1997 Timber Sales in Diamond Lake
Selling the Public's Ancient Forests
On September 17, 1997 the Umpqua National Forest auctioned off 750 acres in the Mt. Bailey roadless area in the Paw Chopper timber sale. This helicopter logging will pluck out 800 logging trucks worth of native trees from one of the highest elevation forests on the Umpqua, destroying habitat for the valuable matsutake mushroom, as well as a variety of rare plants and wildlife that inhabit this remote place.
1997 was a terrible year for logging the forests in the Mt. Bailey area of the Diamond Lake Ranger District. The eastern part of this district is the most-used recreation area of the Umpqua. It is not only home to the Mt. Bailey roadless area, but it also adjoins Mt. Thielsen Wilderness, the Rogue-Umpqua Divide Wilderness, the Sherwood Butte roadless area, the High Cascades Recreation Area, and Crater Lake National Park. Within the ranger district is beautiful Diamond Lake, the largest of the natural high cascade lakes.
The eastern half of the Diamond Lake district is also above some waterfalls, natural barriers to sea-going salmon, and thus it is not considered critical habitat for the endangered Umpqua cutthroat trout or habitat for coho salmon.
It could be for this reason that this remarkable high cascade forest is hosting the bulk of the Umpqua National Forest timber sales for 1997. The Forest has traditionally sold most of its volume from big tree, lower elevation districts. As a result, the forests, fish and wildlife of these lower districts have been devastated, while the Diamond Lake district has catered to the tourists.
Some of the timber sales fragmenting this fragile, beautiful area of Diamond Lake are: Paw, Yogi, Pigout, Peanuts, and Bull timber sales. These timber sales total over 53 mmbf. This equates to over 10,600 logging trucks hauling away native, ancient forests from one tiny part of the forest - the part that is just crawling with tourists. Add this to the devastating Diamond Lake sales from the logging rider last year, and it's no wonder why I saw families camping in clearcuts on labor day.
However, 53 mmbf is only 75% of the target volume of the Umpqua National Forest. There is another section of the Umpqua National Forest that is not within critical habitat for dying fish - the Cottage Grove Ranger District. This ranger district is in the Willamette River watershed, and since the Coho were not protected under the ESA, this district is also easy prey for clearcutting old-growth. Some of the 1997 sales out of Cottage Grove are: Silvermoon, Layng Creek Demo, and Judie timber sales.
Though these sales don't officially impact a protected fish species, they do officially impact the city of Cottage Grove. They all include logging and road building within the municipal watershed. Layng Creek Demo is an experiment to see what happens if they log (including clearcuts within streamside reserves) leaving different domino like patterns of leave trees. The Judie timber sale will build 2.2 miles of new roads and clearcut within the Hardesty Mountain roadless area.
September 1997 was the one-year anniversary of protecting the Umpqua cutthroat trout under the Endangered Species Act. As a result, logging in the Umpqua National Forest has continued unabated, and has been severely concentrated in fragile, not yet totally destroyed, ecosystems.
September 17, 1997, with the auction of the Paw Chopper forests within the Mt. Bailey roadless area, was the cumulation of a very hard year for the Diamond Lake and Cottage Grove ranger districts of the Umpqua National Forest.