Cleaning up the littered forest

It pays to advertise when you want to catch someone doing something that's not within the rules of good citizenship.

Back in October, Sisters area resident, Linda Daniel - who lives near Sisters Rodeo Grounds - noticed an assorted bunch of litter on Forest Service lands. Among the junk were two slaughtered steers.

That did not go down too well with the concerned citizen, and she wrote a letter to The Nugget about the grisly discovery.

USFS law enforcement officer Fred Perl, acting on Daniel's letter, began to plow a little ground, and within a short time he turned over the right rock and identified a nearby resident who had dumped the steers.

Perl issued a citation for dumping trash on USFS lands. The folks involved cleaned up the mess - and if it weren't for hundreds of other people who dump trash on the forest, that would have been that.

According to Susan Nicholas, USFS Coordinator for the newly formed temporary position dealing with "Human-caused Natural Resources Damage," the problems of people dumping trash and vehicles is enormous.

She thinks it's perhaps just out of laziness that many people find our forest lands a convenient place to dump their trash.

"I hired contractors to pick up 28 tires on the Sisters district before the snow flies," Nicholas said recently. "Our volunteers also had to haul away an old couch someone pushed over the side of Seven-Mile Butte, about a dozen syringes under the Lake Creek bridge near Suttle Lake, a beat-up old recliner, box springs and household trash along the 14 Road near Camp Sherman," she added.

Near the Cold Springs cutoff, Perl found so much debris near the 1012 Road that it will take another contractor to haul it all away: camper windows, broken aquariums, sleeping bags, some kind of heavy containers, blocks of styrofoam and a variety of household trash.

Out behind Crossroads there are unwanted appliances scattered all over the place.

"Curt Christopherson, of Sisters, came out to the Three Creeks Sno Park and showed us a huge load of construction debris that was dumped two or three years back," Nicholas said. "People like Curt are stewards of the forest."

Nicholas would like to see a team of concerned citizens organized, and have them known as "Volunteer Stewards of the Forest."

"It isn't just the Sisters district where we have a trash problem," Nicholas says. "The China Hat area and other places throughout the forest looks like a landfill at times: old hot tubs, household garbage, construction debris and even deer carcasses scattered all over the place. Last year we had to hire a contractor to tow away 12 vehicles, among them a camp trailer, two over-cab campers, along with vans, pickups and passenger vehicles."

Near Pringle Falls, fire crews found couches, beds, refrigerators and more household trash that Nicholas and volunteers hauled away. After hunting season, there are hundreds of paper plates and home-made signs left nailed to trees and sign posts, telling friends and relatives which way to go to find the right campground. And when you go into the camping areas you often can find fire-pits loaded with everything from half-burned plastic bottles to scorched beer and pop cans, odd pieces of left-over clothing, bedding and deer guts.

"A lot of times, people set fire to the vehicles, and that gets into serious and costly responses, especially if a forest fire gets going," Nicholas said, "and then we find where people have used the appliances for target practice, shooting them full of jagged holes, making them dangerous to pick up.

"We have the wonderful help of volunteers, Forest Service road crews, (fire) engine crews, biologists, foresters, patrol rangers, law enforcement and other people to help clean up and inform us of the messes."

When the cleanup crews run into unidentified liquids and other debris, the USFS is forced to turn to hazmat technicians to identify the suspicious materials. That service does not come cheap.

"The best way to put a stop to this problem in the urban interface is closing user-created roads, education and law-enforcement," Nicholas says. "If anyone discovers someone dumping debris of any kind on Forest Service or other public lands, they should contact a law-enforcement agency immediately - garbage attracts garbage."

Author Bio

Jim Cornelius, Editor in Chief

Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.

• Email: [email protected]
• Phone: 5415499941