Ecological Benefits of Wildland Reserves
The Proposed Copper Salmon Wilderness Proposal
in Southwest Oregon

Prepared for

DRAFT July 30, 1997

Citation
Frissell, C.A. 1997. Ecological Benefits Of Wildland Protection: The Proposed Copper Salmon Wilderness Proposal In Southwest Oregon. Open File Report Number 97-__. Flathead Lake Biological Station, The University of Montana. Polson.

In the forests of the Pacific Northwest, wilderness protection has proven to be the most certain way to protect and maintain the full array of natural ecosystem functions. While timber and some mineral extraction are precluded, most other ecosystem services and biological conservation needs are secured by wilderness protection. The ecological and economic benefits of protecting headwater wilderness can extend far across the landscape, for example in providing high quality water for downstream uses and sustaining habitat for migratory fish populations that support ocean and river fisheries. Protection of the Copper Salmon area in southwest Oregon as a federal wilderness could provide lasting, regional benefits to many species that are dependent on late successional forest habitats, including spotted owls, marbled murrelets, and several Pacific salmon species and their habitats in three coastal river basins. At the core of the area, the North Fork of Elk River sustains exceptionally diverse and productive salmon runs, and provides an outstanding opportunity for scientific research that could inform the recovery and restoration of fish habitat and populations in other coastal rivers. Most of the area is rife with steep and highly erosion-prone slopes, where timber planning and operations are complicated, expensive, and contentious, and the risk of irreversible impact to soils, watershed processes, water quality, and fish habitat and populations is high. Wilderness designation could simplify and reduce the cost of management, while helping to sustain its existing biodiversity, ecosystem service, and socioeconomic values to the surrounding region. Because of the extent of past road construction and logging on adjacent lands, additional restoration measures may be necessary to ensure that the natural values associated with the Copper-Salmon area are maintained.

From an ecological point of view, the history of forestry is fraught with conservation failure. Despite generations of attempts to reconcile practices of timber extraction and conservation of watersheds and biological resources, much of the remaining natural treasury of federal forest lands in the Pacific Northwest lies concentrated in watersheds that have been protected from development as designated wilderness or national parks, or that through some other artifact of history have remained largely unaltered by forest managers (Frissell 1991, FEMAT 1993, Henjum et al. 1994). Although wilderness areas have not often been intentionally selected with conservation of biological resources in mind, by default these protected natural areas harbor much of our remaining diversity of sensitive species and habitats. In southwest Oregon, for example populations of salmon show strong affinity for those watersheds where most slopes remain free of roads and late successional and old growth forests remain largely intact (Oregon Chapter of the American Fisheries Society 1991, Frissell 1992). Many (perhaps most) rivers in the western USA that are not associated with large, federally protected areas are known to be impaired by a range of water quality problems.

This report reviews some of the ecological and scientific benefits of protecting forested watersheds as wilderness. These benefits are illustrated by a discussion of the proposed Copper Salmon Wilderness area in the Siskiyou National Forest, a small area near the northwest corner of the Klamath Mountains province on the southern Oregon coast.

Wilderness Provides Valuable Ecosystem Services

Undeveloped, natural watersheds contribute to the maintenance of high-quality waters downstream. These waters may be important for sustaining many values such as fishery production and harvest, water supplies for wildlife, people, domestic animals, and crops, aesthetic value and associated property values, industrial uses that require clean water for use in manufacturing, and purposes of waste dilution for municipal, agricultural, and industrial users. These ecosystem services can contribute immensely to the economy of the surrounding region, yet they are rarely explicated and accounted for in the economic and environmental assessments that inform the management decisions about protecting particular areas (Dixon and Sherman 1990). Watershed deterioration can not only directly compromise present-day economic values, it can create new costs for environmental remediation or repair and maintenance of infrastructure, such as when sedimentation of rivers leads to loss of channel stability, creating a need for costly bank protection structures and new bridges. Aside from such tangible economic contributions of water quality and repercussions of its loss, less tangible aesthetic, recreational and spiritual values exist. One way to measure the aesthetic and recreational value of high-quality waters is to compare the significant difference in the market value between private property adjacent to high-quality rivers to otherwise similar properties that lack such access.

