Guest guest Posted August 1, 2008 Report Share Posted August 1, 2008 --Today for you 33 new articles about earth's trees! (378th edition) --You can now RSS tree news in a regional format at: http://forestpolicyresearch.org --To Subscribe / to the world-wide email format send a blank email to: earthtreenews- OR earthtreenews- In this edition: PNW-USA Index: --Alaska: 1) Climate change means Spruce now losing out to Birch --Washington: 2) Saving Heybrook Ridge, 3) Gotchen reserve thin tested by fire, 4) Natural Capital of Puget Sound, 5) Tualip tribe chops down forest, 6) A whole new highway? 7) State's Blanchard forest logging plan is wrong according to the judge, --Oregon 8) Pitchfork rebellion rally in Portland, 9) Bark's road truthing rocks! 10) Letter to editor dispute, 11) Wolf Creek to lose 2,000 acres of forests / old growth? 12) Update on stopping timber sales in the Siskiyous, 13) Stop the Wolf Pup timber sale, --California: 14) 8,648 acres of Wildlife Habitat Will Be Saved, 15) Jackson State forest's activists offer timber harvest plan for Brandon Gulch, 16) Governator tells loggers it'd be great if they just go, 17) Day One: Humboldt Redwood Co., 18) Turning a rec. trail into a fuel break, 19) Cutting down trees to comply with airport's court order, --Arizona: 20) Cutting down just the " little " trees --Montana: 21) Decouple fire management with commercial logging --Colorado: 22) 97 new oil and gas leases on 87,000 acres --Illinois: 23) Chicago Climate Exchange helping farmers with forests, --Mississippi: 24) Too wide of a buffer along highways, 25) Swamp forest history, --Arkansas: 25) 10,000 acres of state forest given to miners, 26) logging burning counterintuitive in Ozark-St. Francis and Ouachita NF restoration of health, --NewYork: 28) Woody Clark thieves all the biggest trees for export, 29) State denies water-intensive horizontal drilling across Southern tier has significant impacts, --Vermont: 30) 'Wood Warms' campaign destroys forests --Virginia: 31) Suing woodcutters to stop coal miners --Maine: 32) Plum Creek to sell 220-acre old tree forest near Elliotsville --Florida: 33) Off road vehicles are changing the outdoor experience on FS land, --USA: 34) Conservation reserves won't be released after all, Articles: Alaska: He's been here every year since 1988. Juday has come to know trees almost like children. He knows, for instance, exactly how old each tree is, how tall and thick it is, how much it has grown over the last year and whether it's getting pestered by bugs. This time he came with a graduate student from Germany and a lab technician he had hired. The lab tech carried a small metal case with papers showing the research plots and the individual white spruce trees in them. There were 2,200 trees in all. Juday started in section 2.05 with tree No. 36. He measured its height — it was tiny — and its circumference at the base, then looked around for signs of a bud-eating insect that's been showing up more and more in white spruce trees in Interior Alaska. " This one is budworm free, " he said, not quite believing it. Juday checked again. " No, sorry, very light. " The lab tech wrote down the new figures, and Juday moved on to the next tree. Juday started his research 20 years ago to unlock the secrets of the boreal forest, as he says. He chose a site in the Bonanza Creek Experimental Forest that had recently burned so that he could track new trees from seedling to maturity. He learned a lot, published papers on his research, and could have stopped at any time. He didn't stop, and over the years climate change worked its way into his research and another finding emerged — things are not looking good for white spruce in the Interior. " We're in the biggest period of change that has happened in this part of the world for several centuries at least, " Juday said. " No matter what you do, or what interest you have in this part of the world, it's very likely to be affected. " The tallest spruce in the plots is about 25 feet, and countless birch already rise well above that height. Fifty years ago, the white spruce almost certainly would have won out on this south-facing hillside above the Tanana River. But things are different now, and Juday figures the birch could possibly win out this time. In 2007, Juday's trees did OK. Tree growth wasn't back to normal, but the trees were recovering from the warm summers of 2004 and 2005, thanks in part to cool weather in 2006. Most trees had some sign of budworm, but the insect damage was less than the year before. Juday crawled under the bows of one of his bushier trees. He wrapped a special tape measure around its trunk — converting from circumference to diameter — and called out numbers to his lab tech. The trees' fate wouldn't be clear for years or decades, and Juday had work to do now. He climbed over thick logs of white spruce felled by the fire 30 years ago and measured another tree. There were still well more than 1,000 to go, and winter was coming. http://newsminer.com/news/2008/jul/29/alaska-forests-hit-more-wildfires-infestat\ ions-cli/ Washington: 2) Advocates for a swath of forest called Heybrook Ridge, above the tiny town of Index in Snohomish County, have just about saved it from the saw. The Snohomish County Council is expected to vote Monday to spend $700,000 in county conservation funds to help purchase 130 acres of mature forest on Heybrook Ridge to save it from clear-cut logging. " I am quite excited, " said council Chairman Dave Somers. He said the votes are there to make the purchase. The county will take possession of the property as a park, protecting its 100-year-old