(letters)

Forest Service on the Record:
We Protect Trees

I have always read Audubon with a sense of respect. The articles are interesting, informative, and sometimes hard-hitting. Never did I question the accuracy of the information presented.

"A Place Time Forgot" [March] leaves the impression that 50 to 80 percent of the Clearwater National Forest has been roaded and/or subject to timber harvest. This is impossible. Nearly two-thirds of the forest is designated wilderness or inventoried roadless. How ironic that the real facts support [the article's] opening: "In one of Idaho's remote reaches, there is a place that looks much as it did 200 years ago, when Lewis and Clark journeyed through." We are very aware of the cultural significance of the Lewis and Clark Trail. While we considered a range of options for managing the area, we opted for an alternative that does not include cutting units in close proximity to the trail. In fact, none of the harvest units should be obvious from the trail. They will appear in the background, thoughtfully designed to emulate natural openings. The article refers to agency plans to extract 62 million board feet of timber in the Middle Black area. In fact, the decision prescribed the removal of only 6.5 million board feet.

Based on the Audubon story, alarmed individuals have taken time to chastise the Forest Service. One flood of letters came from an entire classroom of second graders in Massachusetts. National forest management is changing. Clearwater National Forest managers are making responsible decisions that account for the cultural significance of the Lolo Trail and the values of roadless areas.

Larry F. Dawson
Forest Supervisor
Clearwater National Forest
Orofino, ID

An uninformed reader of your article "Eastward Ho" ["Roads to Ruin," March] would come to the conclusion that the Pisgah National Forest in North Carolina is planning a series of timber sales in existing roadless areas in the Wilson Creek, Lost Cove, Dobson Knob, and Linville Gorge Roadless Areas. This is absolutely not the case! Over the next three years the national forests of North Carolina have no plans to cut timber or build roads in any inventoried areas.

The Maple Sally Timber Sale referred to in the article occurs entirely outside of any inventoried roadless areas in the Pisgah National Forest. After public comments were reviewed and the environmental analysis completed, the final decision called for timber sales to occur on small areas, totaling 155 acres. The final project decision also designated 340 acres to be set aside for long-term protected old growth.

As manager and steward of the areas highlighted in your article, I want to assure you that we strive to balance the multiple uses on these publicly owned national forest lands in a careful, responsible, and sustainable manner.

Miera Crawford
District Ranger
Grandfather Ranger District
Pisgah National Forest
Asheville, NC

DAVID SEIDEMAN RESPONDS:
As Audubon was preparing "A Place Time Forgot," our research editor, Sydney Horton, placed repeated calls to Mr. Dawson, which went unanswered. In a good-faith effort to get his version of events, she spoke to a member of his staff, who confirmed much of the story's contents. Friends of the Clearwater (FOC), a local conservation group, verified them as well. Based on exhaustive surveys, the FOC concludes that a little more than half of the Clearwater's 1.8 million acres are still roadless, depending on which Forest Service figures are used. Much of the rest of the forest is roaded, and most of these roads are built for logging. It is true that after Audubon went to press, Dawson chose a 6.5 million board feet option, a commendable decision for which he deserves credit. The primary reasons the larger alternative detailed in the story (62 million board feet) was not chosen were public outcry and the work of groups like the FOC. It is still objectionable to cut large trees along the North Fork Clearwater, in some of the last habitat of its kind.

Mr. Dawson says he does not plan any logging in "close proximity" to the Lewis and Clark Trail and that "none of the harvest units should be obvious from the trail." As most would agree, close and obvious are subjective terms. Such logging mars scenic vistas by pockmarking the landscape, and causes considerable noise pollution. Timber cutting that is "thoughtfully designed to emulate natural openings" that are not "obvious" to visitors sounds like a Forest Service euphemism—i.e., "viewsheds and scenic corridors" designed to conceal logging activity from the public. It is unlikely that these areas—they range in size from 15 to 450 acres—will be missed by travelers on the Lewis and Clark Trail or by animals that depend on intact old-growth habitat.

"Eastward Ho" never said there were imminent timber plans in the Wilson Creek, Lost Cove, Dobson Knob, and Linville Gorge Roadless Areas. The only logging sale mentioned was Maple Sally, which could set a precedent for other sales in the area, given the aversion of the timber industry, much of Congress, and the Bush administration to the Roadless Area Rule, and their desire to ramp up the cut throughout the national forest system.

Audubon applauds Crawford's declaration that there are no plans to cut in the roadless areas and that the Maple Sally sale has been scaled back. At the time the magazine was published, the story's sources said they hadn't seen the final decision yet. (It bears noting that fierce public opposition helped achieve this decrease.) The Forest Service deserves praise for designating 340 acres of old growth for protection. But, again, how airtight is this protection?

Dawson's and Crawford's letters raise two central questions. First, how does such logging degrade vital connections of viable forested ecosystems that sustain birds and other wildlife? Punching a bunch of holes in the forest causes habitat to unravel like a moth-eaten blanket. Second, why are we logging these places at all? In the South, only 2 percent of logging is on public land. Nationwide, unprotected roadless areas make up only 2 percent of the land base, though they represent a third of the nation's major watersheds and are home to a quarter of its endangered species.

In a broader context, Audubon's forestry articles focused on the administration and Congress, not on local forest managers. Sweeping policy changes are stripping wonderful places, from North Carolina to Idaho, of permanent protection. In recent years the Forest Service has made sincere efforts to reform. Sadly, no matter how well local managers balance multiple uses while trying to safeguard sensitive areas, if Washington decides logging is the best course, the managers' hands are tied.

Happy Birthday, Refuges
I was pleased to read in them June 2003 issue about one of our great public jewels, the National Wildlife Refuge System. What a magnificent idea President Theodore Roosevelt had when he created it, simply for the protection of land and wildlife. And how much better our country and our society is for it!

Joseph Arnold
Jefferson City, MO

I read Audubon's "Safe Havens: The National Wildlife Refuge System Turns 100" with deep and very mixed emotions. My career with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spanned four decades, most of it with the refuge system. Since my retirement almost 10 years ago, I have continued work on the system's behalf with the National Wildlife Refuge Association and, more recently, with the Blue Goose Alliance. My mixed emotions come from the belief that your excellent publication and its writers continue to miss the mark concerning the underlying ills of our refuge system: [We must] promote the establishment of the National Wildlife Refuge Service as a separate agency within the Department of the Interior.

Our National Wildlife Refuge System can never reach its potential buried in the bureaucracy of the Fish and Wildlife Service. Nor can the apathy that surrounds it be overcome. While agency status will not be a panacea for refuges, it will put the system on equal footing with the other federal land-managing agencies, giving it the recognition it so richly deserves as the world's foremost assemblage of lands and waters dedicated to wildlife.

Phillip S. Morgan
Loganville, GA

Don't Forget to Write
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© 2003  NASI

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