Decisions about management of public forest lands in the Pacific Northwest have rarely confronted the issue of water quality and quantity, instead relying on the common assumption that all potential adverse consequences of logging and other resource extraction activities can be avoided or fully mitigated by the use of "appropriate" practices. Existing impacts to water quality in forested watersheds are commonly blamed on practices of the past that are now considered outmoded, and the new practices more recently applied are purported to be sufficient (Frissell and Bayles 1996). Not only does this assumption about "new" practices remain mostly unverified, it could not be verified unless field-tested under a wide variety of conditions and over time periods of many decades (as the "old practices" have been).

What we do know for certain is that such problems are few in watersheds that have remain largely unaltered by humans or have recovered naturally from historical perturbations, sheltered from further disturbance by wilderness or other conservative designation. For example, McIntosh et al. (1994) found that the abundance of large pools, a good indicator of water quality and fish habitat condition, remained stable or increased over fifty years in several tributaries to the Columbia River that had been largely protected within wilderness or other roadless areas, even those subject to large fires and other natural disturbances. By contrast, large pools had diminished in abundance in most rivers outside of such natural areas. A wide variety of historical and recent management practices may have contributed to this pattern, and despite significant differences in management practices, the outcome was similar for both public and private ownerships (McIntosh et al. 1994). Bella and Overton (1972), Ehrenfeld (1991), Stanley (1995) and Frissell and Bayles (1996), among others, have pointed out that the high degree of uncertainty in assuring a desirable ecological outcome from management interventions should cause us to establish a network of reserves where active management is deliberately avoided, as a hedge and control against unforeseen outcomes and mistakes.

Wilderness as Biological Refuge

Wilderness and other undeveloped roadless lands also harbor remnants of a rich native biota that has been extensively altered and depleted on disturbed parts of the landscape. This sensitive biota includes some species that are valued for sport and commercial harvest (game, fish, furs), but many more that may play important long-term roles in community succession and recovery of ecosystems from disturbances. For example, small mammals such as the northern flying squirrel (Glaucomys sabrinus) and red tree vole (Phenocomys longicaudus) may play important roles in the propagation and dispersal of fungi beneficial to plant growth (Maser et al. 1978). Old-growth forests and other forest types associated with natural areas often harbor productive populations of woodpeckers and other insect-eating birds whose young may disperse to the surrounding landscape and aid in biological control of insect outbreaks.

Many of the species that are dependent on natural areas for their persistence may once have been common and widely distributed across the landscape. They have been relegated to remaining forest fragments because the majority of the landscape has been substantially altered by logging and other disturbances, their habitat lost or fragmented beyond its ability to support viable populations. Others, such as the American marten and fisher, are relatively wide-ranging, low-density species vulnerable to trapping or poaching; they require large and inaccessible tract of land to minimize contact with human sources of mortality (Maser et al. 1981). For these kinds of species, the relatively large blocks of natural habitat in wilderness and roadless areas are default landscape refugia. Protection of these refugia from logging and road building is necessary to allow some populations of these species to persist on the landscape. If sufficient habitat is protected that these population isolates can persist, they could provide seed sources of late-successional and other sensitive species to re-colonize the surrounding landscape as it recovers from past disturbance (Reeves et al. 1995, Frissell and Bayles 1996). The biotic refuge functions of natural areas increase in importance as the landscape itself is progressively altered and depleted of the habitat required by sensitive species (Noss 1991). Because they reflect the cumulative impact of disturbances both upstream and downstream, aquatic ecosystems may be especially sensitive to landscape alteration, and sensitive aquatic biota are often strongly associated with relatively unaffected watersheds (Henjum et al. 1994, Frissell and Bayles 1996). Although data sufficient to test this question are limited, they are generally consistent with the hypothesis that high-quality waters originating in relatively intact, largely roadless watersheds support a disproportionate share of natural production of salmon in the Pacific Northwest.