trees in perpetuity. The purchase was also made possible by Friends of Heybrook Ridge, which raised $550,000 toward the $1.2 million property, including $500,000 from one anonymous donor. " I am just blown away, I can't believe we got this kind of support, " said David Cameron of Friends of Heybrook Ridge and a resident of Index. Preserving the forest fits the former logging and mining town's new vision for its economy as an outdoor-recreation mecca, Cameron said. Index draws white-water rafters, rock climbers and outdoor enthusiasts headed to the new Wild Sky Wilderness just up the road. The ridge is in full view from downtown Index and Highway 2, so protecting the landscape was an important priority, Somers said. Saving the forest also will provide environmental benefits, Somers said. " This is a perfect example of what we should be doing, " Somers said. " The owners had a permit to log it last year. They deserve a lot of credit for holding off. " The option to purchase the property from W.B. Foresters of Stanwood was secured by the Cascade Land Conservancy. Friends of Heybrook Ridge was so successful in its fundraising that there is some money left over for trail building and interpretive signs in the forest, Cameron said. Money poured in from all over, in amounts small and large. The most dogged were the indexers — professional book-index compilers, who took the town's name to heart, and sent in checks from around the globe to save the trees. The farthest postmark was from Egypt. " I guess sometimes it's nice having a screwball name like Index, " Cameron said. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008082919_heybrook31m0.html 2) A fire is currently burning through a study area where projections were made about fire behavior about 2 years ago. Managers used data and analysis from the Gotchen Late-Successional Reserve (LSR) study in the planning, analysis, and implementation of treatments near where the Cold Springs fire is now active. The Gotchen LSR, lies on the east slope of the Cascade Range in Washington, and covers about 15,000 acres of the Mount Adams Ranger District on the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. The Gotchen LSR was designated by the Northwest Forest Plan to protect habitat for species associated with older forests. Susan Stevens Hummel, a research forester at the Pacific Northwest Research Station, led a case study of the reserve in 2006. Her findings suggested that the potential for compatibility between fire and habitat objectives could be increased through a technique called landscape silviculture. " Our intent in taking this approach was to expand silviculture decisionmaking beyond a unit-by-unit approach and instead to consider adjacent units and landscape objectives explicitly, " explains Hummel. She and her colleagues used a combination of aerial photo interpretation and field sampling. Hummel focused on changes in forest structure, or the arrangement and variety of living and dead vegetation, a common denominator between fire behavior and owl habitat. However, treatments that reduced fire threat or retained old-forest structure often conflicted in a given stand. To reveal the trade-offs between them, Hummel teamed up with David Calkin, a research economist with the Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station in Missoula, Montana. Forest structure was used as the shared currency between the conflicting landscape objectives. Through the use of simulated treatments to develop the production possibility curves, Hummel and Calkin identified multiple sets of solutions that could reduce the threat of stand-replacing fires while maintaining the overarching goal of the reserve, which is to sustain older forests. Some the key findings of Hummel's study are: 1) Fire threat is projected to increase sharply within the coming decade in the Gotchen Late-Successional Reserve. Fuels are increasing on hundreds of acres annually as trees die in association with persistent insect defoliation. 2) Treating more area of young, noncomplex forest reduced fire threat more effectively in the Gotchen Reserve than did treating structurally complex old-forest patches. 3) Treatments sometimes lost money and sometimes made money at the scale of an individual unit. 4) In landscape treatments that generated revenue to offset implementation costs in the Gotchen Reserve, wood volume came mainly from grand fir in the 7- to 16-inch diameter classes. http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Landscape_Study_May_Offer_Solutions_For_Fire_M\ anagers_999.html 4) Lower doctor bills. Drinking water. Protection from floods. Food. Those are just a few items on a newly compiled list of goods and services provided to people living around Puget Sound by the " natural capital " of the region's forests, mountains and waterways, says a report being released Friday by a team of economists. After examining how wetlands, the Sound and other natural features benefit people living here, the economists behind the report pegged the value of those goods and services at between $7.4 billion and $61.7 billion a year. And they admit upfront that's a big underestimate -- it's just the best they could do for now. If the ecosystems that surround the region's cities had a price tag, what would it be? At least $243 billion -- and perhaps as much as $2.1 trillion, the economic team says. Again, that's a " rough cut, first step " at putting a value on the nature that surrounds us. Why do this? " It gets us beyond the confrontational debate. It's not the environment versus the economy, " said co-author Robert Costanza, director