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The Siskiyou Crest National Monument

An Idea Whose Time Has Come

By Laurel Sutherlin

The Siskiyou Crest, a striking geologic feature, is home to one of the highest concentrations of botanical diversity on the continent and forms one of the most valuable wildlife corridors in the West.

There are few experiences more awe in-spiring than standing astride the Siskiyou Crest at sunset on a summer evening, one foot planted in the watershed of the Rogue, facing the setting sun across an expanse of purple ridges to the horizon, the other foot placed in the Klamath Basin, pointing toward the glaciers of Mt. Shasta, illuminated in the alpine glow of twilight. Beneath those feet, in the waning light, blooms a dazzling array of wildflowers, many of them so rare they can be found only within the immediate terrain on which you stand, and nowhere else on earth.

The entire landscape is infused with a rugged kind of mystery from up here, high on the slopes above the fray of civilization below. Indeed, this is one of the few places in the temperate world where vertebrate animals are still being described to science for the first time, where geologists still squabble over the basics of how to read their own maps and where vast expanses of roadless wildlands remain nearly pristine—yet unprotected.

Very few places can claim so many exceptional ecological values or provide such an array of social benefits through its protection. The Siskiyou Crest is home to globally outstanding levels of biodiversity and its unique geography instills it with a disproportionate importance for wildlife and regional climate resiliency. The region is also a recreationalist’s paradise and its preservation as a destination for visitors from near and far stands to benefit local and regional economies.

An idea whose time has come, the Siskiyou Crest National Monument is a striking geologic feature, straddling the border between Oregon and California while dividing the great river basins of our region, the Klamath and the Rogue, as it stretches through the heart of the Klamath-Siskiyou bioregion, extending some 90 miles from the Cascade Mountains toward the coast. Home to one of the highest concentrations of botanical diversity on the continent, it forms one of the most valuable wildlife corridors in the West.

The Siskiyou Crest inhabits an auspicious junction of space and time. It is exceedingly unusual among mountain ranges, with ridges that run west to east, whereas almost all other mountain systems in North America stretch north to south. This west-east orientation gives the Crest the qualities of a “Land Bridge,” and offers the highest quality habitat corridor connecting wildlife between the Coast Ranges of California and Oregon to the massive cordilleras of the Cascade and Sierra Nevada ranges.

The Crest is a crossroads of the highest order, containing overlapping elements from distant ecosystems in all four directions. It lies on the northern edge of ranges for species that comprise the legendary California floristic province, and the southern reach for many trees and animals that form the great forests of the Pacific Northwest. It is the eastern extent of home ranges for countless coastal life forms, and the western tip of habitat for desert dwellers reaching over from the Great Basin to the east.

On top of this intersection of great geographic provinces, the rugged wildlands surrounding the Siskiyou Crest are also a melting pot where organisms from the deep past mix with the flora and fauna of the future. The Crest fascinates scientists for being both a refuge for ancient species once widespread, and a birthing ground for new species just evolving into being. Both of these attributes stem from the mixture of a stable, mild climate that has persisted for millennia which has allowed evolutionary processes to unfold uninterrupted by glaciation or volcanism while species from afar retreated here as other landscapes became inhospitable to them.

The region around the Crest is also host to a tremendous diversity of microclimates formed by extremely complex geology and steep, twisted topography. One of the unusual rock types present, serpentine, is actually toxic and contains heavy metals such as chromium and nickel that bleed into the soil. Strangely, this toxicity contributes greatly to the diversity of the rare plants found here, as many species have evolved to tolerate this soil type and can grow freely where more common competitors are excluded.

Diversity of form piled on top of diversity of type is a hallmark of the Siskiyou Crest, and a strikingly high percentage of plants and even animals found here are found nowhere else on earth. Siskiyou Mountain salamander (Plethodon stormi), Applegate gooseberry (Ribes marshallii), Baker’s Cypress (Cupressus bakeri) and the Yreka Phlox (Phlox hirsute) are just a small sampling of the endemic specialties found deep in the folds of these mysterious canyons.

The stark reality facing us today is that global climate change is not only happening, it is proceeding at a rate no one seemed able to imagine just a few years ago. Preserving and improving the viability of the habitat linkages provided by the Siskiyou Crest is one of the most proactive steps we can take in our region to help wildlife and humans adapt to the drastic changes to the landscape climate scientists predict are imminent.

