Goat Mountain Timber Sale

Mount Hood is peaking out behind a forested hill, framed by two trees in the foreground.

The Goat Mountain project is located between Goat Mountain and the Memaloose area in the Clackamas district as it intertwines with parts of the Clackamas Wilderness area, and neighboring BLM parcels.  The project includes parts of the Middle Clackamas, Lower Clackamas, and Lower Molalla River Watersheds and proposes to log approximately 2,800 acres of forest within Matrix, Riparian Reserve and Late Successional Reserve allocations.

Bark’s Concerns

This area is notorious for being a site where illegal and damaging activities regularly take place (illegal OHV trails, garbage dumping, illegal target shooting). Bark is concerned that opening up more forest through thinning and roadbuilding will exacerbate this situation.

Along with logging on nearly 3,000 acres, the Proposed Action includes:

  • Special forest product actions for “poles and boughs”.  
  • “Scenic vista management” by cutting some roadside vegetation that is blocking views of distant  mountain peaks.  
  • Mitigating damaging unauthorized recreation uses by placing boulders along roads, berming, obliterating old temporary roads and user created roads, closing system roads with berms, recontouring/decompacting, revegetating, placing large quantities of slash and removing trash.   
  • 1.4 miles of new temporary road would be constructed and 8.4 miles of existing temporary road alignments would be reused.
  • System road changes include decommissioning (0.5 mile), stormproofing and closing (13.8 miles), stormproofing already closed roads (13.6 miles), and installing drivable waterbars on open roads (7.4 miles).
  • Culvert replacement to provide better fish passage.
  • Adding wood to streams for fish habitat enhancement.
OHV damage at Goat Mtn unit 38

Resources for Comment-Writing

Roads

The Forest Service plans on building 1.4 miles of new temporary roads exclusively for this timber sale and rebuilding an additional 8.4 miles of “existing” temporary roads.

Also proposed are 0.5 miles of road decommissioning and 13.8 miles of road closures.