of the Gund Institute of Environmental Economics at the University of Vermont. " We live in a complex, interconnected system, and the environment is one of our huge assets. " Costanza, who helped pioneer the field of attaching economic values to natural areas in the 1990s, said the Puget Sound study is only the second time this kind of analysis has been performed for a regional ecosystem. The first was completed last year in New Jersey -- the state's Pine Barrens were given an environmental value of $1,476 an acre. The concept has faced criticism from environmentalists who resent anyone attaching a dollar value to rivers and mountains and salt marshes and eelgrass beds, said the study's lead author, economist David Batker, director of Earth Economics, a Tacoma-based think tank. But by putting price tags on natural assets, Costanza and other researchers say polluters can be fined more accurately for the damage they cause and governments can get a firmer grip on the importance of preserving forests and limiting sprawl. The study, " A New View of the Puget Sound Economy, " notes that the plusses that nature provides around here include clean drinking water, recreation, fish, flood protection, buffering from storms and erosion control. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/372125_pugetsound25.html http://eartheconomics.org/A_New_View_of_the_Puget_Sound_Economy.pdf 5) TULALIP -- Thousands of Douglas firs and other trees will be chopped down and dragged out of forested lands on the Tulalip Indian Reservation before the end of the year. About 130 acres in the northwest corner of the tribes' 9,000-acre forest will be thinned, a process that removes the area's most slender trees to allow more growing space for timber destined for the sawmill. Leaders of the Tulalip Tribes believe the process will coax the forest to greater health and allow tribal members to preserve cultural traditions, tribal spokeswoman Mytyl Hernandez said. " We do this to sustain our culture, " she said. " We use the forest for so many things, and if it were to die off, it would affect us in a negative way. " Coast Salish American Indians have a long history of stripping cedar bark to weave hats, baskets and clothing. Tree trunks are fashioned into canoes, rattles and other traditional pieces. Tribal leaders expect TimberTec, the Bellingham-based logging company hired for the job, to remove about 4,600 tons of timber. The tribe will then sell as many as 40 percent of the timber to paper mills. The larger logs, those with trunks measuring 5 inches in diameter or more, will likely go to sawmills, TimberTec President Christopher Secrist said. The tribe won't make much money from the sale of the trees, Hernandez said. She did not share the exact dollar amount, but said the project is designed to promote the growth of the trees that will remain, not to make money from the sale of young timber. The last time the tribes' forestry department thinned trees was in 1999, on 17 acres, Hernandez said. Terry Grinaker, forest manager for the Tulalip Tribes since 1980, is about to leave his job, Hernandez said. Grinaker developed the tribes' forestry plan, which includes regular thinning projects, Hernandez said. The tribal government has hired TimberTec for that work in the past. The forest thinning project began this month and will continue through November. Advocates of the practice say it improves the quality of timber destined for sawmills, and eases the chance of wildfire. Critics, including The Sierra Club, say forest thinning benefits the logging industry at the expense of natural growth and native wildlife habitat. http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20080727/NEWS01/693849343 & news01ad=1 6) Construction begins next month on the first of five projects that build the State Route 704 cross-base highway in Pierce County. WSDOT awarded a $7.35 million contract earlier this week to Ceccanti, Inc., to build the Spanaway Loop Road to State Route 7 section of the larger cross-base plan. The Spanaway Loop Road to SR 7 project significantly improves safety and mobility by widening Spanaway Loop Road to five lanes and adding a dual right-turn lane from Spanaway Loop Road to southbound SR 7. The improvements will ease back-ups during peak travel times. The project is scheduled to wrap up in June 2009. The remaining SR 704 projects will be completed as funding becomes available. The planned six-mile, multi-lane highway stretches east to west between Fort Lewis and McChord military bases, and connects SR 7 to I-5. The new corridor provides congestion relief and reduced delays on I-5, SR 512, SR 7 and county roads. For more information visit http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Projects/SR704/CrossBase/ 7) DNR was wrong to believe it didn't have to study Blanchard Forest, specifically because it draws from federal and state policies that are designed to minimize the impact of logging and to protect fish and wildlife, and those polices each had environmental impact statements. A King County Superior Court judge has ordered the state Department of Natural Resources to do an environmental study of Blanchard Mountain before allowing logging. The opinion issued by Susan J. Craighead earlier this month focuses on 4,827 acres of " working forest " that DNR manages on Blanchard Mountain, a favorite playground of hikers, horseback riders and hang-gliders just south of the Whatcom County line. It's also trust land that is logged to raise money for the state, Skagit County government and Burlington-Edison schools. In May 2006, DNR put together a 10-member