By many accounts, 2007 was a successful year of bringing stakeholders together, and building a common understanding of the need to better prioritize areas for possible treatment. The hurdle yet to overcome is convincing the U.S. Forest Service to implement these community-based priorities, and to focus its logging and other fuels reduction efforts around homes and communities.
Colorado Wild’s Forest Watch Campaign continues to fight the worst abuses, where the cash-strapped Forest Service continues to use scarce taxpayer dollars to propose logging far from communities or infrastructure, where it will do nothing to reduce wildfire danger.
Case in point is the Upper Eagle Fuels Reduction Project, which includes land from near Camp Hale to Lost Lake north of Vail. It is a massive over-reaction to existing and expected mountain pine beetle attacks on lodgepole pine trees. The proposed logging units are not even close to communities, and thus the project would not provide any fire risk reduction. The proposal calls for clearcuts over 250 acres in size, with several large clearcuts adjacent to each other. One road accessing the trailhead for the climb of a popular 14,000 foot peak would be at least partially closed during logging and hauling. Colorado Wild and other groups filed an objection to the project. The Forest Service withdrew its proposal, but is expected to reissue a similar one soon. We believe the Forest Service is inappropriately trying to authorize this project under the Healthy Forests Restoration Act, which requires projects to focus on protecting areas near communities.
Similarly, late last year, Colorado Wild led efforts to persuade the Forest Service to reduce or eliminate portions of the Thompson River Project in the Hell Canyon Roadless Area east of Estes Park. Thanks to our efforts, roughly 1000 acres of proposed treatments in the roadless area was removed from the project. Nonetheless, another 1077 acres of roadless forest remains threatened, most of which are more than a mile (and over at least one steep ridge) away from any private land. This sale, in which the Forest Service is abusing one of the well-intentioned exceptions to the current Roadless Rule, highlights the threat posed by the loophole-ridden Colorado-specific Roadless Rule now proposed (see page XX for more information).
Similar projects include the Sargents Mesa Timber Sale on the Gunnison National Forest near Monarch Pass, the Handkerchief Mesa and Burro/Blowout Timber Sales on the Rio Grande National Forest near South Fork, and an outrageous proposal by the Routt (northern Colorado) and Medicine Bow (southern Wyoming) National Forests to cut 300 foot swaths around all open roads on both forests. These backcountry logging proposals represent the worst of the dozens of projects currently under review by Colorado Wild.
Colorado Wild’s Forest Watch Campaign continues to fight the worst abuses, where the cash-strapped Forest Service continues to use scarce taxpayer dollars to propose logging far from communities or infrastructure, where it will do nothing to reduce wildfire danger.