Siskiyou Crest: California’s next National Monument?

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The Siskiyou Crest is a splendid refuge, especially if you’re a pacific fisher or a mountain lion. The east-west range links high-altitude habitats, providing a migratory path for animals that don’t like to venture down to the lowlands. Hundreds of species, such as the Siskiyou salamander, exist nowhere but in this ecological crossroads along the California-Oregon border.

Now a team of activists and scientists, spearheaded by the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center, are pushing for federal recognition of the area as a national monument.

It may be an uphill battle: compared with such national jewels as Yellowstone, with its burbling geysers, or Glacier National Park with its roaring grizzlies, Siskiyou has garnered little attention.

Today, a group of Siskyou fans will hike into the forest, snapping shots of rare wildflowers and sweeping vistas on a nine-day, 90-mile expedition. The project’s motion-detecting cameras will aim to capture shots of rare carnivores such as the elusive wolverine.

‘The Siskiyou Crest is a world-class landscape -- an epicenter of biodiversity and a place deserving of federal protection,’ said Laurel Sutherlin, a grass-roots organizer with KS Wild and the trip’s leader. But the crest is also ‘a little known area that few people have experienced firsthand,’ Sutherlin noted.

-- Amy Littlefield

Photo: The Siskiyou Crest is home to many rare species of wildflowers. Credit: http://www.siskiyoucrest.org/; used with permission