Blanchard Forest Strategies Group to come up with a plan " because it believed that it could no longer minimize logging in Blanchard Forest in deference to its heavy use by the community now that the forest had matured to the point that it was ready to harvest, " Craighead wrote in her opinion. The group, which included representatives from environmental organizations, came up with a plan that had as its key component protection of a " core " of 1,600 acres of forest at the top of Blanchard Mountain. The idea was to allow the core to grow into an old forest, and to provide habitat for wildlife and opportunities for recreation. But the lawsuit filed by Chuckanut Conservancy and North Cascades Conservation Council - which were not part of the working group - said that in crafting that plan, DNR erred when it said logging in the remainder of the forest would have no environmental impact. Their case turned on two issues. What is the baseline for determining impact of the plan? Because the forest was trust land, DNR used sustainable logging as a baseline. The plaintiffs used the status quo of the past 80 years, which involved multiple uses with limited logging, according to the judge's written opinion. Craighead sided with the environmental groups and required DNR to do a full environmental impact statement for Blanchard. " While it may be true that Blanchard Forest is not as ecologically unique as plaintiffs paint it to be, the forest is nonetheless highly unusual. It is the only place where the Cascades meet Puget Sound, " she wrote in her July 8 opinion. " ...Blanchard Forest represents a slice of near-wilderness in the middle of a rapidly urbanizing area. " DNR officials said they are awaiting the judge's final order, which should come out in the next few weeks to make a statement. http://www.bellinghamherald.com/102/story/475544.html Oregon: 8) Well, there didn't seem to be any federal agents this time (or were there?) at Sunday's rally in Pioneer Square for the so called " Pitchfork Rebellion " (a group of environmental activists from Lane County). The Pitchfork Rebellion was founded by husband and wife team Day and Neila Owen. The group is made up of forest-dwellers who say that Lane County lumber companies are making them sick by spraying pesticides on forests by their homes. They are also protesting the Bureau of Land Management's proposed Western Oregon Plan Revision (WOPR), which organizers say will increase clear-cutting of Oregon old-growth forests by 700%. The protest was held on a stage in the middle of Pioneer Square. Organizers say close to 1,000 people came throughout the afternoon although it is unclear if they came for the protest or simply were in Pioneer Squate. As speakers traded stage time with musicians, most all the spectators who weren't pitchfork member sat passively on the stairs thirty yards from the stage. Occasionally someone would yell encouragement to speakers. Portland's protest was much different than the last reb' gathering. You may have heard of the May 30th 'Pesticide Rally' at Kesey Square in Eugene. The rally gained media attention after U of O student Ian Van Ornum was controversially restrained with a stun gun by Eugene Police. Ornum, who organized the event, was dressed in a fake chemical engineer white plastic jumpsuit and was spraying cars with a canister of water. The incident, which was heavily reported in Eugene, has been branded as police brutality by the local media. Witnesses say that Ornum was assaulted by police before he was tased. The controversy snowballed when, shortly after the rally, Eugene's Register-Guard reported that Department of Homeland Security was monitoring the rally and that federal agent Tom Keedy was the person who notified police about Ornum. Even MTV picked up the story. Day Owen was also arrested at the protest. Read an op-ed in the Register-Guard written by his wife Neila here: http://www.registerguard.com/csp/cms/sites/dt.cms.support.viewStory.cls?cid=1237\ 34 & sid=5 & fid=1 -- Sunday's protest was mellower (think acoustic guitar). The rally began at noon and lasted until five o'clock. Members of the Pitchfork Rebellion shared their experiences with pesticides. http://wweek.com/wwire/?p=12620 9) It was just about a year ago this week that we hosted our second Roadtruthing Campout along the Hood River. For five days, Barkers collected data on the crumbling road system for the first citizen-led inventory in Mt. Hood National Forest history. We knew we were doing the right thing by getting people into their forest to see firsthand what the road system looks like (getting into the forest is usually the right thing), but there were still many unknowns about how we would use our findings to make long-lasting change. Well, only a year later, we've seen an impact that we never could have predicted. To read more about the progress that Bark has made with your data, and discover some of the hurdles that we've hit, please visit our homepage at www.bark-out.org and click on the article titled, " Update: Mt. Hood Travel Plan. " And to the 45 people who helped with our roadtruthing last summer, we thank you for being a part of making a real difference on Mt. Hood forever. http://www.bark-out.org/ 10) In their recent commentary in The Oregonian, Tim Lillibo, Asante Riverwind, Jay Lininger and Karen Coulter, representing four environmental groups, claim that Congress must provide the Forest Service with clear priorities that take old growth and roadless wildlands off the table when it comes to logging ( " Looking to the future of Oregon's forests, " June 17). Only then, they argue, can