8 Winter 2016 Applegater
Upper Applegate
Watershed planning
Nedsbar Timber Sale:
Next steps
BY DON BOUCHER
BY KRISTI MASTROFINI
Multiple public workshops have
been focusing attention on the Upper
Applegate Watershed. A consistent theme
is the importance of looking back, as we
get deeper into the current planning
for the Upper Applegate, at the goals
identified in the Applegate Adaptive
Management Area (AMA) Guide,
prepared in the late 1990s. This guide is
the product of some very thoughtful and
forward-thinking collaborative work,
and the goals it presents can be guiding
principles regardless of any current
land-use allocations. The primary goals
identified in the AMA Guide are (1) to
achieve healthy, diverse, and functioning
ecosystems that are sustainable over
time, and (2) to make public agencies,
e.g., US Forest Service (USFS) and
Bureau of Land Management (BLM),
more adaptive and improve community
engagement in planning, implementing,
and monitoring.
Concurrent with the preparation of
the AMA Guide was the Applegate Valley
Strategic Plan, finalized in July 1997.
The visions and goals identified in this
plan demonstrate public concerns about
and awareness of the interconnections
of the social, economic, and natural
systems. The strategic plan identified
the following vision for the Ruch/Upper
Applegate area: “Our forests are healthy,
natural systems managed for a variety of
resources including wildlife, birds, and
wood products. We protect our old-
growth forests and we have introduced
fire into the forest ecosystem. We have
created cathedral forests near homes to
reduce the risk of destructive fire. Our
rivers are healthy productive places that
are free from development and contain
abundant fish.”
The reason for looking at this
work, completed almost 20 years
ago, is that it is still relevant. We have
not yet achieved the vision outlined in
the strategic plan. Our current planning
process is designed to move toward that
vision. Planning on the Upper Applegate
Watershed continues following a meeting
nearly a year ago January in which
the community was asked to identify
benefits from the land, threats to those
benefits, and possible management
actions to mitigate the threats. That was
followed by a workshop in April where
agency resources specialists and several
community members shared information
about the current condition of the Upper
Applegate area. Since those meetings,
the USFS and the BLM have hosted
two workshops to focus discussion on
the Upper Applegate planning area.
The purpose of these workshops was
to further clarify community values
(August 3)
and to identify
the important
threats to
maintaining
those values
(October 4).
Va l u e s
identified
b y
t h e
community
were arranged
into five main categories with elements
that either represent the value of the
landscape or identify important areas on
it in relation to the value. These elements
were mapped by agency specialists and
can be viewed in an online map. This
map is still a work in progress and will
be updated as mapping is completed. It
is available for viewing by the public at
arcg.is/2cLlWj5.
The work before us now is
to identify a suite of actions that will
address the most serious threats. A public
workshop was held on November 9 to
discuss how we (the community and
agencies) address in the near term the
most important threats. We are using an
approach that looks at ecosystem services,
or what we are calling “benefits from
nature.” These are the goods and services
that people receive from natural systems.
A number of good comments were
received and some potential management
actions were provided by the community.
The agencies are now working to compile
all of the notes and organize them into
themes to bring back to the community
in a meeting that will be scheduled after
the holidays in January 2017. There we
hope to continue a collaborative effort to
identify a suite of management actions
that will address the more important
threats to nature’s benefits.
As stated in the AMA Guide:
“Goals can only be achieved when
citizens, resource managers, and
governmental leaders work to support
and sustain an open process of integrated
community and ecosystem planning.”
The key to successful collaboration really
rests in our ability to communicate and
work together to find common ground,
resolve differences, and work towards
successful outcomes. We are working to
build a transparent process that integrates
community and agency values.
If you have questions, comments,
or other thoughts, please feel free to
contact me.