The Rogue Basin of southwest Oregon is one of the only areas of its size to have a site-specific, peer-reviewed report, based on the latest scientific data, to make concrete predictions and recommendations about the looming impacts of climate change to the local ecology and economy. The report, Preparing for Climate Change in The Rogue River Basin of Southwest Oregon, prepared by the Climate Leadership Initiative at the Institute for Sustainable Development at the University of Oregon, and the National Center for Conservation Science and Policy in Ashland, makes many tangible recommendations for how land managers can best prepare for the startling changes to come.

To prepare our rivers and forests for climate change by increasing resilience and resistance, the science panel on this project recommends:

“Remaining intact habitats should be protected, including old growth, roadless areas and corridor connections for wildlife migration. Protected areas should be expanded longitudinally and latitudinally in order to allow species to shift their ranges. Protection and restoration of ecosystem structure, function and genetic diversity to allow organisms to withstand and adapt to climate stressors. Land and stream reaches that provide critical support for ecosystem services should be identified, protected and restored. Ecosystem services are benefits that people gain from functioning ecosystems, including clean water, decomposition of waste and toxins, timber harvest, recreational opportunities, etc.”

Protecting these carbon-sequestering forests in the face of climate change is of even greater significance in the Klamath-Siskiyou region, as climate models increasingly predict that it will see a smaller average temperature increase (2-3 degrees within the next 50 years) than anywhere else in North America. As the impacts of climate change become more severe, the Siskiyou Crest could very well, once again, serve as an Ark for species struggling to adapt to a changed world.

The establishment of a Siskiyou Crest National Monument would also be a boon to the regional economies of southwest Oregon and northwest California. This region, like much of the West, is moving away from the boom and bust economic cycles of resource extractive industries like logging and mining, and towards more stable, diversified and sustainable economies. In Jackson County the percentage of people’s income based on extractive industries fell from 19.1% in 1969 to just 8.2% in 1997. In Josephine County during the same time period it fell from 17.5% to 4.8%.

Meanwhile, the percentage of income generated by economic activity associated with natural amenities—things related to activities like tourism, recreation, retirees, and quality of life services—has steadily increased. Again, in Jackson County from 1969 to 1997 the percentage of incomes based on natural amenities increased from 23.7% to 33.5%, and in Josephine County it grew from 28.1% to 39.9%.

Southwick Associates, which studied the historical economic performance of Oregon and western counties associated with roadless and wilderness, published this conclusion:

“Many argue that protecting lands from extractive activities is especially harmful to rural communities. However, when only rural western counties are studied, the relationship between economic growth and protected and Forest Service roadless areas is very strong. In rural counties during the period 1969-1997, the amount of protected lands within 50 miles of a county’s center is positively and significantly correlated with employment growth and with income growth. Similarly, the amount of Forest Service roadless areas within 50 miles of a county’s center is positively and significantly correlated with employment growth and with income growth. This means counties with, or near, protected lands are more likely to experience stronger economic growth.

“The result of this analysis is clear: Protection of roadless areas is strongly and positively connected to economic growth. Throughout the West, counties with more roadless and protected areas showed stronger economic growth from 1969 to 1997 than those without such lands.”

Economic sectors associated with tourism are increasingly important sources of income in Oregon. Between 1969 and 1997 the amount of income, in inflation-adjusted dollars, gen-erated by hotels and other lodging places grew by 120%, income generated by drinking and eating establishments grew by 151%, and income generated by amusement and recreation services grew by 459%. In contrast, inflation-adjusted income generated by the manufacture of lumber and wood products actually declined 15% during the same period. As gateway communities to some of the best backcountry recreation areas of the West, the towns scattered around the base of the Siskiyou Crest only stand to see these numbers grow when the land is adequately protected.

When taken together, the wildlands of the Siskiyou Crest form an interconnected network of nearly one million acres of high quality wildlife habitat. Much of the landscape is roadless and relatively unspoiled, and should be preserved as close to that state as possible for generations to come. These are the areas that need the least management to provide climate resiliency, stable territory for imperiled wildlife, and ecosystem services like drinking water and carbon sequestration.