Wilderness vs. the Ecological and Economic Costs of Timber Management

In the west, most remaining roadless areas are marked by steep terrain and highly unstable soils (The Wilderness Society 1993, FEMAT 1993). Most of these areas were not previously logged because they were difficult to access and operate on and were dominated by younger or sparse timber of low value relative to that available in more accessible and productive parts of the landscape. Today, however, maturation of stands in many of these areas, depletion of timber supplies on other lands, development of markets for sizes and species of trees that formerly were in little demand, and the extension of large, subsidized road networks far into the forest have conspired to increase the market value of the timber in roadless lands. There is increasing economic incentive to enter these areas and remove their timber.

However, the environmental and managerial costs of logging these areas is also increasing. As late successional forests and other natural habitats become more scarce and fragmented by logging and other land uses, the conservation value of the remaining undisrupted habitats increases disproportionately. The increasing need to protect multiple species, from many kinds of aquatic and terrestrial habitats, all increasingly rare and many whose regional or global viability is already seriously in jeopardy, places a burgeoning burden of proof on land managers who would endeavor to further alter these forests through logging, construction of new roads, and other management actions. The mounting recognition that past management activities have left a legacy of persistent, previously largely unacknowledged environmental damage further fuels the possibility that impacts to water quality, soil stability and fertility, biological populations, and other environmental resources will increase in the future. Even relatively ambitious planning efforts, such as the Northwest Forest Plan (FEMAT 1993), presume that further declines of target species, such as the northern spotted owl, are inevitable under the best of scenarios.

Few credible analytic tools (and even fewer reliable field data) are available to properly gauge the effects of past activities, and predict the likely effect of future activities whose impacts will be imposed on the ecosystem (Collins and Pess In press). The spatial fragmentation of aquatic populations caused by disruption of watershed processes and aquatic habitats, for example, generally increases the vulnerability of the remaining population isolates to extinction from even small changes in their habitat (Rieman and McIntyre 1993, Frissell and Bayles 1996). Yet, with the exception of work performed for the northern spotted owl, virtually none of the analytic methods used in watershed analysis and other assessment procedures account for the spatial aspects of population organization and threats to population persistence at local and landscape scales, for either terrestrial or aquatic species.

In short, the environmental risks of removing timber from sensitive roadless lands appear to be increasing, and there is no compelling reason to believe that new analysis methods are available that will reduce the costs and increase the reliability and accuracy of environmental assessment (in fact research support for this purpose has probably declined since its heyday in the early 1970's). Moreover, there is little solid evidence that new management techniques can successfully reduce or reverse the likely environmental damage that can jeopardize the biotic resources that depend on these areas. In fact, each management technique of the past has been touted by someone as a perfect improvement over the previous generation's method. Most new management practices that have been proposed recently to mitigate or moderate impacts to forest habitats, watershed processes, and aquatic habitats (e.g., selection harvest with helicopter yarding) are extraordinarily costly and largely unproven. Because of the inherent physical vulnerability of slopes and soils in many roadless areas, together with the new biological sensitivity of fragmented landscapes, the consequences of any unanticipated impacts are likely to be long-lasting or irreversible. And the history of environmental assessment warns us that the most ecologically important impacts are almost always not those that were anticipated by even the most exhaustive of pre-project assessments and mitigation schemes (e.g., Barnes and Bodaly 1994). Recently, forest planners have (at the behest of government attorneys) explicitly assumed that all appropriate mitigation measures (many unspecified) will be applied perfectly in every applicable situation. Although this "theory of divine mitigation" may appear to be useful in a litigation context, as every manager knows well, it is ludicrous in practice. Mistakes will be made, and in steep and highly unstable terrain, especially one inhabited by fragmented populations of sensitive species, even small mistakes (e.g., in road location or maintenance) can have large consequences.

