Bear Grub Gone

     Yesterday I joined a rally in front of the Bureau of Land Management office in Medford to protest the timber sale in the Applegate known as Bear Grub.

    Some of the most beautiful places in the Applegate are included in this sale, such as, for instance, the beautiful East Applegate Ridge trail. Since the East ART was built by the Applegate Trails Association four or five year ago, it has become one of the most visited trails in the Appleagate, and for good reason. Its views over the Applegate Valley—Ruch, the Thompson Creek valley, the Little Applegate, up into the Red Buttes, the Siskiyou Crest—are spectacular. Wildflowers grace its shoulders in profusion in May and June.

Now, however, when I walk the East ART, I see large swaths of trees with white rings painted on their trunks—trees marked for cut. The East ART would be a different trail if the Bear Grub Timber Sale went through.     

    Other areas I love to hike are included in Bear Grub: the Sterling Mine Ditch trail, the Jack-Ash trial, the beautiful, wild, unroaded Wellngton Wildlands, an area that the BLM itself at one time designated a "land with wilderness characteristics." Let loggers in, and it no longer qualifies for that protection, which wasn't much, anyway, if Wellington Wildlands could be given away as part of Bear Grub.

    It also seems wrong to be cutting the largest trees in our forest when wildfires are so rampant. The large trees are fire resilient. Younger, thinner trees, and the brush that grows up in overcut areas, burn hotter and faster, increasing the fire danger. What are our forest managers, BLM and Forest Service, thinking, to be cutting our big trees?

    So I made my sign for the rally—"Keep your grubby paws off Bear Grub"—and yesterday morning joined a group of other forest enthusiasts, masked and spaced well apart, in front of the BLM during the time bids from timber companies were being accepted (if there were any). 

Other signs gave similar messages as mine: 

    "Farmers for protected forests." 

    "No Sale! Save our big trees." 

    "Trees=oxygen. To cut them is an act of suicide." 

    "Forest protection = climate protection." 

    "Don't grub our mountains bare. Stop Bear Grub." 

    "Big trees are fire resilient." 

    "We ❤️ big trees."

    Judging by the reception we received from the traffic on the road, the rally was a success, as we received some honks and no fingers. The driver of a big semi drove past with a wave in our direction. Our aim was to make it clear that the community was not in favor of the Bear Grub Timber Sale. We hoped to deter bidders.

    For that aim, the rally wasn't quite so successful. In the end Timber Products bought Bear Grub for about a million dollars. 

    And so go our big, beautiful trees, our shaded trails, sold, for a million dollars, when their value to us is a million times more. 

    I am sick at heart.