**Testimony of Jim Rogers --- Port [\<\<]{.mark}Orford[\>]{.mark},
[\<]{.mark}Oregon[\>\>]{.mark} --- Copper Salmon Wilderness Hearing**

[\<\<]{.mark}U.S.[\>\>]{.mark} Senate Committee on Energy & Natural
Resources

Subcommittee on Public Lands & Forests

September 20, 2007

**My name is Jim Rogers. I'm a Consulting Forester from Port Orford,
Oregon.\
I would like thank Chairman Wyden for introducing the Copper Salmon
Wilderness Act and the Senators on this Subcommittee for the
opportunity\
to testify today.**

**Port Orford is located along a remote stretch of Highway 101 known as
America's Wild Rivers Coast --- and our weather is every bit as wild as
our rivers.**

**I'm here from Curry County on behalf of Friends of Elk River, Trout
Unlimited, Campaign for America's Wilderness, a coalition of sportsmen,
and a Who's Who list of national, State, and local public officials and
environmental organizations, who all ask you to protect Elk River** ---
and 44 miles of crystalline headwater streams --- **by designating the
13,700 acre Copper Salmon Wilderness Area.**

**In our watershed, ancient stands of Port-Orford-cedar, Douglas-fir and
Western hemlock withstand hurricane-force winds and more than 120 inches
of annual rainfall. Several endangered species including marbled
murrelets, spotted owls, bald eagles and coho salmon find refuge here.
Elk River provides spawning and rearing grounds for winter steelhead and
big 40 to 50 pound Chinook salmon. Black bear, mountain lions, and
elusive ringtail cats still wander the precipitous mountains lush with
wild rhododendrons and massive old-growth trees --- trees that sometimes
grow 300 feet tall and 10 feet in diameter.**

**Renowned for its remarkable water clarity, the Wild & Scenic Elk River
is perhaps the healthiest habitat in the lower 48 states for anadromous
fish. This watershed is a place like no other, and in my years as a
forester I've seen a lot of places.**

Graduating from the SUNY College of Forestry at
[\<\<]{.mark}Syracuse[\>]{.mark}, [\<]{.mark}New York[\>\>]{.mark}, in
1964, I began my professional forestry career working for Weyerhaeuser
in [\<\<]{.mark}Aberdeen[\>]{.mark}, [\<]{.mark}Washington[\>\>]{.mark}.
Next I joined the U.S. Forest Service where my job was to lay out and
appraise timber sales. Four years later I became the Timber Manager for
Western States Plywood Cooperative and moved my family to Port Orford.
It's here that my life started taking unexpected twists and turns.

**As timber manager for Western States Plywood Cooperative, my
responsibilities were bidding on Siskiyou National Forest timber sales
and then supervising the road construction and logging activities that
followed. One notorious sale was the Copper Mountain Timber Sale in the
upper Elk River watershed. Walking among huge Douglas-fir and
Port-Orford-cedar trees in the silence of the mossy forest along the
North Fork of Elk River, I felt a quick pang of remorse; but my
professional training quickly suppressed it and I began counting how
many #2 Peelers there were, picturing the grins on the faces of the mill
workers when they saw these huge Doug-fir logs going through the lathe,
and the smiles on the faces of the Japanese log buyers when the
priceless Port-Orford-cedar was safely in the holds of their ships.**

**Right off, things went awry. Even before the logging took place there
were landslides, and then a large culvert washed out sending thousands
of cubic yards of mud and debris directly into the North Fork. One
afternoon when the logging crew was yarding the logs in Unit 6, a
windstorm came in and blew down the entire buffer we'd left along the
river. I stood in awe as 18 acres of enormous old-growth trees crashed
to the ground like so many pick-up sticks. The following year several
more acres of Unit 6 slid straight down into the North Fork of Elk
River.**

Today the abandoned spur roads that led to these harvest units and to
other similar clearcuts, haven\'t been passable in decades, and the
fully re-grown plantations are too steep to walk on, not to mention
manage using conventional methods.

However, as a result of road construction done 40 years ago, deep holes
in the lower reaches of [\<]{.mark}Elk River[\>]{.mark} are still
filling in with every winter storm. Road failures dump literally tons of
rocks into the river; this coarse sediment fills the deep holes where
the trophy-size salmon hide from view in the cold mountain water.
Washouts also dump fine sediment into the streams, smothering salmon
eggs and destroying the low-gradient productive flats that scientists
consider barometers of watershed health.