The result of these many convergent factors is that timber management in roadless areas comes at a very high cost and yet carries no certainty that all other resource values will be successfully protected. Even over the short term, therefore, the economic wisdom of removing timber from these areas is questionable. Over time frames of decades or more, it is safe to predict that underestimated and unforeseen environmental and social costs will accumulate and further dwarf the short-term gain taken the timber industry.

The proposed Copper-Salmon Wilderness is a small area located in the headwaters of the Elk, Sixes, and South Fork Coquille Rivers in the Siskiyou National Forest of south coastal Oregon (Fig. 1, Fig. 2). It is named for Copper Peak and Salmon Peak, two major landmarks defining the area, as well as the connotation of the Pacific salmon of several species that inhabit the area and its surrounding rivers. The area totals about 10,900 acres, 78 percent of which is located in the headwaters of the Elk River basin encompassing most of catchment of the North Fork of Elk River and much of the South Fork. The remainder of the area is split between the uppermost reaches of the Middle Fork Sixes River and the headwaters of Johnson and Salmon Creeks in the South Fork Coquille River (Fig. 1). The area is bounded by logging roads and clear cut units, although a few miles of spur roads and some small logged areas are included within the boundary (Fig. 2). Aside from these few disturbed sites, the area encompasses extensive forests, comprising a mosaic of late successional and old growth stands interspersed with mature hardwood stands and scattered rocky openings on ridge tops. The dominant tree species include Douglas fir, Port-Orford-cedar, western hemlock, bigleaf maple, red alder, manzanita, and other hardwoods. In some riparian areas, Port-Orford-cedar is the major conifer species, where it holds its own with abundant hardwood trees.

A very dense network of surface streams traverses the entire Copper Salmon area, with riparian forests of varied species composition and size structure as a result of fire, landslides, and other natural disturbances that have affected the area in recent centuries. The terrain is quite steep (excepting a few flatter spots on ridge tops, large landslide benches, and narrow floodplains or terraces along streams) and the soils are rocky and in most places highly unstable where mature forest cover is removed. Most of the streams within the area are small and steep, supporting a fauna of invertebrates, amphibians and some resident trout populations, but the North and South Forks of the Elk River are larger and they host important populations of salmon, steelhead, and sea-run cutthroat trout.

Recent Management History

The vicinity of the proposed wilderness has a history of timber-focused management which led to obvious and persistent environmental damage in areas adjacent to the proposed wilderness. These damages include deterioration of soils that continue to impair timber regeneration and growth as well as longstanding damage to streams and fisheries (Siskiyou National Forest 1976, 1994). A timber sale in the East Fork Butler Creek, just outside the western edge of the Copper Salmon area, led to vast areas of actively raveling soils that loaded large quantities of sediment in that stream. As a result of these activities, landslides increased by about 10-fold over natural background levels in the Butler Creek area (Siskiyou National Forest 1994, McHugh 1987). Aggradation of the bed of the East Fork of Butler Creek caused by the overwhelming accumulation of coarse sediment resulted in loss of summer surface flows and complete elimination of summer fish habitat in what previously had been a permanent stream supporting native steelhead (Everest et al. 1987). The sediment in question originated both from the road system and from greatly accelerated erosion of the deforested hill slopes within cutting units. Other assessments have documented additional long-term consequences of these timber sales, including depletion of coarse woody debris and warming of stream habitat well beyond the levels preferred by salmon and trout (McSwain 1987, Siskiyou National Forest 1994).

