Forest Plan Prompts Appeals for Revisions

The response by environmentalists and other forest users to the new management plan for Cleveland National Forest raises serious questions about the government’s ability to protect the 567,000-acre reserve with a limited budget.

The long-term Land and Resources Management Plan, enacted in June, is based on budgets a third larger than the Cleveland forest officials have had in recent years. And the budget for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 is expected to be slightly less than this year’s.

“We won’t be able to do the amount (of work) that’s called for,” said Mike Rogers, the U.S. Forest Service’s top official at Cleveland forest. “The plan is a goal. It gives (us) some desired objectives to aim for.”

The new plan is designed to guide use, management and development of the Cleveland forest for the next 10 to 15 years.

Improved roads, an expanded trail system, more developed recreation facilities and wider access for off-road vehicles are among the plan’s goals for the national forest, which stretches across Orange, San Diego and eastern Riverside counties.

Six Appeals to Plan

Six written appeals to the plan, ranging from a single-page, handwritten letter to a lengthy critique, are being sent to the U.S. Forest Service chief in Washington, along with replies from Zane G. Smith Jr., Pacific Southwest regional forester.

The formal appeals came from individuals, environmental groups and even a Forest Service biologist, and they covered a wide range of issues:

- The Sierra Club asked that the Sill Hill area in San Diego County’s Descanso Ranger District be designated as wilderness to protect its scenic, scientific, educational, historical and habitat value.

- Steve A. Loe, wildlife biologist for the nearby San Bernardino National Forest, asked for stronger protection and monitoring of wildlife populations. “The plans don’t describe how the Forest Service and the public are going to manage the plan, to take care of the wildlife” with a limited budget, Loe said in an interview.

- Montague D. Griffin of San Diego claimed that “the Forest Service failed to properly recognize and address recreational issues and needs. . . . Recreation was subordinated to economic return and ‘higher priority land and water uses.’ ” His appeal seeks more study of recreational needs, establishment of two new wilderness areas, a ban on livestock grazing and an expanded trail system.

- John R. Swanson of Berkeley asked the Forest Service to designate 254,000 acres--nearly 45% of the Cleveland’s area--as wilderness. “If this very unique and very fragile area is to survive to serve man and all life, this Cleveland National Forest must be established as a permanent preserve,” he wrote.

- James W. Smith, representing Mountain Relay Co. of El Cajon, asked for more attention in the plan to communications equipment. “By omission,” his appeal states, the plan has made no mention of existing facilities, “nor, as required by law, identified those electronics sites which will be needed in the future.”

- The Wildlife Society, a group of professional ecologists and managers, charged that the plan fails “to adequately describe the real budget situation” and its effects on the forest. The group wants “non-essential activities such as providing for increased fuel wood, grazing, recreation and public access” to take a back seat to wildlife monitoring and environmental protection.

“You shouldn’t spend money on anything new until you can afford to take care of what you’ve got,” biologist Loe said. “Our wildlife has been pushed to the very limit right now.”

Chief Will Decide

After receiving these appeals, Forest Service Chief R. Max Peterson will decide whether to order changes in the management plan, said Susan Marzec, spokeswoman for the Forest Service’s regional office in San Francisco.

Officials already are planning to hold meetings on the plan this year with forest users and others, Rogers said, to help establish budget priorities.

“We put the plan together based on what we knew needed to get done,” he said.

The plan projects an annual budget of $11.4 million to maintain and improve the forest, significantly higher than last year’s $7.8 million and this year’s $8.2 million. Although Congress has not yet acted on the Forest Service budget for fiscal 1987, Rogers expects the Cleveland to get about $7.9 million.

In his response to one of the appeals, Smith wrote: “The plan may not be fully implementable at current (1986) budget levels, but it is feasible to begin implementation with current funding.” Still, he stated, the slower schedule isn’t expected to impede environmental goals.

The forest plan calls for a greatly expanded program of controlled fires to reduce the risk of wildfire and, at the same time, improve wildlife and fish habitats. “We won’t be burning the number of acres called for,” Rogers predicted.

Fewer planned fires, coupled with a firefighting force already trimmed by federal budget cuts, “is going to significantly alter and hurt the ecosystem,” Loe said in an interview.

“That’s one of the most significant things in the world that damages habitat,” Loe said. “We worry about a bulldozer, but wildfire can take a hundred thousand acres and change it in a week or two weeks’ time.”

Besides his job as biologist in the San Bernardino National Forest, Loe serves as zone leader of the intergovernmental Southern California Wildlife Habitat Relationships Program, and as conservation chairman of the Southern California Chapter of the Wildlife Society.

“I couldn’t stand by--as the people’s biologist, really--and let the public not see what the situation really was,” Loe said. “We’re probably going to lose 20 to 30 species in the next 20 to 30 years in Southern California.

“There’s probably nowhere in the United States where we’re going to have an extinction rate faster than the Southern California coast.”

Species Threatened

Among the species threatened by rapid growth are flying squirrels, spotted owls and other birds, mountain lions, foothill yellow-legged frogs and southern rubber boas, Loe said. “Lots of plants may go that we never knew were there, because we haven’t had the time or money to study Southern California like we need to, before the decisions are made.”

Responding to appeals for more wilderness areas, Smith said other, less restrictive designations can both protect the land and allow many uses.

“By law, the National Forests are established and managed to provide for multiple-resource use, such as outdoor recreation, range, timber, watershed and wildlife and fish purposes,” the regional forester wrote.

Making the bulk of the forest a wilderness preserve, as Swanson requested, “would contradict this mandate,” Smith wrote.

Recreational uses, he also said, were studied in detail and balanced with other uses of the forest. Improving the trail system and public access to the forest are among the management plan’s objectives.

Electronic communications sites, Smith said, are among the “special uses (that) are allowed subject to their compatibility with other uses and the unavailability of suitable private land” under the plan.

Rulings on the appeals, once made by Forest Service Chief Peterson, will be subject to review by Secretary of Agriculture Richard E. Lyng. Additional challenges to the plan--which took five years of study, planning, hearings, comments and revisions--could be made in court.