we improve eastside forest health. The four authors claim that the recent compromise among interest groups over logging in the wake of eastern Oregon's Shake Table and Egley fires " spares more than 150,000 acres of old-growth forests and backcountry roadless areas from chain saws and bulldozers. " The authors also claim that a " century of fire suppression, logging and grazing has left some eastern Oregon forests unnaturally dense and at greater risk of uncharacteristic fire. " While this statement has some merit, it misrepresents these activities in two ways. It ignores how they have changed over time to become more environmentally friendly, and it suggests that these activities alone impact forest health. http://www.oregonlive.com/commentary/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/editorial/1217287\ 536110090.xml & c oll=7 11) The Glendale Resource Area of the Medford BLM is currently planning to log over 2,000 acres in the Wolf Creek area. The logging would occur in fire-resilient old-growth forests, within streamside riparian reserves, and within forests designated as critical habitat for the threatened Northern spotted owl. Winter steelhead and coho salmon also call this watershed home. 528 acres of the proposed logging would consist of " regeneration harvest " in which native old-growth forests are removed and converted into dense young fiber plantations. The BLM proposes 3.2 miles of new road construction, which would further fragment habitat and bleed sediment into creeks. There is scientific and social consensus that green old-growth forests help dampen the effects of wildfire. Even timber planners in the BLM acknowledge that fire hazard increases when the agency cuts down an ancient forest and replaces it with tightly spaced second-growth. As stated in the BLM's Grave Creek Watershed Analysis (page 44): " The high density of small trees and brush may result in increased risk of large, intense fires or increased susceptibility to disease or insect damage. " Yet the BLM refuses to learn from its past mistakes and continues to propose timber sales that decrease forest resiliency and increase fire hazard. Rather than create new matchstick fiber farms, the BLM should focus on thinning existing plantations near communities to reduce fire risk. Thinning fire-suppressed forests and reintroducing fire through controlled burning would go a long way to making these forests more resilient. Please speak up for healthy forests and safe communities. Click here for quick talking points and an email address for the BLM. http://kswild.org/wolfpup 12) As an advocate for forest ecosystems and healthy salmon runs, KS Wild works hard to steer foresters away from old-growth logging and toward restoration-based small-diameter thinning. Following the 2007 summer fires, at the behest of the timber industry, the Forest Service immediately started planning " salvage " timber sales on steep slopes located above salmon-bearing streams on the Klamath National Forest. We are happy to report that the Klamath National Forest announced in early July that they are canceling three post-fire timber sales, two near Happy Camp and one near McCloud. There is no ecological justification for logging large trees, be they green or burnt. For years fire ecologists have been telling all who will listen that the patches of dead trees (snags) created by the fires and other natural disturbance events are a vital ecosystem component for forest health. The snags provide crucial habitat for a number of at-risk terrestrial species such as the Northern spotted owl, the Pacific fisher and the Pileated woodpecker. Further, the snags (and down wood) provide stability for the soils, shelter for the seedlings, and the primary source of wood for in-stream fish habitat. Recently, peer-reviewed studies have confirmed that post-fire logging inevitably harms natural recovery. In 2006 forest researcher Dan Donato found that salvage logging at the Biscuit fire had killed tree seedlings and increased fuel loads. Similarly, in 2007 researchers from the Corvallis Forestry Sciences lab found that forest stands that had been logging and replanted following the 1987 Silver Fire burned more severely in the 2002 Biscuit fire than stands which had not been subjected to salvage logging. Given the impacts of climate change on forests and fire, it would be prudent for public land managers to focus public resources on thinning small diameter trees from over-crowded forests near homes and communities, rather than target big trees, which are in severe shortage across the landscape. http://kswild.org/ 13) Recently, while I was thumbing through the mail, I stumbled upon a Bureau of Land Management letter outlining plans for the " Wolf Pup " timber sale in southern Oregon. Aside from the incongruity of the name, something else caught my eye: " …regeneration silvicultural treatments would occur at a minimum 100 years of age. " TRANSLATION: the BLM wants to cut down all the trees over 100 years old. Sometimes the BLM makes me feel like I am taking crazy pills. Please take action now and let the BLM know that we won't let them chop down century-old trees. Not only does this plan call for clear-cutting 418 acres of old growth (you know, that type of majestic Northwest forest that we've already lost 90% of), but the " Wolf Pup " timber sale would also intrude into critical Spotted Owl habitat. If that's already got you upset, you probably don't want to read what I'm about to tell you next. You should click here now to let the BLM know you'll be the voice that our ancient forests don't have. Now, for another