A Connectivity Corridor, Pollinator Garden, and Butterflies - Part I

by Dianne Keller

Mark’s rustic residence on the east slope of Mt. Ashland with his pollinator garden in the foreground.  Mark Newberger, July 2022

May 2025

Imagine walking along the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), a west coast, high elevation hiking route that extends from Mexico to Canada.  All you have for survival is carried in a heavy pack on your back.  The California border is seventeen weary miles behind.  The spectacular alpine scenery along the crest of the Siskiyou Mountains in Oregon has been amazing.  Feet are sore and thirst is nagging as you drop down off a hot, rocky montane chaparral slope.  Suddenly ahead a profusion of color and activity comes into view: wildflowers bobbing in a slight breeze, bees buzzing as they probe flower heads, and butterflies floating around in an abundance of sizes and colors.

Golden Hairstreak (Habrodais Brunis) on the slopes of Mt. Ashland. Rob Santry September 6 2024

Thoughts transfer to immediate desires as you see a water spigot at the side of the trail with a promise of cool, drinkable water.  Next to it sits a weathered picnic table in the shade of the needled overstory of several tall trees.  It’s time for a long-awaited break.  You have arrived at Mark’s Pollinator Garden where a number of needs can be met – quenching thirst, sitting at a picnic table while replenishing calories, and having Wi-Fi access to the outside world.  A real oasis.

This remarkable piece of private land belongs to Mark Newberger, a high energy, slight-of-build man who is passionate around all things environmental.  He is quick to grasp new ideas and think through best approaches.  He has created a homestead confined to two of his forty acres. The remaining 38 acres are kept natural where only projects which improve or maintain the habitat for native plants and wildlife take place.

Features of the Property

Pacific Crest Trail cutting through a Montane Chaparral ecosystem consisting mainly of giant chinquapin, snowbrush ceanothus, and Greenleaf manzanita.  David Lee Myers, August 4, 2024

Not only hikers find a natural haven on Mark’s property. Its five intact ecosystems – montane white fir forest, montane chaparral, and wet, moist, and dry meadows offer sustenance to all manner of flora and fauna.  Half the property is covered in stands of conifers.  In addition to white fir there is incense-cedar, Douglas-fir, and ponderosa pine. The chaparral hillsides, dotted with some granitic rock outcrops, primarily consist of giant chinquapin, snowbrush ceanothus, and Greenleaf manzanita, with the bright blueish-purple flowers of Siskiyou penstemon scattered among the bushes.  The dry meadows are abundant with coyote mint and yarrow while in the wet meadow horsemint thrives, its blossoms crawling with bees and butterflies. 

Mark’s property is located on the east side of Mt. Ashland a few miles down from the Mt. Ashland Ski Resort.  The mountain itself is part of an ancient granitic pluton which once formed underground and has now through erosion and uplifting risen to a height of 7,532 feet in elevation.  Weathering has broken the rock down into well drained, sandy soil.  His parcel sits astride the Siskiyou Crest with the terrain ranging from flat saddle areas to 70 percent slopes.  A unique feature of the property, sitting atop a ridgeline as it does, is that the south-facing slopes drain into the Klamath River in California while the north-facing slopes drain into the Rogue River in Oregon.  (Mergenthaler 2018)

The Siskiyou Crest Connectivity Corridor

The location of Mark’s property on the Siskiyou Crest makes it an integral part of an extensive high-elevation land bridge tying together the ancient Klamath-Siskiyou Mountains to the west with the younger Oregon Cascades to the east.  As the only transverse range in the Pacific Northwest, this east-to-west tending Siskiyou Crest area is one of the most important connectivity corridors in western North America, with local, regional, and national significance.  (DellaSala 1999)

Siskiyou Crest Region of southwest Oregon and northwest California is an important high elevation connectivity corridor between the Coast Range mountains to the west and the Cascade/Sierra Nevada mountains to the east. Mark Newberger’s property is located at the crest’s eastern edge. Map from siskiyoucrestcoalition.org, 2024

This land bridge is not only structurally connected, that is it has a physical relationship between landscape elements, but also functionally connected.  Functional connectivity is the degree to which landscapes actually facilitate the movement of organisms and processes between areas of intact habitat.  Working corridors support the movement of biotic processes (e.g. animal movement, plant movement, plant propagation, genetic exchange) and abiotic processes (water flow, energy transfer, materials exchanges).  All contributes to a complex terrain with varied climates that support outstanding levels of biodiversity and act as a critical ecological link between coastal and inland ecosystems. (Cascade-Siskiyou Connectivity Symposium Report 2022)

