Forest Plan Seeks to Expand Logging

The U.S. Forest Service unveiled proposals this week that would allow the extensive cutting of old-growth trees in the Giant Sequoia National Monument east of Bakersfield and two other national forests in Northern California.

The plans, affecting more than 800,000 acres of public land in the Sierra Nevada, sidestep logging restrictions set recently to protect wildlife habitat and watersheds in all national forests in the mountain range.

In announcing the plans, Forest Service officials said they are intended for the reduction of fire hazards and scientific study, but environmental groups dismissed that claim as a barely disguised rollback of forest protections instituted under the Clinton administration.

“I think the Forest Service is courting and going to get a vigorous backlash from this kind of nonsense,” said Nathaniel Lawrence, director of the forestry project at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “It’s what the Forest Service has been doing for 80 years and why these forests are in such bad shape.”

In an environmental impact statement released Thursday for the 329,000-acre Giant Sequoia National Monument, Forest Service officials are recommending the most permissive of six alternative management plans studied. It would provide for commercial removal of trees up to 30 inches in diameter, including some young giant sequoias.

The monument was created in 2000 to protect the oldest, largest trees, and they would be spared under the current plan. However, critics of past logging have argued that by removing surrounding trees, the shallow-rooted ancient giants are more vulnerable to wind.

Until now, the Sierra Framework, adopted by the Forest Service last December as the guide for forest management throughout the Sierra Nevada, severely restricted cutting of trees up to 30 inches.

Critics said the provision for commercial logging is inconsistent with the purpose of the monument, created by President Clinton in a proclamation withdrawing about one-fourth of Sequoia National Forest from logging and mining.

The monument contains 38 of California’s 75 groves of the majestic giant sequoia that live several thousand years.

The proclamation said: “Removal of trees, except for personal-use fuel wood, from within the monument area may take place only if clearly needed for ecological restoration and maintenance or public safety.”

Sequoia Forest Supervisor Art Gaffrey said in a telephone conference call Friday that the proposal gives the Forest Service the maximum latitude for managing the monument to remove the most flammable trees and brush and restore forest health by thinning dense stands.

The largest forest fire in California this year burned across 150,000 acres of the Sequoia National Forest, including a small portion of the monument. Firefighters were able to keep it out of the groves of ancient trees.

“The worst thing that could happen in the Sierra Nevada is to do nothing,” Gaffrey said in the conference call. “If you chose only one method to try to manage this, you may not be doing the right thing.”

But the new proposal goes too far, said Jay Watson, California director of the Wilderness Society. “We’re not opposed to appropriate hazardous-fuel reduction inside the monument,” Watson said. “But by the sound of things, what’s being proposed is overly aggressive.”

In Northern California, the logging that would be conducted as part of a study in the Lassen and Plumas forests has incensed some members of the Quincy Library Group, a collection of local residents whose plan for the management of the northern forests was enacted into a law hailed by many Republicans as a model of forest stewardship.

The law called for pilot projects to clear out small areas to prevent the spread of fires, said Linda Blum, a member of the group. Blum said the study has hijacked the group’s work, which never contemplated the removal of large trees, which spotted owls need for nesting.

“Somebody in the Forest Service has it in their head that finding loopholes to cut big trees is what the forest industry and the public still wants,” Blum said.

The Forest Service plan, announced Wednesday in the Federal Register, would involve logging on 493,000 acres of Plumas and Lassen national forests north of Lake Tahoe.

The study would be broken into three sections with different intensities of timber removal on each. It did not specify a volume, but said that in the most intensive areas trees up to 34 inches could be cut.

Watson of the Wilderness Society said the proposed study was a good idea that has gotten out of control.

David Stone, forest ecosystem staff officer for Plumas National Forest, disputed that assertion.

He said the study was designed by scientists to test the effects of different treatment methods.

“The intent is if you don’t depart, if you just go down the road of the framework you’re not going to learn anything,” Stone said.

“They want to see what the owls will do?” said Blum of the Quincy group. “I know what they are going to do. They are going to fly away and not come back.”