Despite the history of severe and largely uncorrectable problems from past logging and road construction activities, both the 1976 Mount Butler-Dry Creek EIS and later the Siskiyou National Forest Plan (1991) programmed extensive new road networks and clearcut logging on similar lands within the Copper Salmon area and adjacent portions of the Elk, Sixes, and South Fork Coquille River drainages. The Forest Service repeatedly contended that environmental damage from the proposed timber sales would be kept to insignificant levels through the application of "new" but largely unspecified techniques. This claim was questioned by many independent scientists who through their field research were familiar with the area and its biophysical sensitivities and ecological capabilities (see comments reproduced in the EIS's, with much additional material documented in the appeals record for the 1989 forest plan and in subsequent timber sale records). Despite the controversy and the presence of clear weaknesses and oversights in the Forest Service's environmental assessments, a large number of timber sales and major road construction projects proceeded in the area during this contentious period. Partly in response to the public's concern about the Forest Service's intention to expedite these road construction and logging projects, Congress designated the Grassy Knob Wilderness in 1984, encompassing portions of the Elk and Sixes basins to the west of the Copper Salmon area (Fig. 1). The Grassy Knob Wilderness protects several important tributaries but does not include key headwater areas and tributaries that critically affect the health of the mainstems of the Elk and Sixes rivers.

Presently management of the Copper Salmon area and adjacent lands is guided by the Siskiyou National Forest Plan of 1989, as amended by the Northwest Forest Plan developed under court order in 1993 (FEMAT 1993). Prior to 1993, the Forest Service had managed to push relatively few of the planned timber sales through, due partly to strenuous public opposition in the appeals process and probably also to growing internal concerns of some staff about the adequacy of previous analyses that had been used to justify the projects. As a result, a portion of the Copper Salmon area remained intact, despite the fact that much of this area been slated for logging under the forest plan of 1989. In the 1993 decision, many areas, including a majority of the Copper Salmon area, were dedicated to Late-Successional Old-Growth reserve, placing them off-limits to further logging (with the exception of some older timber sales that were temporarily revived by a "rider" clause in a recent federal appropriations bill). Some parts of the present Copper Salmon area, however, are still designated as "Matrix" lands for which timber sales are planned. These lands include many acres that are potentially unstable and have high erosion risk, including a very large, semi-active or metastable earth flow complex in the South Fork Elk River that is a major potential sediment source to the Elk River. Although riparian areas receive substantial new protection under the Northwest Forest Plan, outside the clearly definable riparian areas on "Matrix" lands lie many slopes where perturbation by logging or road construction brings a moderate to high risk of damage to streams. These risks pose severe (perhaps insurmountable) challenges to managers who are expected to ensure that such impacts will not occur.

Benefits To Water Quality And Aquatic Biota

Protection of the Copper Salmon area as wilderness would preclude further logging and road construction from the area, securing it for its intrinsic ecological and cultural values. Among the resources that would benefit is the water quality of the Elk River, and to a lesser extent, the South Fork Coquille and Sixes River. This benefit would be realized from maintaining the existing natural forest vegetation that helps stabilize the potentially unstable slopes. The benefits of watershed protection include not only streams that originate inside and pass through the protected area, but extend far downstream to major tributaries and mainstem segments of the Elk, Sixes, and South Fork Coquille River that drain the Copper Salmon area (Fig. 1, Table 1). About 38 km (25.5 mi.) of small headwater streams would receive complete protection of their entire drainage catchments. An additional 11 km (4 mi.) of headwater streams and 22 km (14 mi.) of larger streams would receive protection for their immediate streamside zones (portions of their headwaters would lie outside the area), and more than 100 km (>70 mi.) of major downstream tributaries and mainstem segments of the three rivers would directly benefit from protection of portions of their headwaters within the Copper Salmon area (Table 1).

The stream segments where water quality would benefit include several of major importance to wild salmon populations. Headwater protection would benefit Salmon Creek and Johnson Creek, important coho spawning areas in the South Fork Coquille River. Protection of key headwater areas of the Middle Fork Sixes River would benefit that important stream, which hosts significant spawning populations of coho and chinook salmon, as well as steelhead trout (Reimers 1971, Stein et al. 1972, Frissell 1992). In the Elk Basin, benefits would accrue to the South Fork, parts of Butler Creek, and the mainstem Elk below the confluence of the North and South Forks. Most importantly, the wilderness would provide secure protection for the North Fork Elk River and a large part of its catchment. This major tributary supports persistent and relatively abundant spawning and rearing populations of an exceptional diversity of anadromous fishes, including coho salmon, fall-run chinook salmon, steelhead, sea-run cutthroat trout, resident rainbow trout, and lampreys (Reeves 1989 and unpublished data, Siskiyou National Forest 1994). The chinook salmon and steelhead populations of the streams mentioned above have long contributed to important sport and commercial fisheries in these three rivers and the south coastal Oregon area.