Don Boucher
541-899-3840
Applegate AMA Team Leader
Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest
dboucher@fs.fed.us
The Nedsbar Forest Management
Project, located in the Little Applegate
and Upper Applegate Watersheds, was
planned under the 1995 Medford District
Resource Management Plan (RMP) and
was designed to meet multiple objectives
including managing forests to promote
tree vigor and growth, improve forest
stand resiliency to natural disturbances
such as fire and insects, provide for
the conservation and recovery of the
northern spotted owl, reduce hazardous
fuels, and produce timber products in
support of the Medford District’s 2016
Allowable Sale Quantity.
As designed, not all objectives
would be met on every acre; the
intent is to meet these objectives at the
landscape scale. The design of the Bureau
of Land Management’s (BLM) proposal
incorporated the intent of Recovery
Action 10 of the 2011 Revised Recovery
Plan for the Northern Spotted Owl, which
recommends conserving spotted owl
sites and high-value spotted owl habitat.
This substantially reduced the acreage
proposed for forest thinning from BLM’s
original proposal that initiated public
outreach in May of 2014.
As many in the community are
aware, the Nedsbar Timber Sale did
not receive any bids at the timber sale
auction held in September 2016. After
some consideration, the BLM decided to
withdraw the sale a few days later. While
there are always a number of factors
contributing to the salability of timber,
one of the main factors considered by
the potential bidders was the economic
challenges associated with the large
proportion of helicopter logging (about
50 percent of the sale) combined with a
low average volume per acre across the
sale area and the small average diameter
of timber to be removed (about 12.8-
inch average diameter).
The Nedsbar Timber Sale
will move forward again soon,
but may look a little different. The
analysis that went into the decision-
making process remains sound and
it incorporated the input of not only
BLM resource specialists but many
members of the Applegate community
and other interested stakeholders. In
fact, a dedicated group of local citizens,
the Applegate Neighborhood Network,
worked very closely with BLM and
contributed their own Community
Alternative. The BLM fully analyzed
this Community Alternative in its
environmental assessment (EA), known
as Alternative 5. The strength of the overall
analysis through all alternatives provided
the decision space to make positive
management choices for our public lands
in the Nedsbar planning area. While I did
not select the Community Alternative,
I did incorporate several aspects of that
alternative, including reducing road
construction, deferring treatment at this
time for some of the stands, and altering
treatment prescriptions in others.
Because the EA analysis
remains valid and treatment needs
still exist, the BLM plans to move
forward with a reworked Nedsbar
Timber Sale that would include changes
to improve the economic viability of the
timber sale. These changes will likely
include dropping some of the units with
the highest logging costs, primarily those
associated with the helicopter logging.
Any changes would, of course, be within
the scope of the existing environmental
assessment. Work not included in the
repackaged timber sale may be deferred
for future consideration or developed
into future stewardship contracts, BLM
fuels reduction contracts, or small
commercial timber sales designed to
provide opportunities to the local
community.
The Nedsbar Timber Sale was
planned under the 1995 Medford
District Resource Management Plan
(RMP) and the planning area was then
designated as an Adaptive Management
Area (AMA) where the testing of new
management approaches to integrate
and achieve ecological, economic, and
other social and community objectives
was encouraged.
Although the 2016 Southwestern
Oregon RMP no longer has an AMA
land-use allocation, the BLM continues
to encourage community involvement
and collaborative processes to support
local land-management projects.
Kristi Mastrofini
541-618-2438
Field Manager, Ashland Resource Area
Medford District BLM
kmastrof@blm.gov
— McKee Bridge Centennial Celebration —
Planning is under way for McKee Bridge’s 100 th anniversary celebration on Saturday,
June 10, 2017, from 11 am to 3 pm. Mark your calendars and plan to join us for a grand
celebration of McKee Bridge and its part in the history of the Applegate.
Food, music, historic displays, vintage cars, and steam engines will be featured
at this family-friendly event. For more information, contact Paul Tipton at ptipton@
frontier.com or 541-846-7501.