A plot of leveled timber is visible from the Mount Ashland parking lot. The Cottonwood timber sale by Forest Capital Partners, LLC, is a project on private land near Mount Ashland that will go on for coming months.

Timber sale south of Mt. Ashland ski area may impact traffic

Logging not part of proposed Mt. A expansion

By Alan Panebaker
Ashland Daily Tidings

Along with summertime recreationalists, the Mount Ashland access road will see a rumbling of logging truck traffic sharing the road with motorists.

Forest Capital Partners, LLC, a Boston-based timber company, started a timber sale this week in the Cottonwood Creek drainage south of Mount Ashland that will continue for at least a couple months.

“We had been planning to work on that property for a long time,” Ken Cummings, region manager for Forest Capital Partners said. “It took a while to build a road in there, though.”

The company owns 320 acres in the area. Cummings said the 90- to 100-acre harvest will be a patch clear cut project where they leave stands of trees in between the cuts. Despite the view of cranes and an open clear cut from near the ski area, Cummings said the company is trying to keep most of the logging out of sight from the general public.

“We’ve tried pretty hard to minimize what kind of visual impact you’ll see,” Cummings said. “You’re looking at a 25-acre plus or minus patch there (from the ski area parking lot). The biggest disruption is the truck traffic.”

The company was permitted the sale through the Oregon Department of Forestry. The Klamath National Forest granted the access permit. Bob Marcu, stewardship forester for ODF, said timber companies are required to notify their department before they begin cutting. ODF then assesses the area and looks for sensitive issues like threatened species or streams that could be affected by the project.

“If they have protected resources, they have to submit a plan,” Marcu said.

Although ODF does not necessarily approve projects, it does make comments about protected species. Marcu said ODF standards for companies cutting on private land are generally more relaxed than Forest Service regulations. The Klamath National Forest also issued a road use permit to the company, requiring them to pay for road maintenance and possible damage due to their use of Forest Service roads.

On the other side of Mount Ashland, a proposed expansion has been halted by a lawsuit against the Forest Service regarding impacts on the local watershed, especially the Middle Branch of the East Fork of Ashland Creek. While the lawsuit is still in limbo, the Forest Service has halted any ground disturbance or timber harvesting in the expansion area.

Mount Ashland Ski Area General Manager Kim Clark stressed there is no connection between the private timber sale south of the ski area and the expansion work. While the ski area and logging company are concerned over community confusion about the project and disturbances caused by trucks rambling up and down the access road, local environmental groups say clear cutting on private lands on the Siskiyou crest make public lands, where regulations are more strict, more important. George Sexton, conservation director for the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center, is one of them.

“Because of the checkerboard nature of land ownership on the Siskiyou crest, all those private industrial lands heighten the need for environmental protection on federal land,” Sexton said.

The “checkerboard” land ownership is a mix of National Forest, Bureau of Land Management and private lands. Because of its proximity to the McDonald Peek Roadless Area and the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, private lands on the crest are usually under the microscope of local environmental groups. Some environmentalists worry habitat for wildlife like the northern spotted owl could be jeopardized when clear cutting projects create rifts between two areas on the crest. Sexton said chances for the public to get involved and change private land timber sales are few and far between, forcing environmental groups to put more focus on public lands.

“Private land cutting increases the value of adjacent public lands,” Sexton said.

A logging truck prepares to head down the Mount Ashland access road. Trucks will be shipping timber from a private sale to White City this summer.

Staff writer Alan Panebaker can be reached at 482-3456 x 227 or apanebaker@dailytidings.com.

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