Conservation News
Logging Plans Land Sierra on "Threatened" List
By Don Thompson, Associated Press
Submitted by Bruce Dau
Logging Plans Land Sierra on "Threatened" List
By Don Thompson, Associated Press
Submitted by Bruce Dau
A plan to triple logging in 11.5 million acres of Sierra Nevada national forests has landed the area atop an environmental group's new list of the 10 most threatened wild places in California. As it has each of the three years it has produced the list, the California Wilderness Coalition accused the Bush administration of targeting the state's natural resources, a charge denied by a U.S. Forest Service official.
"Many of California's wild areas that Congress is now considering for permanent protection are simultaneously being targeted by the Bush administration for logging or energy development," the coalition said in releasing its list last week. Only three of the 10 locations are new this year, including the Sierra Nevada national forests. The other new areas are the Furnace Creek area in the White Mountains, east of the Sierra Nevada, and the Golden Trout Wilderness Addition area, southeast of Fresno. Four of the 10 sites are in Southern California, most threatened by heavy development there.
The Sierra Nevada national forests topped the list after Forest Service officials recently revised a management plan that had been approved in the waning days of the Clinton administration. Jack Blackwell, who heads the Forest Service's California region, last month announced changes that would triple logging and allow the cutting of larger trees, steps that he said are needed to prevent the sort of devastating wildfires that swept Southern California last fall. Environmental groups are appealing that decision to the Forest Service's Washington, D.C., headquarters, and are threatening to sue over the issue.
Forest Service official Matt Mathes said the decision was not connected to the politics of the Bush administration. "This is a decision that was made by career Forest Service employees who are ecologists, biologists, foresters, soil scientists, hydrologists and fire specialists here in California," Mathes said.
As for the other new areas, the environmental group said the Furnace Creek area is a rare desert stream threatened by illegal off-road-vehicle trails, and the group said salvage logging in the proposed Golden Trout Wilderness Addition area threatens California's imperiled state fish. Also on the endangered list is the eastern part of the Los Padres National Forest. The environmental group cited the Forest Service's study of the potential for oil and gas development, which the coalition said would threaten endangered species habitat, including that of the California condor.