doozy. The " Wolf Pup " plan would actually put our forests at greater risk for high-intensity fire. And that's according to the BLM's own analysis. The people who manage our public lands should be focusing on restoring wildlife habitat through conservation-based thinning projects, not tearing down fire-resistant old-growth forests. Perhaps the worst part of this whole deal is the BLM pretends as if they didn't have a choice in the matter. They just HAVE to cut down our old growth. They even tell folks planning to write in comments advocating for old-growth protection not to bother. They don't want to hear about it. Let 'em hear what you have to say: http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/1780/t/430/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=\ 191 California: 14) A Total of 8648 acres of California Wildlife Habitat Will Be Saved at August 28th Wildlife Board Meeting: Merced County: 154 acres, Monterey County: 228 acres, San Bernardino County: 8 acres, Riverside County: 104 acres, 178 acres, San Diego County: 188 acres, 24 acres, 235 acres, Shasta County: 4915 acres, 284 acres, Napa County: 738 acres,Santa Cruz County: 64 acres, San Luis Obispo County: 1172 acres, Orange County: 306 acres and 50 acres. August 28, 2008 10:00 A.M. State Capitol, Room 112 Sacramento, California 95814 PRELIMINARY AGENDA ITEMS http://www.wcb.ca.gov/ 15) This Friday, August 1, 2008, the Jackson Advisory Group is going to make a final review of a timber harvest plan for Brandon Gulch. This is your chance to have your say about whether or not the plan adequately protects our public resources -- both the trees and the recreation opportunities, but especially recreation opportunities. Please read on at least to the bolded paragraph. You may recall that timber harvesting in Brandon Gulch was the focal point of legal action by the Campaign to Restore Jackson State Forest in 2000 to halt industrial logging in our public forest. Now, nearly eight years later, all legal actions are settled. One part of the settlement was an agreement that the old timber harvest plan for Brandon Gulch would be replaced by one designed to hasten its recovery toward old-growth conditions (or, in scientific terms, " late-seral conditions " ), while protecting recreation values. Brandon Gulch is one of the premier recreation sites in Jackson Forest, and a number of popular recreation trails go through or adjoin the proposed timber harvest plan. If you have hiked, biked, or walked through Brandon Gulch, you know how beautiful is the forest and how wonderful are the trails. The key recreation protection provided in the recommended harvest plan is a no-harvest setback from roads and trails of 150 feet. Additionally, logging operations are to minimize the amount of disturbance, landings are to be cleaned up and replanted, and roads are to be decommissioned. You can read the full recreation section here. The proposed recreation protections, are substantially stronger than those contained in the Jackson Forest Management plan. Your support for these protections will help assure that they are adopted. Please send an email of comment or support for the proposed recreation protections. The recreation protections being proposed are contained in the draft report of the Late Seral Development Committee of the Jackson Advisory Committee (JAG). The full JAG will give its final review to this report at its August 1 meeting at the Fort Bragg Senior Center, starting at 9:00 a.m. http://www.jacksonforest.org 16) The forest-products industry is part of the three core industries of mankind, which are food, shelter and clothing. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared that it is OK for the forest-products industry to leave the state of California. It will be replaced by green industry, according to Schwarzenegger. The Sierra Club recently promoted the eradication of hundreds of millions of dollars of a natural resource here in California, with the help of its friend, the California Air Resource Board. This is making illegal $100 million to $300 million of plywood composite panels or particleboard that cannot be sold as they have a little bit more formaldehyde in them. This stock will have to be destroyed or burned and millions of acres of new forest lands harvested to remedy this huge environmental blunder by the Sierra Club and California Air Resource Board. Also, based on recently enacted legislation, furniture companies based in the state will be hard pressed to stay in business. All of the furniture stores on Highway 78 will be threatened by this legislation at some point. Formaldehyde is a natural compound that every human produces in the body daily. The forest products industry is 4 percent of the U.S. Gross National Product at $480 billion. http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/07/27/opinion/commentary/zd64f7091715299148\ 825748b0004ca3 3.txt 17) Officially Day One: Humboldt Redwood Co. LLC After many starts and stops in trying to get to this day, we are all excited to work on building Humboldt Redwood Company. Our first and most important task is working through employment offers for close to 250 folks. Below is our most current letter To All Employees that shares some information about a variety of important employment related items. For the most current updates continue to view this Bulletin Board. http://www.hrcllc.com/ 18) Regular visitors to Redwood Regional Park's East Ridge Trail in the Oakland hills have circulated a petition and plan to protest what they're calling a " logging " effort as fire officials and arborists remove numerous