A massive clearcut proposed for national forest lands next to Yellowstone National Park, along with an even larger logging project, have been dropped for the time being by the U.S. Forest Service.
In announcing that, the Forest Service said the delay was due to staffing issues that prevented the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from completing a biological opinion on the project.
According to the Center for Biological Diversity, the project called for clearcutting more than 4,600 acres of forest, logging across an additional 9,000 acres, and bulldozing up to 56 miles of road on lands just outside Yellowstone in the Custer Gallatin National Forest.
In April the Center for Biological Diversity, WildEarth Guardians, Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Native Ecosystems Council challenged the South Plateau project, saying it would destroy wildlife habitat. The groups claimed that the logging project would have also destroyed the scenery and solitude for hikers using the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail, which crosses the proposed timber-sale area.
“This is a good day for the greater Yellowstone ecosystem and for the grizzlies, lynx, and other wildlife that call it home,” Ted Zukoski, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, said last week. “The Forest Service may revive this destructive project in a few months, but for now this beautiful landscape is safe from chainsaws and bulldozers.”
In response to the group’s challenge, the Forest Service said it was withdrawing the South Plateau project until after it issues a new management plan for the Custer-Gallatin National Forest this summer. Then it plans to prepare a new environmental analysis of the project with “additional public involvement” to ensure the project complies with the new forest plan.
“This was another one of the Forest Service’s ‘leap first, look later’ projects where the agency asks for a blank check to figure out later where they’ll do all the clearcutting and bulldozing,” said Adam Rissien, a rewilding advocate at WildEarth Guardians. “Logging forests under the guise of reducing wildfires is not protecting homes or improving wildlife habitat, it’s just a timber sale. If the Forest Service tries to revive this scheme to clearcut native forests and bulldoze new roads in critical wildlife habitat just outside of Yellowstone, we’ll continue standing against it.”
The project violated the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to disclose precisely where and when it would bulldoze roads and clearcut the forest, which made it impossible for the public to understand the project’s impacts, the groups said in their April objection. The project allowed removal of trees more than a century old, which provide wildlife habitat and store significant amounts of carbon dioxide, an essential component of addressing the climate emergency.
“The South Plateau project was in violation of the forest plan protections for old growth,” said Sara Johnson, director of Native Ecosystems Council and a former wildlife biologist for the Custer Gallatin National Forest. “The new forest plan has much weaker old-growth protections standards. That is likely why they pulled the decision — so they can resign it after the new forest plan goes into effect.”
“The Forest Service needs to drop the South Plateau project and quit clearcutting old-growth forests,” said Mike Garrity, executive director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies. “Especially clearcutting and bulldozing new logging roads in grizzly habitat on the border of Yellowstone National Park.”
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Comments
This is another example of why we need to expand Yellowstone National Park to incorporate adjacent national forest and BLM lands, as well as key undeveloped private lands. Even wilderness areas outside the park — although they do not allow logging — are open to harmful activities such as livestock grazing, slaughter of genetically unique Yellowstone bison, and trophy hunting for predators such as wolves, coyotes, and mountain lions.
Kellett is uninformed. Opening old growth forest areas is beneficial to wildlife with sun and forbs providing food for all the species he thinks he supports. Think of all the wasted wood and wildlife that will be destroyed in the coming fires. It's (people) like this that have caused massive destruction of forests across the west. This smells of another Biden interference boondoggle that won't allow professional agencies to do the right thing all to appease stupid people living in cities. The same people who want wolves moved to Colorado. I hope these people enjoy lumber prices when they want to build. National forests were created to manage resources Lumber is a big part of that. This comment was edited to remove gratuitous language.--Ed
oh yea the earth and environment are sooo much healthier when managed by humans and profit. Classic corporate greed! Shame on you pawn
Let the Forest Service manage the forest. Most people don't understand the reasons, Animals will still utilize the land whether it's logged, burnt out or left.
What next,, save a corn stalk! Don't eat corn??? It's renewable!
Managing forest through clear-cutting can increase species diversity.
So, Michael Kellett is "uninformed" and "clear-cutting" old growth forest is beneficial to wildlife? Really? It "can increase species diversity" and prevent "all the wasted wood and wildlife that will be destroyed in the coming fires" will it? So, since you're so sure, I bet you might have some idea who is going to start some of those "coming fires" don't you? Yeah, it's true some of the comments here smell; but, I'm not sure it has anything to do with Biden at all. I've also spent plenty of time around the aforementioned "professional agencies" and they're sure not immune to either bad decisions or infiltration by local knuckleheads.
