Owyhee BLM Juniper Mountain Old Growth Western Juniper Forest Destruction
It’s hard to articulate just how sickening and vile Owyhee BLM’s purposeful destruction of an old growth juniper forest on Juniper Mountain in the Owyhee Canyonlands by the Oregon border was.
BLM’s prescribed burning assault was purposefully designed to destroy ancient juniper groves. Younger trees amid old growth were cut down all around ancient trees. The cut junipers were left for a year or 2 so they would be tinder dry. This method of generating extreme damaging fire conditions is termed “jackpot burning”.
BLM’s fire zealot burn manager then oversaw both ground ignitions of the brown-needled downed trees and use of napalm-coated ping-pong balls rained down from helicopters to light the forest ablaze.
Old growth western junipers can be over 1000 years old (the record age is 1600 years). Many of the ancient trees in the Owyhee are impossible to age, as the inner wood is decayed. The decayed tree centers added to the BLM conflagration, as the flames erupted in the center of the trees and often burned them to skeletons, or piles of ash.
The prescribed burn was preceded by a rigged BLM EA analysis based on ridiculous vegetation models that modeled the ancient trees out of existence, ignored natural plant community succession, and found the Juniper Mountain landscape should nearly all be sagebrush instead. This is emblematic of the false narratives and alternative reality the agency vegetation models, land grant college range “research”, NRCS “Ecosites” and other pseudo-science artifices have created. The outcomes of these models and artificial plant community categories are used to justify landscape-level manipulation – because the complex natural plant communities on the land don’t fit the artificial model ideals. This is paralleled in the endless logging projects and burning projects claimed to be “restoration” being planned and conducted across vast areas of the Intermountain West Region 4 National Forests. The native plant communities on the ground are never satisfactory under the vegetation models and artificial “desired” conditions.
Photos below depict what took place on Juniper Mountain. All that beauty destroyed. All that biodiversity and wildlife habitat destroyed. All those ancient trees and forest groves destroyed – some undoubtedly pre-Columbian. All that carbon spewed into the atmosphere. All this based on BLM lies – interwoven with supporting lies from NRCS, and lies of “range scientists” from USDA in Oregon and the University of Idaho who are bonded at the hip with the livestock industry. This wanton destruction was also facilitated by the “release” of three Wilderness Study Areas on Juniper Mountain in the Owyhee Initiative wilderness deal where environmental groups let the livestock industry dictate what would and wouldn’t be “protected”. Here’s Sierra magazine on the persecution of juniper forests. This article too describes the BLM’s Owyhee ecocide.
Deep ash from ancient trees is all that remains. Biotic crusts, bunchgrasses and scattered shrubs – poof – gone. Clouds of ash billow up with each step across the land. Huge amounts of carbon were released into the atmosphere in the “prescribed burn” of “encroaching juniper”. BLM and the Forest Service prescribed fire “restoration project” documents drone on endlessly about how great their prescribed fires are because they burn lightly across the land just getting rid of “underbrush” and some downed wood. Another agency lie. Carbon, nutrients – all up in smoke.
Dense ash billowing amid a frail old growth skeleton. And in the background – it’s always a good idea to purposefully toast vegetation in draws – if you want to maximize post-fire erosion.
An old growth juniper that had been burned perhaps a decade before, Owyhee ranchers set fires in individual old trees. When BLM used to call them out on it – they said they were communicating with “smoke signals”. Look at the young junipers. Yet BLM NEPA EA and the passel of cattle ranching sycophants from the University of Idaho, NRCS and USDA Oregon ag. research “scientists” that had been circling around Juniper Mountain before the BLM burning claimed Juniper Mountain is a sagebrush site. They based this on ridiculously short fire return intervals that were based on land grant college “research”. Under the BLM models – the vegetation was to burn so frequently that trees couldn’t gain a foothold.
