Take Action: Let the Forest Service know that this type of project needs an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). Go to the bottom of this page for bullet points to include in your comments. Comments are due by May 11 and can be submitted here.
The Forest Service is attempting its largest timber sale in modern history. Innocuously titled the “Region 5 Post-Disturbance Hazard Tree Project,” the project would allow logging of fire-affected trees—so-called “salvage logging”—near roads and trails across California’s national forests. The project is so large that the Forest Service split it into three zones—North Zone, Central Sierra and Southern Sierra—with each zone covering multiple national forests. The North Zone is likely going to be of prime concern for North Coast residents as it covers our nearby forests, the Six Rivers, Shasta-Trinity, Mendocino and Klamath National Forests.
You would think that such a large project, with so many unknowns, would have had rigorous environmental impact assessment. Nope! Instead we get a skimpy Environmental Analysis that repeatedly concludes that the proposed logging would not pose any significant impacts.
Yet, the scale of the proposed logging is enormous. The project includes 5,780 miles of roads and trails. To put that into perspective, that is enough distance to go from Los Angeles to New York City! In the North Zone, the Forest Service is proposing to log up to 600 foot swathes across 2,708 miles of roads and 341 trails, equaling nearly 200,000 acres. Uncounted and undisclosed by the Forest Service are the number of landings necessary to pile the logs before they are hauled out of the forest. These are not dead forests. In many cases, the Forest Service would be logging forests affected by fire but still very much alive, with only a 60% chance of succumbing to fire wounds in the immediate future. Even individual trees that have been killed by fire play an important role in fire-adapted ecosystems. So, removing them would have a significant impact.
The Forest Service asserts that this aggressive logging is necessary to maintain its road and trail network. And we agree that removing trees that pose a hazard to road and trail users is appropriate. But the Forest Service has done the opposite: almost limitless logging that would enable long snaking clearcuts across our public lands when a focused and narrowly tailored project would be more appropriate.
While the Forest Service claims that this logging is necessary to keep roads safe, most of the roads slated for logging (81%) are poorly-maintained and rarely-used Maintenance Level 2 roads— agency-speak for roads managed for high-clearance vehicles and not intended for frequent travel. While some Maintenance Level 2 roads are important as ingress/egress routes in the case of an emergency, most serve no vital purpose. These roads are vestiges from another era, when National Forests were primarily managed for timber production, and we have way, way too many of them. Many roads that the Forest Service says are “vital” are in fact dead-end spur roads that are maintained for no other reason than to facilitate logging. Crisscrossing the landscape, these roads are a chief source of sediment pollution to local waterways, as they are often poorly maintained and constructed, with undersized culverts.
What’s at stake from all this logging? Post-fire logging adds a disturbance on top of another disturbance, making already erosive landscapes bleed more sediment. Nearly every major river on the North Coast would be affected—from the Smith in the north to the South Fork Eel in the south—impacting in total more than 239 sub-watersheds with increased sediment pollution, including 30 municipal watersheds. The project treatment areas contain multiple Tier 1 key watersheds and Critical Habitat for threatened and endangered salmon.
Northern spotted owls, Pacific fishers, Humboldt martens and other forest denizens would see their nest and denning trees logged. How many? It isn’t clear because the Forest Service will not complete surveys to protocol before logging is planned to commence. The plan includes areas that we know were used by northern spotted owls and other species that require large, old trees and forests for their survival. The project touches nearly every northern spotted owl Critical Habitat Unit in Northern California and also would allow commercial logging within Late Successional Reserves and Riparian Reserves.
There is another path forward. As EPIC told the Forest Service many months ago, when this was still a glimmer in their eye, the agency should focus efforts on high-use roads and other roads that serve a critical purpose, coupled with a review of the existing road network to see which roads were no longer necessary. That would have found common ground to better protect the remarkable region of the North Coast. Instead, we have a massive timber sale in fire-affected watersheds that most certainly will include environmental impacts to our national forests and important wildlife habitats.
Let the Forest Service know that their efforts should be focused on high-use roads and that more environmental assessment is needed before any more progress is made on this project. Take action today by commenting on this project!
Comments are due by May 11 and you can make comments following this link:
Here are some quick bullet points to include:
Indicate if your comments are specific to one of the analysis areas (North Zone, Central Sierra Zone, or Southern Sierra Zone) or specific to a certain National Forest or location. (We are in the North Zone).
The agency should focus efforts on high-use roads and other roads that serve a critical purpose, coupled with a review of the existing road network to see which roads were no longer necessary.
The project treatment areas contain multiple Tier 1 key watersheds and Critical Habitat for threatened and endangered salmon. It will potentially impact more than 239 sub-watersheds with increased sediment pollution, including 30 municipal watersheds.
The project will impact nearly every northern spotted owl Critical Habitat Unit in Northern California and also would allow commercial logging within Late Successional Reserves and Riparian Reserves.
The project area is too big and impactful for solely an Environmental Assessment (EA). The agency must conduct an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) before continuing forward.