate everyone
who has participated and donated food,
but we could really use some additional
participation from the community. If you
have taken a bag and for any reason cannot
continue to participate, please return it
to the Applegate or Ruch stores so that
someone else can use it (we have to pay
for the bags). And please consider joining
this program if you can afford to do so.
One hundred percent of the food donated
goes directly to the Applegate Food Pantry,
located behind Ruch School. Just pick up a
bag at the Applegate or Ruch store—there
are instructions in each bag.
T h e r e m a i n i n g d a te s f o r
dropping off bags are October 10
and December 12. If you can’t make
those exact days, that’s okay—we will
check the stores a couple of days before
and after those dates.
Questions? Call us at 541-951-6707.
Arlene and Claude Aron
541-951-6707
Happy Columbus Day!
on our public lands and thereby weakening
the protective provisions of the Northwest
Forest Plan, which calls for “multiple use”
management by the federal agencies.
Most of these planned BLM rewrites
rely on very risky forest management
actions that have never been tested. They
represent just a few of the obstacles our
community will be confronting from
now on. The irony is that none of these
outlandish proposals or actions will
guarantee enough logging revenue to
come anywhere near funding the budget
shortfalls of “timber-dependent” counties.
All of these stumbling blocks
reflect attempts by Congressional
representatives, timber-dependent
counties, timber interests and the BLM
itself to weaken the public process for
citizens to influence agency decisions.
Many people living in the Applegate don’t
realize that the BLM’s present Resource
Management Plans (1995) granted our
community extraordinary opportunities
to “develop and test new management
approaches to integrate and achieve
ecological and economic health and
other social objectives” (not “dominant
use” timber
cutting) with our
local agencies.
Chris Bratt
We are in danger
of losing this
cooperative mandate provided by our
federal designation as the Applegate
Adaptive Management Area (AAMA).
This special area allows our community,
the BLM and the US Forest Service to
jointly seek innovative strategies and future
actions that are most responsive to social
and resource issues.
From my perspective, our community
efforts over the past 20 years in working
cooperatively with the federal agencies in
the AAMA have paid off for all parties.
There is no justification for now pressuring
the BLM into changing our present AAMA
“multiple use” management direction,
especially in this increasingly polarized
political arena. We in the Applegate expect
better. We need better long-term forest-
management solutions. Anything else
would be a travesty.
Let me know if you expect better.
Chris Bratt
541-846-6988
In addition to vendor booths, this
event will have educational programs
with agriculturally based themes such
as beekeeping, beer making, noxious
weed eradication, and more. Nonprofit
educational booth space will be available
at no cost if nothing is being sold.
We will also have a children’s
area with crafts and games, and we intend
to have live music. We are looking for
musical groups or individuals to perform.
We will need volunteers from
the community to help plan, prepare
and set up for the event, and help with
activities at the fair. Anyone who would
like to sponsor or support any of the fair
activities is encouraged to contact Janis
Mohr-Tipton for details.
This event will certainly boast
something for everyone, and we hope to
make it a true gathering place for all ages of
our community. If you would like to be a
part of this great gathering and fair, contact
Janis Mohr-Tipton or Paul Tipton at 541-
846-7501 or email us at applegategrange@
gmail.com. We will be featuring vendors,
musicians, sponsors and activities in our
promotional materials for this event, so
let us know at your earliest convenience
about your participation so that we can
include you.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Janis Mohr-Tipton • 541-846-7501
Harvest Fair Vendor and
Nonprofit Booths Coordinator
janismohrtipton48@frontier.com
“
I fear the day that technology will surpass our human
interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.”
—attributed to Albert Einstein