Someone had a sense of humor amidst the eco-carnage. These are stacked up giant puffball mushrooms that grow in some years in the understory of old growth western juniper forests mimicking a snowman. The ‘shrooms are a bit past their prime.
A burn around 3 years before in Pole Creek on the west side of Juniper Mountain, just below the new burn site. It was a dress rehearsal for the jackpot burning of old growth trees across Juniper Mountain. Note dense cheatgrass. Bulbous bluegrass is another highly flammable exotic dense growing grass that is now inundating large areas of this landscape.
Lactuca and cheatgrass weeds at Pole Creek old growth burn.
Yet another victim of the dress rehearsal Pole Creek burn.
Owyhee BLM has a LONG history of destroying western juniper forests for the livestock industry – during the 1960s-1980 or so heyday of past deforestation. The “eradication” plot was an old chaining. The range department liars from the University of Idaho knew all about these old “treatments” in many places in the Owyhees, and deceived their students on field trips here by claiming junipers were “invading” the old treatment sites. They also deceived the public by claiming the trees that were re-occupying old “treatments” were invading. This is the case in many places on public lands across the West where trees are claimed to be invading – they’re actually re-occupying the elevation and precipitation zone where a forest naturally occurs. BLM had ravaged the forest in past tree “eradication” efforts. Sites with young trees are also found to be “unhealthy” in BLM’s rigged rangeland health evaluations and NRCS Ecosites for the area. That’s what BLM did with Pole Creek and Trout Springs EAs as a justification prelude to jackpot burning and aerial napalming. BLM blames the trees, while cow damage gets off scot free.
Burn unit sign in a cow-mangled landscape. Instead of dealing with cows, BLM burns trees to promote forage grass. In this case, BLM;’s rangeland health analysis that preceded the fire, and was the basis for the ancient forest burn, found that the mere presence of trees meant the land was unhealthy, distracting from a need to seriously deal with the cow problem.
Old growth mountain mahogany jackpot burned.
Waiting for the jackpot burn incineration. Juniper tree in left of photo shows its laden with pale blue berries.
Road blading is a standard practice with BLM “prescribed fires” – so big fire equipment can be close by if the fire blows up. This had been a faint two-track.
A couple decades ago, BLM would claim that juniper was a major invader, but conceded that older trees should naturally occupy rocky outcrops and what they termed “fire resistant” sites like rimrocks. So what did Owyhee BLM do on Juniper Mountain? It targeted the very sites where it used to claim juniper should grow. Agency lies have gotten worse and worse over the years.
Existing mature sagebrush communities get burned too in the BLM zeal to destroy junipers.
A closer view of the chartreuse Vulpia lichen indicates mature and old growth juniper. This tree was partially burned in places by the BLM fire, and will succumb over time as many others did post-fire.
BLM futilely trying to count tree rings AFTER they destroyed the ancient Forest? Or some cutting edge University of Idaho Range Dept. “research”? This does show what happens to the decayed centers of ancient western juniper trees in a BLM napalm conflagration.
BLM jackpot-burned old growth mountain mahogany. The burn also destroyed lichens on boulders.
What a magnificent old juniper – now senselessly destroyed by Owyhee BLM.
And when you zoom in, you can see that BLM cut down and “jackpotted” dozens of smaller trees all around the ancient one they incinerated. Also, the black blob is a boulder with toasted lichen.
Weeks after the burn, puffs of smoke are visible in the distance in the juniper forest where “prescribed fire” was smoldering. Also note the gradations of forest destruction. Foreground – complete rendering of trees to ash – then scorching-killed trees in the mid-ground view.
Western juniper berries are critical winter food of flocks of wintering American Robins and Townsend’s Solitaires who survive the winter feasting on juniper berries. BLM’s War on junipers is senselessly wiping out this food source across southern Idaho, NW Nevada, a huge area of eastern Oregon and NE California.
Mountain Lion tracks in mud – snowed on and frozen overnight.