The maintenance and restoration of habitat connectivity along the Siskiyou Crest is essential to the recovery of several imperiled species (e.g., gray wolf, Pacific fisher, marten, northern spotted owl, coho salmon), and vital to plant and insect migration and dispersal. (Meiklejohn, et. al. 2019) 

Photo courtesy of Siskiyou Crest Coalition

This high elevation corridor is becoming more important as climate change increases temperatures. It allows animals and rare plants to take refuge from the heat of the lowlands by migrating north into high mountain habitats, or west by moving towards the Pacific Ocean.  (Siskiyou Crest Coalition 2025) However, free movement along this corridor has been compromised over the last 100 years by human activity. Recent awareness of the ecological values of this land bridge has made reducing obstacles a high priority.  

The following has occurred or is in being planned:

• Four hydroelectric dams were built along the Klamath River between 1918 and 1962. They severely impinged upon the free movement of water bound species.  The largest dam removal in U. S. history was completed in 2024, following almost 30 years of activism by down-river tribes. (Neumann 2024) While several smaller dams remain on tributary creeks, major migration barriers to fish and other aquatic species are gone on the main river.  Aquatic habitat and water quality are improving; in time, so should riparian habitat.  (Klamath River Hydroelectric Project 2024) 

• The main north-south transportation corridor on the west coast of the United States is Interstate 5. Its heavy traffic punches right over the Siskiyou Mountains cutting off free flow of flora and fauna between the species-rich CSNM and the Siskiyou Crest. The Southern Oregon Wildlife Crossing Coalition has been working with Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT), the agency responsible for construction projects on the I-5 corridor, to reduce these obstacles. (Grable 2022) The Federal Highway Administration made available $33.2 million in December 2024 to kick off construction on the first wildlife overcrossing in the state of Oregon. However, these funds are currently frozen.

Artist rendering from the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) shows what Oregon's first wildlife overpass might look like if it is built over Interstate 5 near Siskiyou Summit. It could be 150-200 wide or wider and connect with federal land on both sides of the freeway within the Cascades-Siskiyou National Monument. ODOT image, Ashland.News.com, March 26, 2024

• The bioregional Cascade-Klamath-Siskiyou Connectivity Symposium will be held May 28-29, 2025 at Southern Oregon University in Ashland. Participants will learn about projects in the region that are improving wildlife corridors and habitat connectivity.  Dan Roberts from ODOT will be giving a status report on the wildlife overcrossing funding. Learn more and register for the Symposium here.

Part II – coming next month

Learn why Mark won first place in a nation-wide butterfly garden of the year contest.

Literature Cited

• Cascade-Siskiyou Connectivity Partnership. May 2022. Cascade-Siskiyou Bioregional Connectivity Symposium Report

• DellaSala, Dominick et. al. October 1999. A Global Perspective on the Biodiversity of the Klamath-Siskiyou Ecoregion. Natural Areas Journal, 19(4):300-319

• Grable, Juliet. August 2, 2022. Rejoining a Landscape: Southern Oregon Coalition Moves Forward with I-5 Wildlife Crossing, Jefferson Public Radio

• Klamath River Hydroelectric Project. September 13, 2024 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klamath_River_Hydroelectric_Project

• Meiklejohn, Katie, R. Ament, G. Tabor. 2019. Habitat Corridors and Landscape Connectivity: Clarifying the Terminology, largelandscapes.org>wp_content>uploads>2019>06>Habitat-corridors-and-landscape-connectivity1.pdf

• Mergenthaler, Kristi. 2018. Siskiyou Summit: Newberger Baseline Documentation Report.  Southern Oregon Land Conservancy

• Rogue Valley Times. December 20, 2024. First ever I-5 Overcrossing Receives 33 million, rv-times.com/2024/12/20/interstate-5s-first-ever-wildlife-overcrossing-receives-33m-federal-grant/

• Siskiyou Crest Coalition. 2025. About Siskiyou Crest/Exceptional Connectivity, https://www.Siskiyoucrestcoalition.org/

• Southern Oregon Land Conservancy. 2025. About Us/Our Story, https://www.landconserve.org/