However, much of the rest of the landscape between and around these relatively pristine pockets has been heavily impacted by decades of road building, livestock grazing, fire suppression, commercial logging, mining and ORV abuse. These areas are in need of active management to restore their streams, forests and soils.

Hundreds of miles of un-maintained roads built decades ago to facilitate industrial logging now languish, bleeding salmon-choking sedi-ment into nearby streams. Mile after square mile of plantation forests await small diameter thinning projects to improve their health and resiliency. Whole swaths of the landscape are in need of treatments to reduce the hazards of uncharacteristically hot wildfires after decades of misguided suppression. The vision for a Siskiyou Crest National Monument is not to “lock up” the landscape and leave it completely alone, but to work with scientists, tribes and land managers to implement science-based restoration projects where needed. Such activities will help to further enhance the ecological values of the Crest while also providing much-needed local jobs in the woods.

A large portion of the proposed monument overlaps the ancestral territory of the Karuk people of the mid-Klamath. The Karuk Tribe has stewarded this land for millennia and have articulated a sophisticated and progressive approach to land management. The tribe’s Eco-Cultural Management Plan for these lands is an integrated approach to adaptive problem solving, utilizing both Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) and western science in the interest of managing the restoration of balanced ecological processes.

Klamath-Siskiyou Wild is in communication with the Karuk Tribe in the hope that we can create a special designation for this portion of the monument that will increase the management authority and rights for traditional uses for the Karuk across this territory. This collaborative effort has very little precedent, and there are complex legal and political challenges to negotiate. KS Wild looks forward to continuing to explore how our conservation goals for this area can complement and advance the goals of the Karuk people to play a greater role in determining the management of their homeland.

The area encompassed by the Siskiyou Crest National Monument is an enchanting and challenging year-round playground for outdoors enthusiasts. The spectacular peaks, deep canyons and clean rivers are at once rugged and remote while also highly accessible by an extensive network of roads and trail systems. There is truly something for every interest here, from easy car camping to deep wilderness backpacking, from high exposed ridges to tucked away swimming holes.

Hunting, fishing, backpack-ing, mountain biking, horse-back riding, skiing and para gliding are all popular acti-vities that would be further promoted by the establishment of a national monument. Local communities already cater to outdoors oriented visitors with gear stores, abundant lodging and dining, guide services and other amenities. The western portion of the proposed monument contains the Oregon Caves, one of the most visited attractions in the region, and on the eastern end the Mt. Ashland Ski Area also attracts tens of thousands of winter sports fans.

The Sterling Ditch Trail system contours over 20 miles through beautiful pine oak savannah and low-elevation mixed conifer forest in the Little Applegate Valley, providing excellent views and close to town wilderness walking in any season. Nearly sixty miles of the Pacific Crest Trail runs along high ridges through the heart of the proposed monument, offering iconic vistas in every direction, and unsurpassed access to wildflower meadows and idyllic camping opportunities. It would take a lifetime to explore the thousands of miles of routes available in this inviting and alluring countryside.

The Siskiyou Crest National Monument is an ambitious vision that will be made real by the efforts of many dedicated people over a period of years. KS Wild needs your support and participation to gain permanent protection for this special place. Please become a member, sign-up for our bi-monthly eNews email updates at www.kswild.org, and stay tuned for calls to action at important moments in the political process. Please visit the Action Alerts section on the homepage of our website to send an automatic letter to your Senator letting them know that you care about the area and asking him/her to work to protect the Crest.

Meanwhile, please write letters to the editor to your local paper supporting the monument proposal, and help pass resolutions endorsing the plan in your local city government. We are seeking businesses to sign on to show support, and funding is always needed. First and last—go to the Crest and explore! KS Wild will be leading a series of hikes this summer (see www.kswild.org for info) and is hosting a public gathering at the Grouse Gap Shelter on August 12 (see sidebar).

Laurel Sutherlin has an M.A. in Environmental Studies and is on the staff of the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center. A grassroots organizer with more than a decade of experience mobilizing communities, coordinating campaigns and building the movement for forest advocacy, he is a trained naturalist and environmental educator who specializes in using these skills to inspire people to protect the biodiversity surrounding them. Contact him at laurel@kswild.org.

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