'
The Green Springs Mountain area is part of “the missing northwest quadrant” of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument. Located east of Ashland and north of Highway 66’s Green Springs Summit, the area includes Green Springs Mountain, Round Mountain, Sampson Rim, the Right Fork of Sampson Creek, the Little Hyatt Old-Growth Groves, Little Hyatt Lake (a small reservoir) and portions of the headwaters of Soda Creek, Sampson Creek, and Keene Creek. The wildest core of the area was identified in the 2004 book, Oregon Wild: Endangered Forest Wilderness, as the Green Springs Mountain unit of the South Cascades Wilderness proposal.
Fast fact: Governor John Kitzhaber wrote Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar in September 2011 to impress upon him the value of Green Springs Mountain as an area “worthy of protection” as an Oregon BLM “Crown Jewel.” Regrettably, the BLM still wants to log Green Springs Mountain, and push roads further into this area’s wild interior.
Why this place is important
A diverse group of scientists with considerable experience in the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument and surrounding regions concluded the Monument’s existing boundaries are unlikely to safeguard the area’s native species and natural processes from future decline, and unanimously recommended including the Green Springs Mountain area as part of their proposed “Rogue Valley Foothills to Plateau” addition to the Monument.
Wrote one scientist involved with the study, “Vegetation in this area is diverse, including the full range of plant communities celebrated by the monument proclamation: &lsquolsquo;a rich mosaic of grass and shrublands, mixed conifer and white fir forests, and wet meadows.’” The region’s combination of oak-savannah woodlands, which give way to conifers in higher elevations, are important for the area’s overall climate change resilience. Green Springs Mountain is recognized as vital habitat for dozens of particularly unusual birds and rare animals like Lewis’ Woodpecker, Great Grey Owl, Western Bluebird, Western Meadowlark, Northern Spotted Owl, and Pacific Fisher. The area's lower slopes also provide important winter range habitat for big game.
Recreational Opportunities
Green Springs Mountain provides abundant opportunities for hiking, horseback riding, cross-country skiing, bird watching, botanizing, mushrooming, and hunting. The Pacific Crest Trail crosses through the eastern portion of the area, offering easy hiking and ready access to strolling solitude or challenging off-trail rambles and scrambles.
The recently constructed Green Springs Mountain Loop Trail also provides excellent views across the southern Rogue Valley, south to Pilot Rock and to the southwestern portion of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument. Little Hyatt Lake (a small reservoir on upper Keene Creek) also offers fishing and quiet, small-craft boating opportunities.
These canyons, glades, and forest groves are a remnant place apart. But Green Springs Mountain – including the un-entered old-growth groves west of Little Hyatt Lake – is currently threatened with commercial logging, new road construction, and road reconstruction by portions of the BLM’s proposed Sampson Cove and Cottonwood timber sales. Five local and regional conservation groups are currently in court attempting to stop these timber sales. Noting how much of the larger “Dead Indian Plateau” region of Green Springs Mountain had already been roaded and logged by the early 1990s, even the Medford BLM production timber staff proposed a portion of this area to be designated an Area of Critical Environmental Concern. The proposal was rejected, however, by a BLM district manager who didn't want to remove the area from the timber base.