trees for a long-planned fire break along a portion of the trail. But park officials say the tree removal is vital for fire safety and is being done responsibly, leaving as many healthy trees standing as possible. " The trail itself is really the only fire break in that area right now. If a fire were to come through there under the northeast winds, it would not be a good situation, " said Ken Blonski, fire chief for the East Bay Regional Park District's fire services. " It's the same concept as defensible space around your house. Plus, we're taking about the old trees that have limbs hanging over the trail that could fall and injure someone. " Those who object to the tree removal agree that some trees should be taken down for fire safety, but they insist many healthy trees are being unnecessarily removed, harming the natural beauty of the area. " A lot of people now feel this park has lost a lot of its charm and beauty. It's as if we are now walking in a desolate war zone with stumps, like graves, to remind us of what used to be there, " said Rose Nied, who lives in the Oakland hills and takes her dogs to the trail on a regular basis. She and other tree supporters plan to share their views with the park district's board of directors Thursday at the board's regular monthly committee meeting, asking for more selectivity in tree removal, more environmentally friendly herbicides on stumps and more advance notice for similar projects. " We all agree that the eucalyptus, and trees which were leaning and might fall, and trees that may not have looked so healthy should have gone, " she said. " But many of us believe that what they have done is overkill. This is one of the few off-leash dog areas around, and the animals need the shade or they overheat. This is eliminating all the shade. There definitely were Monterey pines that were taken down that were not harmful to anyone and were healthy specimens. " http://www.insidebayarea.com/localnews/ci_10037729 19) After years of legal wrangling, on Aug. 15 Sacramento County will begin cutting down more than 100 trees at Rancho Murieta Airport to comply with a court order. The owners of the private airport took legal action to compel the county to comply with Federal Aviation Administration safety requirements after the airport's night operations were suspended in 2002. The trees are on county parkland located between the airport and the Cosumnes River. The airport is owned by the estate of the late businessman Fred Anderson. The county acquired the 129-acre stretch of land from the Pension Trust Fund for Operating Engineers in exchange for the Yellow Bridge in 1979. " The reason Aug. 15 is the magic date to start work is that's when (California Department of) Fish and Game allows you to go in because it's after the nesting season for raptors, " Sacramento County Deputy Parks Director Jill Ritzman said recently. " The (tree-removal) count right now is 148, and there will be some field calls on some of those, " Ritzman said, adding that a similar number of trees is expected to require trimming. " If the tree is going to be taken down by a third and the tree is in poor health, we will probably just remove the whole tree because it's going to die anyway. If you have to take a tree down by 40 or 50 percent, you may as well just remove it. So there will be a lot of those field calls made by the arborist and biologist. " The environmental impact report for the project notes there are up to 187 trees that now intrude on the airport's safety zone and approximately 93 additional trees that will pose a risk in the next five years. The county is required to manage the trees and trim them to comply with FAA requirements a minimum of once every five years. According to the environmental document, at least a dozen oak trees and 66 Northern California black walnut trees will be cut down. The black walnut is considered the rarest species on the site, and four of the oaks meet the definition of a heritage oak -- a California oak tree with a trunk 60 inches or greater in girth measured 4.5 feet above the ground. The EIR estimates 3,537 inches of tree loss would have to be mitigated, which is typically done by planting a corresponding number of saplings. The trees are part of a riparian environment that supports a variety of plant and wildlife. Swainson's hawk nests have been found near the tree removal area, said Todd Smith, environmental analyst for the county Department of Environmental Review and Assessment. The EIR notes the potential for impact is high for Swainson's hawk and the valley elderberry longhorn beetle, a threatened species that is completely dependent on elderberry shrubs. A 2007 survey of the property located 134 elderberry shrub clusters. The fall run of the Chinook salmon could be affected to a lesser extent. http://www.murietaonline.com/forum/f24/rancho-murieta-airport-news-3131/ Arizona: 20) SPRINGERVILLE -- A piece of heavy equipment called a hot saw is slicing through a high-country stand of skinny ponderosa pines like a mechanical Paul Bunyan on steroids. Nearby, a computer-programmed log processor is stripping the branches off cut trees as if it were peeling carrots. Most of the logs are no more than a foot in diameter -- not big enough to properly be called timber. It's a haul Dwayne Walker's grandfather, who skidded fat logs out of Southwestern pine forests with mules and Clydesdales, would have scoffed at. Not Walker. " We're thinners. We changed our name, " says the fourth-generation woodsman. In Arizona's White Mountains, a U.S. Forest Service project is turning traditional logging on its head in an