Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center

KS Wild is the primary organization providing oversight and advocacy for more than five million acres of public lands in the Klamath and Rogue Watersheds. Our core geographic focus includes the Rogue River-Siskiyou, Six Rivers, Klamath, and Shasta-Trinity National Forests, the Medford, Coos Bay, and Lakeview BLM Districts, and the private timberlands along the Siskiyou Crest. Our paid staff of six, assisted by canvassers, interns, seasonal employees, attorneys, law clerks and volunteers, use administrative, legal and outreach tools to further a science-based approach to conservation.

The aim of our Conservation Program is to protect core roadless areas, important habitats and key wildlife migration routes within the Klamath-Siskiyou Ecoregion from unsustainable resource extraction and to restore those areas that have been impaired by a century of mismanagement. Our strategy is three-fold: 1) Public Lands Monitoring defends roadless areas and old-growth forests from damaging timber sales, off-road vehicle abuse, excessive cattle grazing and road-building through project tracking, comments, field monitoring, and strategic appeals and litigation; 2) Issue-oriented Campaigning advocates for the protection of intact roadless areas, protection of threatened and endangered species, additional Wilderness designations, and ecologically-driven redirection of land management activities through multi-stakeholder efforts; and 3) Education & Outreach involves educating the public, non-traditional allies and elected officials about the importance of functioning ecosystems, the threats to these ecosystems, restorative alternatives to bad management, and how a healthy environment helps create a healthy economy.

KS Wild has a solid track record as a leader among environmental groups in the Pacific Northwest. Without the advocacy of KS Wild, the majority of old-growth timber sales, inappropriate cattle grazing, off road vehicle misuse and other environmentally damaging activities in the Klamath-Siskiyou would go virtually unopposed.