Due to prior timber sales that have been excluded from the margins of the proposed wilderness, the Copper Salmon area would not comprehensively protect the watershed of the Upper Elk River. Protection for the Middle Fork Sixes, Salmon Creek, and Johnson Creek headwaters would also be fragmentary. Because many of the streams inside the Copper Salmon have headwaters that originate in cut-over or road-impacted lands outside the proposed wilderness (Fig. 2), there will be a need to allocate special resources to restoration of these surrounding lands if aquatic resources are to receive the full benefit of watershed protection. This restoration effort should encompass comprehensive and detailed surveys of road stability and drainage function, followed by treatment of existing and potential problem areas to prevent further watershed damage. Nonessential roads could be closed and hydrologically decommissioned. Those spur roads that fall inside the Copper Salmon boundary could be fully obliterated, or converted to hydrologically stable foot trails, at relatively little cost. Most if not all of these restoration measures would be advisable (and perhaps legally mandated) regardless of whether a wilderness area were established.

Benefits To Biodiversity--Rare And Endangered Species

Few data on the occurrence of fish and wildlife species are available from Forest Service planning documents, other than the presence of salmonid species as observed over many years by researchers at the Pacific Northwest Research Station (Reeves 1989 and unpublished data; Siskiyou National Forest 1994). However, a query of the extensive database maintained by the Oregon Natural Heritage Program on the locations of rare, threatened, and endangered plants and animals indicated that several such species are found in the Copper Salmon area, or its immediate vicinity (Table 2). The number of records is surprising, given that roadless areas such as usually receive very limited biological survey effort compared to more accessible roaded areas. As a result, existing records typically underestimate the actual occurrence of sensitive plants and animals in sparsely-roaded areas.

The Copper Salmon area encompasses the sites of numerous verified sightings of two listed bird species that are dependent on old growth forest habitat---the northern spotted owl and the marbled murrelet. Murrelet records include numerous visual or aural observations of adult birds flying in the vicinity of potential nesting habitat, as well as at least one direct observation of a nest (locating murrelet nests is quite difficult and uncommon). There have been many observations of spotted owls in and adjacent to the Copper Salmon area since the first formal surveys began to be conducted in the 1980s. These include numerous observations of single owls, as well as mated pairs exhibiting nesting behavior. The extent of sightings within this relatively small area suggests the possibility of "packing"--i.e., birds from surrounding areas where habitat has been lost to logging in recent years may have become exceptionally concentrated in the remaining suitable old growth habitat in areas like Copper Salmon. It seems highly likely that any further logging of old growth habitat within this area will cause direct loss of substantial numbers of birds and nests. There have been occasional sightings of bald eagles along the mainstem of Elk River (Siskiyou National Forest 1994), and these birds are probably using salmon as forage; thus their livelihood may depend on the protection of salmon resources in the basin. The Sixes and Coquille Rivers are designated as key habitat for bald eagle recovery (Siskiyou National Forest 1994), and eagles there may also benefit from headwater protection that contributes to the productivity of wild salmon populations.

