YOUR COMMENTS NEEDED BY DECEMBER 11

The Arapaho-Roosevelt National Forest has proposed the Thompson River Project for an area east of Estes Park, between U. S. Highways 34 and 36. Up to 9500 acres of National Forest land could be impacted by logging and other fuels reduction activities. Some of the proposed treatment units are appropriately located adjacent to private land and homes. Reducing fuels on these National Forest lands could complement defensible space created by private landowners, reducing the risk of homes being lost to fire. Unfortunately, there are also some serious problems with the project as currently proposed.

Please send comments to the Forest Service about this project by December 11th (more info below).

MUCH OF THE PROJECT IS IN AN INVENTORIED ROADLESS AREA. The project area contains the entire 5924-acre Hell Canyon Inventoried Roadless Area (IRA). Several treatment units are proposed for this IRA. Most of this acreage is not near any homes, thus logging would not help protect private property from fire. Conversely, logging would likely degrade or destroy roadless area values, such as primitiveness and high quality wildlife habitat.

THERE IS NO ECOLOGICAL OR PRACTICAL NEED FOR FUEL REDUCTION AT THE HIGHER ELEVATIONS OF THE PROJECT AREA. It has been mistakenly assumed that almost all of the Ponderosa pine/Douglas-fir stands on Colorado’s Front Range were historically maintained in an open (i. e., widely-spaced), “park-like” state by frequent low-intensity fires. Recent research as shown that this is likely to be false. Only the lowest elevation forests of this type, generally under about 7000 feet, had this fire regime.

Higher elevation ponderosa/Douglas fir stands likely had what is now called a mixed severity fire regime, under which there were moderate- and high-severity fires, where whole stands were sometimes replaced, as well as low-intensity ones. Unlike low elevation forests, these areas had higher tree densities, and more small trees as a part of the natural forest structure. Much of the Thompson River Project area, including a substantial portion of the roadless area, is located at these higher elevations, and does not need human intervention to restore ecological health.

Now that the 2001 Roadless Rule has been reinstated, it is questionable whether logging in much of the Hell Canyon Roadless Area would be legal. Under the Rule, logging in roadless areas is only allowed to restore ecosystems and to prevent “uncharacteristic” fire from occurring. Given that half or more of the IRA is within its historic fire regime and far from homes, much of the Roadless portion of the area is in need of no restoration or fuels reduction whatsoever.

ACCESS TO MANY OF THE PROPOSED TREATMENT UNITS IS LACKING.  There are no roads in the IRA, and some other proposed treatment units also lack road access. This will make it difficult to treat certain areas, as it would be impossible to bring in mechanical equipment to implement the project. If access across private land were granted, roads could be constructed to reach the interior units, but that could be expensive and damaging to soils, water quality, and wildlife habitat, particularly since much of the terrain is steep and rough.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:  Write to:  Dyce Gayton, Canyon Lakes Ranger District, 2150 Center Ave, Building E, Ft. Collins, CO 80526-8119. You can e-mail comments to:  dgayton@fs.fed.us. Be sure to include your full name and hard mail (postal) address. Your comments should be postmarked or e-mailed by December 11, but later comments will still be accepted.

• Insist that there be no logging in the IRA except within 100 yards or so of private land on which the owners have created or are creating defensible space.
• Insist that no new roads be built for the project. Mention that the Forest Service’s road system is already unmanageable, thus adding more roads is both undesirable and damaging. New roads would be difficult and expensive to construct, and also nearly impossible to completely close at the end of the project.
• Request that logging be limited to areas adjacent to private land, where it would complement defensible space work done on the private lands and thus do the most good toward reducing the fire threat to property.
• Insist that the Forest Service not spend limited taxpayer dollars logging backcountry areas, when there is an ongoing need to reduce fire risk immediately adjacent to private lands.

More information about the project and maps are available at:
http://www.fs.fed.us/r2/arnf/projects/ea-projects/clrd/thompsonriver/index.shtml

For additional information, call Rocky Smith of Colorado Wild at rocky@coloraodwild.org.