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Please Forward Widely
The Shasta-Trinity National Forest Service is proposing to log "residual" old growth trees in a logging sale totalling more than 2,000 acres, threatening northern spotted owls, Pacific fishers, coho salmon, and other species in the East Fork of the South Fork of the Trinity River watershed. This area has already been heavily logged and roaded, and the proposed "East Fork Timber Sale" would contribute to significant adverse cumulative effects in the watershed, which is listed under the Northwest Forest Plan as a key watershed and is, in effect, a designated salmon recovery area.
EPIC won an appeal of this exact same timber sale in December 2003, when the Regional Forester found that it did not demonstrate compliance with requirements to protect listed salmon species and also did not adequately analyze the effects on wildlife of removing large, old growth trees. Making no changes to the sale, the Shasta-Trinity is now trying to push it through again.
Though presented as a "fuels reduction" project, the East Fork Timber Sale is clearly driven by the Forest Service's desire to produce timber volume: more than 10 million board feet would be extracted in this project. That's roughly two thousand log truckloads.
But by far the most valuable part of the sale are the remaining grand old legacy trees, last remnants of the enormous forests that blanketed this remote, rugged area until commercial logging began in the middle of the last century. EPIC and Citizens for Better Forestry, the local forest watchdogs, have repeatedly asked Donna Harmon, Hayfork District Ranger, to take the big old trees out of the East Fork sale. Ms. Harmon has refused even to discuss the idea.
The Forest Service won't drop the old-growth trees from the East Fork sale for the same reason that its "thinning" prescription would cut thousands of the mature trees that could become old forests in our children's lifetimes: timber corporations aren't interested in the small-diameter trees that actually need to be thinned to reduce the risks of wildland fire.
Nonetheless, the Forest Service still claims the purpose of the East Fork project is to prevent catastrophic fire, despite the fact that logging would occur many miles from even the nearest hamlet, deep in some of Northern California's most remote backcountry.
One particularly egregious aspect of the sale is its proposal to log in Riparian Reserves, areas set aside to provide for the survival and restoration of salmon and other aquatic species. Given the designation of the watershed as a Key Watershed, and the legacy of logging and roadbuilding which has already degraded its habitat values, it's very difficult to see how the East Fork sale could comply with the Aquatic Conservation Strategy, the part of the Northwest Forest Plan which is intended to ensure recovery of imperiled salmon species. Another big issue is that it would use tractor-logging on a vast number of acres, which causes soil compaction and erosion.
The Regional Forester, on consideration of EPIC's appeal of the East Fork project, agreed in December 2003 that the Shasta-Trinity NF had not shown that it would comply with Aquatic Conservation Strategy program requirements. He also concluded that the project didn't adequately document the effects on wildlife of removing an undisclosed number of big old trees. In a rare win for a timber sale appeal, he remanded the decision back to the Shasta-Trinity NF.
Hayfork District Ranger Donna Harmon responded by proposing the exact same plan again, claiming that all she needed to do was include a few things in the administrative record to bolster her claims of "no significant environmental impact." This does not wash.
This process is typically of the Shasta-Trinity's approach, and it's founded on their misconceived notion that nobody's watching, and if they are, they're too intimidated to say anything about their destructive programs. Help us prove them wrong.
Please write to the Shasta-Trinity National Forest today. Tell them that they need to prepare a full-fledged EIS (Environmental Impact Statement) to evaluate a project as big, as destructive, and as inherently controversial as the East Fork Timber Sale. Disregarding environmental analysis requirements with a blithe finding of "No Significant Impacts" is not acceptable when public resources like the South Fork Trinity River, its native fish runs, and its forest and wildlife, are at stake. Please also let them know that you favor restoration and real fire protection over industrial timber extraction.
Comments are due no later than February 23rd.