Mammal reports for the area are sparse in the Heritage database and Forest Service documents. It appears that relatively little survey effort has been made in this area for such potentially sensitive mammals as bats, flying squirrels and red tree voles, and larger carnivores such as bears and fishers. There is one record from 1990 of a sighting of an American marten near Elk River in the vicinity of the Copper Salmon area. It appears likely that other mammals associated with old growth forests and roadless areas can be found in the area. The Copper Salmon area is spatially positioned on the landscape such that it is likely to serve as a key stepping stone or nodal habitat patch in an archipelago of old growth habitat areas extending from the Grassy Knob Wilderness near the coast, east to the Port Orford Cedar Research Natural Area, southeast to the Wild Rogue Wilderness and other interior natural areas along the Rogue and Illinois Rivers, and thus to the Kalmiopsis Wilderness in the southern half of the Siskiyou National Forest. Many wide-ranging species in the region use riparian habitats for foraging or other life history needs, and the Copper Salmon area may provide an important natural habitat link for animals that travel between Elk River, the Sixes River to the immediate north, the Coquille River to the east, and the Rogue River to the south.

From the Elk River southward, the coho salmon is now listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. The steelhead and chinook salmon are presently undergoing a status review range-wide, and listing of Klamath Mountains populations is a distinct possibility. As mentioned above, stream habitat that would be protected within the Copper Salmon area, or whose water quality would directly benefit, include several important spawning and rearing streams for coho, steelhead, and fall chinook salmon. Streams of special importance to coho salmon include the North Fork Elk River, Johnson Creek, Salmon Creek, and the Middle Fork Sixes River.

Comprehensive surveys of frogs and salamanders have apparently not been conducted in the area, but the area contains habitat that is ideal for several sensitive amphibians species. A population of the Del Norte salamander, a federal species of concern, was found in 1975 within the Copper Salmon area in the vicinity of Copper Mountain. These salamanders occurred near a spur road which would be included within the wilderness boundary. Their presence illustrates the biological value of including within the wilderness some areas that have experienced previous impacts. Given that this is the only confirmed locality for this species in the area, it makes sense to consolidate protection and restoration of this site within the wilderness boundary.

Plants of concern in the area include the Port-Orford-cedar, which occurs in small numbers in stands across the area, but assumes special importance in riparian areas, where it is often the dominant conifer species (Siskiyou National Forest 1994). The headwaters of Sixes River within the Copper Salmon area contain one of the finest remaining examples of old-growth Port-Orford-cedar, with trees exceeding 3 m (10 ft) in diameter and approaching or exceeding 300 feet in height (personal communication with Jim Rogers, forestry consultant in Port Orford, Oregon). Few such old-growth stands of Port-Orford-cedar remain unlogged (the stands mentioned here have been proposed for logging in recent timber sales). Moreover, across its range the survival of the Port-Orford-cedar is threatened by an exotic, water-borne pathogen that was apparently introduced from Asia, against which the Port-Orford-cedar has little or no resistance (Zoebel et al. 1985). The pathogen has been widely dispersed by vehicles traveling along forest roads, and spores can move from roads far downstream, infecting streamside and floodplain trees. The extent of infection within the Copper Salmon area is unclear from available records. The pathogen has quite likely already been widely spread along the existing ridge top road network and through ground disturbance by logging equipment. The degree to which riparian forests have been infected within the Copper Salmon area should be carefully documented; uninfected areas need to be identified and roads closed and modified to minimize the chance of further spread of the disease. Because of the patchy nature of Port-Orford-cedar occurrence within the area and the likelihood that many of the headwater streams that lack road crossings remain free of the pathogen, the Copper Salmon area may form an excellent reserve that if protected could be relatively resistant to further invasion by the disease. This reserve function would almost certainly be rapidly lost if the Copper Salmon area were subject to additional expansion of the road network and associated logging activities.

The Copper Salmon area may also contain populations of rare plants endemic to the Klamath-Siskiyou region, although it appears that few surveys have been made within the area. Surveys in the immediate vicinity of Copper Salmon have documented the presence of several rare plant species (Table 2). These species include Bensonia, a member of the saxifrage family, that often grows in moist habitats; Bolander hawkweed, a small, bristly wildflower that grows in forests and open ground; Piper's bluegrass, which grows on dry open slopes and ridge tops; and Hairy manzanita a shrub or small tree endemic to the Klamath Mountains region, typically occurring on rocky ridge tops.