Lodgepole pine is a species that historically is fire dependent. In the last century of fire suppression man has created unhealthy, overly dense forests that are extremely susceptible to mountain pine beetle infestations and catastrophic wildfires because we don't let the fuel loadings and tree densities control themselves naturally. Our options now are to let catastrophic wildfires completely scorch the earth (they burn hotter and longer with decades of unburnt fuel which destroys everything down to mineral soil) or thru large scale mechanical treatment also know as logging. Clearcuts provide fuel breaks, they allow for beneficial low intensity fires and increased forage opportunities for wildlife. All those roads will likely be decommissioned and rehabbed to a natural state (depending on the Custer-Gallatin Forest Plan) and will allow young and healthy lodgepole pine to regrow. So I guess let's fight this and wait for another wildfire to decimate the area so that it looks like a moonscape for the next 50 years?
can't we just let the forests be? Is a big pile of cheap lumber so important to future generations? Im sure those burning the rainforest feel like their doing a bang up job too. Hands off. go find another way to cut a paycheck.
Hey Al --- Sorry - maybe the part of your post that actually made sense was in the deleted 'gratuitous language'. It sure wasn't in the part where you attempted to push clear cutting as a way to improve flora and fauna.
Not a fan of clear cutting for firemanagement but it does provide an important renewable resource.
https://twosidesna.org/paper-production-supports-sustainable-forest-mana...
It is astonishing that in this era of climate change, the loss of biodiversity, and the degradation of natural green spaces, people are still defending clearcut logging, the most destructive type of logging.
Clearcutting worsens wildfire risk, drives out wildlife, degrades the soil, spreads invasive species, and it even provides few jobs since it is highly mechanized. The tired claim that we are cutting less wood than is growing ignores the fact that America's forest biomass is less than half of what it was in 1600, and these forests are highly fragmented and degraded.
The fact that people are perpetuating forest industry propaganda on a national parks website is the legacy of a century of disinformation from this corrupt and destrutive industry.
Michael, do you have some evidence we aren't planting more than we harvest?
EC,
There are three key points here:
1. We are already at a huge carbon deficit in terms of forests. Half of the carbon that was stored by our forests in 1600 is now in the atmosphere, fueling climate change. Any logging we do is setting back the ability of the forests to reabsorb this carbon and keep it out of the atmosphere. We need to increase forest carbon storage, and that means reducing the amount of logging so we are increasing standing forests. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/ffgc.2019.00027/full
2. Conventional wisdom holds that forestry is fine as long as new trees are planted to replace the trees that were cut. But plantation is not a forest, any more than a corn field is a prairie. Among other things, plantations:
• store less carbon https://media.nature.com/original/magazine-assets/d41586-019-01026-8/d41...
• have lower biodiversity https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10531-010-9936-4.pdf
• reduce soil productivity https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1466-8238.2011.00690.x
• have a higher fire risk https://today.oregonstate.edu/news/high-wildfire-severity-risk-seen-youn...
• are more vulnerable to insects and disease https://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/sustain/report/pdf/chapter_17e.pdf
than natural forests.
3. Although the overall forest acreage has remained relatively steady at 25% below the acreage in 1600, the integrity of these forests is declining due to logging, roadbuilding, urban sprawl, and other development. https://www.fs.usda.gov/treesearch/pubs/5196 In the southern U.S., natural forests are being logged four times faster than South American rainforests and much of this is being converted to inferior plantations. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/342/6160/850
Given how long it takes a tree to grow to a havestable height, harvested vs planted is perhaps not the best judge, especially if the harvested are old growth.
In other words you don't have anything to dispute we are plantomg more than we are cutting. Your articles are interesting but many make the questionable link of correlation and causation. They also fail to quantify the signifcane of the differences especially in the overall scheme of thiings nor balance them against the benefits the logging provides. 1000, board feet of lumber has already gone from $304 to $1,500 under Biden. Think what will happen to the cost of construction and paper products if we substantially reduce logging futher.
Better you blame Trudeau and Trump, EC....
https://www.reuters.com/article/sponsored/skyrocketing-lumber-prices
Why weren't they sky rocketing when trump was in office? And no matter the current cause, there is little doubt that ending clear cutting would make matters worse. But you are right, I should have said "during Biden" rather than under. I don't know that any of his specific polocies are a near term cause but certainly they haven't been a near term benefit.
A lack of clearcutting or other timber supply is not the reason lumber prices are high. It is inadequate mill capacity to meet a COVID-related spike in demand. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-20/lumber-s-version-of-a...
Aside from this issue, responsible landowners avoid clearcutting because it causes long-term degradation of the forest.
I'm sorry, Mr. Kellett; but, you're probably not going to win over your detractors by informing them that clearcutting causes the degradation of forests. If there's anything the past few years have taught us, it's that rightwing republicans actually like and even advocate degradation, any kind, any time, the more the merrier. So, telling them that clearcutting causes degradation merely puts you in one of those "never wrestle with a pig because you both get all dirty and the pig likes it" situations.
I live in an area where random areas of clear cutting are obvious on mountains and hillsides we observe driving down the road. One would think that someone with a personal vested interest in real estate sales would - at least - admit that buying property with a view of a partially scalped hillside wasn't popular, even setting aside any other concern other than aesthetics.