Living -- For Now -- In Paradise

Living -- for now -- in paradise

Forests owned by the federal Bureau of Land Management make good neighbors -- until the chain saws show up

Thursday, August 16, 2007
SARAH HUNSBERGER The Oregonian Staff

Anita Vissell calls it Middle-earth.

The thick, mossy forest first lured her on horseback into its shady recesses when she moved to the rural Beavercreek area 27 years ago.

"It's so dark and dense," Vissell said, explaining why the wooded canyon still seems to her like something out of "The Lord of the Rings."

"The wildlife down there is just abundant, and it's quiet, and it's peaceful, and it's beautiful."
Over the decades, the forest, owned by the federal Bureau of Land Management, has been at the heart of Vissell's rural Clackamas County lifestyle, and she has come to think of it as her own private paradise.
The land is part of a vast checkerboard of small BLM forests across the county. While the public is welcome to explore any of the BLM's properties with minimal restrictions, most people don't even know they exist because of their obscure locations.
The result is that a small handful of mushroom gatherers, deer hunters, hikers, bikers and horseback riders have tens of thousands of public acres pretty much to themselves.
Unlike national forests, which cover huge swaths of contiguous land in eastern Clackamas County, most of the BLM properties are small and scattered, most ranging from a few dozen to a few hundred acres apiece. In all, the BLM owns more than 74,000 acres of forestland in Clackamas County.
And unlike state and county parks, which are well known and heavily visited, most of the BLM sites are nearly impossible to find -- even with the help of maps -- and have unmarked entrances and boundaries.
Many of the BLM properties are tucked away down narrow gravel roads, and others are not connected to any public roads at all, making them accessible only to property owners who live on adjacent land.
"These people, they've got their little piece of heaven," said Rudy Hefter, natural resources staff administrator for the Salem BLM office.

There is one caveat. Those little pieces of heaven are timber properties meant to generate logging revenue for the government, and it's only a matter of time -- usually every 60 years or more -- before the chain saws move in.
The logging of these properties has become an increasingly emotional and confrontational issue as more residential development spills into the county's rural areas, Hefter said.

"Let's say we're ready to go do some harvesting there, the first thing they do is go, 'Oh gosh, that's our backyard. You can't go mucking around in there,' " Hefter said. "And then they get their neighbors involved and their lawyers involved and the excitement is on."

Ann Marie Church and her husband, Robin, bought their house in rural Beavercreek two years ago in part because a wooded BLM property borders one side of their land. The Churches must cross the BLM land to get to their home from the road, and an easement allows their driveway to cut across public land.

"It's like going through the Sherwood Forest," Ann Marie Church said.

The property is scheduled to be evaluated this year for harvest. Typically that means cutting would be four to five years away, Hefter said.

"I knew that was a possibility when we bought the place," Church said. "I sure hope it doesn't happen, but we'll see."

"I would just be sick to look out there" if logging occurred, said Church's neighbor, Debbie Buchtel. "Thinning I wouldn't mind."

While the BLM no longer allows clear-cutting, harvest operations can range from light thinning to "regeneration cutting," which is one step short of a clear-cut and removes all but a few trees per acre.

"Some landowners, they think they have a good thing going, and they try do what they can to keep us out," Hefter said. "Even though there's a plan in place for us to harvest timber, there's a significant number of people who don't want to hear chain saws behind their house."

The Annie's Cabin timber sale on BLM land along the Molalla River drew particularly loud objections earlier this year.

The thinning operation is in the Molalla River Shared-Use Trail System, a network of trails built and maintained in large part by volunteers.

A Portland environmental group, along with the nonprofit Molalla River Keepers, objected to the sale because it would affect the popular trail network. As a result, regulators are requiring some of the harvest to take place using helicopters, minimizing the disruption to the trail system.

Problems in paradise:
Many of the lesser-known BLM properties also have their own trail systems, developed through the years by neighbors. Although constructing new trails requires BLM permission, most of the trails have been around for decades.

Vissell and her Beavercreek neighbors have carefully maintained the path network that winds through the wooded canyon near her home, connecting the BLM property to private timber properties on which the owners have granted permission for horse traffic. Vissell considers herself an unpaid steward, carrying a garbage bag to pick up trash and regularly trimming back branches to keep the trails open.

She's also given affectionate names to special places in the woods: Bear Track Crossing for the area where she once saw footprints in the mud; the Picnic Table for the spot where an old table sat two decades ago.

At another BLM site, there's a network of horse trails developed by boarders at the nearby Cascade View Stables. That perk is a big reason Debbie Schroeder bought the stable a few years ago.

But because most of the BLM properties are hidden, they also suffer abuse, from rampant litter and methamphetamine contamination to illegal harvesting of plants, mosses and firewood. Damage from all-terrain vehicles is everywhere.

The property near Cascade View Stables is home to a notorious garbage dump, where people back up their pickups to a steep ravine and empty mounds of trash into the forest. On a recent sunny morning, amid purple foxglove blossoms, the forest floor was littered with an old pair of sweat shorts, broken glass, fast-food cups, shotgun shells, beer cans and a glass marijuana pipe.

BLM district ranger Dennis Daraghy said the site has been cleaned up repeatedly.

At the property near Vissell's home, four-wheeler damage got so bad that BLM rangers posted the area as off-limits to motorized vehicles in response to neighbors' complaints. The knee-deep ruts carved by ATV tires have partially healed, but the damage is still evident. Vissell keeps a supply of the BLM signs on hand and posts new ones on tree trunks each time someone rips them down.

"I hope . . . people understand how important these little parcels are when people take care of them," Vissell said. "It's just a treasure to have."

Sarah Hunsberger: 503-294-5922
[email protected]