**The reason that Elk River was the last south coast watershed to be
logged became obvious. Not only was it the most dangerous and the most
expensive watershed to work in --- more often than not --- serious
ecological damage resulted from building roads and logging in this
extremely steep, rough, unstable country.**

Finally, after seven years with Western Sates Plywood, I felt I had no
choice but to disagree with my timber industry colleagues. I began using
my on-the-ground experience and professional knowledge to save the most
valuable fishery streams in the Elk River watershed. My new colleagues
turned out to be fish biologists and fishermen. Working from my cabin in
a voluntary capacity, I shaped a broad coalition of diverse groups
including the League of Women Voters, the Longshoremen's Union, the
Independent Troll Fishermen of Oregon, the Confederated Tribes of Coos,
Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians, and others. This group --- the first
of its kind --- successfully lobbied for permanent protection of the
fisheries of the middle stretches of the Elk and Sixes Rivers. In 1984,
after 10 years of effort, we saw the 17,000 acre Grassy Knob Wilderness
Area established. Grassy Knob Wilderness was the first Wilderness Area
in our Nation created expressly to protect fish.

The following year, the Forest Service undertook an extensive study of
the entire watershed. Among many things, they discovered that the most
productive fish spawning tributary was the North Fork of Elk River, an
area that was not included in the Grassy Knob Wilderness. Astonishingly,
despite this knowledge, the Siskiyou Forest Plan called for logging and
roading two-thirds of the [\<]{.mark}North Fork[\>]{.mark} drainage.

Friends of Elk River monitored those USFS timber sales and we challenged
in court any sales that were unlawful; but our hands were tied when the
Section 318 Rider and the Salvage Rider exempted all sales from
environmental appeals. There was nothing we could do as loggers and road
builders went back into the North Fork and clearcut healthy old-growth
trees that were holding together the extremely steep mountainsides in
the [\<]{.mark}Elk River[\>]{.mark} watershed. When it came time to cut
those units, even one of the timber buyers tried to find a way out of
logging the resurrected sale.

**Indiscriminate incursions notwithstanding, Elk River watershed remains
one of the most intact low-elevation temperate rain forests
[in]{.underline} [the]{.underline} [world]{.underline}. Although the
entire area has been off-limits to logging for the past 13 years, there
will inevitably be continued attempts to go back after the North Fork's
timber, each furtive attempt further damaging and eventually irreparably
destroying our world-class salmon fishery. The only way to really
protect this unique, extremely important area for perpetuity is by
awarding it Congressional protection as Wilderness.**

There is no matrix in Copper Salmon. However, as was the case with the
Grassy Knob Wilderness Area, a few old timber plantations --- the legacy
of imprudent management that took place several decades ago --- remain
inside the Copper Salmon Wilderness. Including these re-grown
plantations and using main roads as the Copper Salmon Wilderness Area
boundary, circumvents high-priced land surveying and mapping expenses.
It's the no-cost, sensible way to go that best safeguards the North
Fork's ecosystem and watershed values. All of the areas within the
proposed Copper-Salmon Wilderness area meet the criteria of the
Wilderness Act.

According to ecologist Dr. Christopher Frissell, "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." Dr. Frissell conducted a detailed analysis of the
ecological values of the Copper Salmon area. His report is attached to
this testimony.

**The Copper Salmon Wilderness proposal started locally, from the ground
up.\
Our rural community is united in support of wilderness designation for
the Copper Salmon area. This is why Mayor Auborn and I traveled across
the country --- from shore to shore --- to explain to you in plain
words, that the ecology and the economy of our remote fishing community
are deeply interconnected. Our community depends on the health of Elk
River watershed and the world-class fishery provided by the North Fork
of Elk River.** We also know that just as our economic wellbeing is
bound to our wild rivers and to our forested watersheds, our wellbeing
is also dependant on the clean air and clear water that these forests
provide.

**From retirees to schoolchildren, all facets of our coastal community
support wilderness designation for the Copper Salmon area. Church
groups, business leaders, fishermen, artists, and thousands of visitors
who travel great distances to smell the sea air and glimpse the area's
unparalleled beauty, join me in urging you to release us from the old
boom and bust cycle of resource extraction, and to make our vision of
economic stability a reality by establishing the Copper Salmon
Wilderness Area.**

**Please protect this gem.**

**Thank you**. I appreciate the opportunity to speak before your
committee.