Special Scientific Values

The Elk and Sixes Rivers have both hosted a long and unique history of scientific research on wild salmon populations and their relationship to forest management (e.g., Riemers 1971, Stein et al. 1972, Reeves 1989). For example, in the course of a long-term, annual survey effort researchers of the Pacific Northwest Research Station (Reeves 1989, Reeves unpublished data) have found the North Fork Elk River to consistently support an especially high diversity and abundance of native fish species. This stream has been used as a benchmark for identifying the factors that contribute to high-quality salmonid habitat (Siskiyou National Forest 1994). Scientists have noted that conditions in the North Fork partly result from a natural fire and large landslide episode that occurred sometime in the previous century or earlier. This event deposited large volumes of woody debris as well as sediment in the valley, and the complex and productive habitat in the stream result partly from the re-excavation of this concentration of natural woody material. These observations have provided new understanding of how fish habitat is shaped by natural processes, and new insights into how land management could be conducted in ways that might be less damaging and more concordant with long-term ecosystem processes (Reeves et al. 1995). Preservation of the catchment of the North Fork Elk could help ensure that this invaluable study site remains available for scientific research that can contribute to our understanding of natural recovery processes, and used as a model to help develop more successful approaches to protection and restoration of salmon habitats elsewhere.

Designation of the North Fork and its catchment as a Research Natural Area should be considered to secure its continued availability for research into natural ecosystem processes. Such a management classification would be entirely consistent with wilderness designation of the North Fork and the greater Copper Salmon area.

The proposed Copper Salmon wilderness is not unique to the region in terms of its scenery or natural history the way many past wilderness areas have been. The greatest value of the Copper Salmon area lies in the fact that it is indeed highly representative of an ecosystem and mosaic of natural forest habitats that was once much more widely distributed across the region, but has been severely reduced over the past century. The Copper Salmon area is now of high value for regional biodiversity protection and scientific research due to its recent history of relatively limited human alteration and due to its geographical context with respect to other important natural areas in the region. If protected this area could continue to serve as an invaluable model for scientific research, not just in fish and watershed ecology, but also in the critical subject of the ecology and conservation of the threatened Port-Orford-cedar.

The Copper Salmon area forms an important potential landscape stepping stone for old-growth-dependent species that must travel between the rivers and remaining old growth forests of the Klamath Mountains region. In this way, protection of areas like Copper Salmon helps increase the likelihood that the biota of larger wilderness areas elsewhere in the region retain or regain their full complement of native plant and animal species. Wilderness protection could confer significant scientific, ecological, and economic benefits that extend far beyond the borders of the Copper Salmon area, including maintenance of water quality for several important streams and rivers, protection of salmon populations dependent on that water quality, and subsequent benefits not only to human fishers but also to animals such as the bald eagle that depend on these wild fish resources.

Of the many ecosystem services and related benefits that the Copper Salmon area presently provides, virtually all (other than short-term timber values) could be placed at risk if additional logging and road construction occurs in the area. This risk is especially high because of the inherent to high sensitivity of the steep and erosion-prone slopes and soils. As a result of the potential large magnitude and long persistence of impacts from past road construction and timber sales, there is a high potential for cumulative impacts resulting from new disturbances imposed upon the persistent historical effects of past activities. We have few proven assessment tools that are sufficient to ensure that these problems can be reliably predicted and prevented. Moreover, loss of old growth forests in Copper Salmon would certainly result in further large-scale fragmentation of the Klamath Mountains that could place old-growth dependent species in further jeopardy.

Wilderness protection could thus confer many tangible benefits, not just inside the Copper Salmon area, but throughout the surrounding river basins, while avoiding the high cost, high risk of environmental damage, and social divisiveness associated with attempts to extract additional timber resources from this increasingly sensitive landscape.

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Acknowledgements -- I thank the Friends of Elk River and its supporting foundations for the opportunity to prepare this report. The Oregon Natural Heritage Program and the Powers Ranger District, Siskiyou National Forest provided helpful background information.