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259-foot ponderosa pine dies

Oregon tree was tallest of its kind for three decades

By MARK FREEMAN, Mail Tribune
Published: March 20, 2017, 7:53pm

MERLIN, Ore. — What used to be the tallest known ponderosa pine on the planet has died, and now its namesake campground is set to join it.

A beetle infestation has done in the 259-foot-tall ponderosa pine that was tallest of its ilk known for more than three decades before it was supplanted in 2011 by another tree in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest by about 9 feet.

It once was one of 61 “Living Witness Trees” tapped in 1987 as being around when the U.S. Constitution was ratified. Now its moniker is “hazard tree,” one of several dead but still-standing trees whose widow-maker capabilities have closed Big Pine Campground, the 12-space area near Galice where the tree resides, according to the Forest Service.

“It’s a hazard tree, so how do you reconcile that?” forest spokeswoman Chamise Kramer says. “It’s incredibly difficult to cut a tree that big, and some people might be upset by that.”

Local Angle:

Pine beetles claimed the life of Southwest Washington’s largest Ponderosa pine in 2015. Known as the Big Tree, the pine grew for an estimated 500 years or longer near Trout Lake in the present-day Gifford Pinchot National Forest. It was at least 200 feet tall and 22 feet in diameter. Like the Oregon tree, it was left standing to decay naturally.

So the forest’s Wild Rivers Ranger District now plans to rid the campground of its fire pits, picnic tables and other amenities and re-open the lands there for “dispersed” camping, just like anywhere else in the forest, Kramer says.

Forest Service requirements for addressing hazard trees don’t apply in the general forest, Kramer says.

The tree’s death has been met with dismay by big-tree hunters like Mike Oxman, the former owner of a Grants Pass tree service who now lives in Seattle.

“I wasn’t planning on this tree dying in my lifespan,” says Oxman, 65.

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