effort to make the forest less flammable. Walker's crew isn't touching big, commercially valuable trees. Instead it is aiming the hot saw at slender-waisted ponderosas, the kind of dense young growth that can stoke a wildfire like coal shoveled into a furnace. Typically, there's been no market for little trees. The White Mountain Stewardship Project aims to change that by giving wood cutters, mills and other businesses an incentive to turn unwanted growth into wood-stove pellets, paneling and other products. The project is the brainchild of frustrated locals who watched their traditional logging economy collapse and an iconoclastic forest supervisor. By the 1990s, environmental lawsuits to protect habitat for the Mexican spotted owl were blocking the heavy logging in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest that had helped feed the region's sawmills for decades. Terry Reidhead says that if someone had asked him a decade ago to take small-diameter logs, he would have told them " to go to hell. " A flirtation with bankruptcy changed his family's thinking. These days, small logs are mostly what comes through the Reidhead Brothers operation, which manufactures paneling, flooring and siding on the outskirts of Springerville. The Forest Service gave him a $250,000 grant to install new equipment. He has a handshake agreement with Walker to supply the mill with wood from the White Mountains project. He has found a market for his products in Mexico and has done better than he expected. Over at Arizona Log and Timberworks, 4-inch-diameter pine logs are stacked like bunches of giant, blond pencils. Here Randy Nicoll and his brother Keith, buoyed by $300,000 in federal grants, use wood from Walker to make fence railings, utility poles, log trusses and decorative posts. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-thinning31-2008jul31,0,2690431.story Montana: 21) " Everybody is trying to hijack the fire issue for their own agendas " —Fire historian Stephen Pyne, of Arizona State University " If you like driving among towering Sierra Nevada ponderosa pines older than the Constitution, or hiking Montana's Bitterroot in the footsteps of Lewis and Clark, you may be making one of the year's half billion visits to America's national parks and forests. Except, of course, to the forests that are on fire. In Montana alone, 19 fires were burning at last report. One has closed part of Glacier National Park. Wildfires have been getting worse over the years. In response, the government now plans drastic tree-thinning under its Healthy Forests Initiative. Skeptics call it a pretext for logging, one that flies in the face of our forests' overarching value as places to visit and appreciate. Today's fires can grow unusually fierce because Smokey Bear went overboard. For decades, the well-meaning policy of suppressing all forest fires allowed too much fuel—dead wood, underbrush, small trees—to build up on public lands, especially in the fire-prone West. What might have once been a minor grass fire now turns cataclysmic, like last year's Hayman Fire in Colorado. All parties generally agree that many forests need tidying up—by cutting, or carefully controlled burning, or both. There, agreement ends. Citing cost efficiency, the Bush administration will invite loggers to do the thinning and let them cut what they need for profit. Critics say they'll take the best, biggest trees. To sort it out, I consulted the nation's best-known fire historian, Dr. Stephen Pyne, based at Arizona State. " I am dismayed that they are coupling fire management with commercial logging, " he says of the White House plan. " Usually fire takes the little stuff and leaves the big, while logging takes the big stuff and leaves the little. " Logging debris, he adds, is a worse hazard yet. But both sides, Pyne says, oversimplify. Forests are naturally adapted to fire, but in different ways. The open grass-tree mix typical of ponderosa pine needs frequent, mild grass fires. The bigger trees survive, providing key habitat and pools of cooling shade. Lodgepole pine forests, by contrast, grow thickly and regenerate every century or so from " self-immolating burns, " as in the seemingly catastrophic Yellowstone fires of 1988. Colorado: 22) The change could also allow 97 new oil and gas leases on 87,000 acres to be developed on national forests in Colorado that are currently protected from drilling by federal rule. " President Bush is doing the Texas Two-Step to trample public lands in Colorado on his way out of the barn, " said William H. Meadows, president of The Wilderness Society. " The meetings in Washington are Bush's latest attempt to weaken strongly-supported protection for the state's 4.4 million acres of undeveloped roadless lands. Combined with the fancy footwork he's doing in Idaho and the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, the president is trying to leave his bootprint on nearly 50 percent of America's roadless forests. " The meetings in question start with a Forest Service open house on July 29 from 5-9 p.m. in which agency personnel will be available to provide information and answer questions about the proposed Colorado Roadless Rule. The Roadless Area Conservation National Advisory Committee, meanwhile, will meet on July 30 to discuss the proposed rule for the management of roadless areas on National Forest System lands in Colorado and to discuss other related roadless area matters. The Sierra Club also expressed displeasure with the way the Bush administration is trying to skip some beats: it has cut Coloradoans' opportunities for comment to 50 percent of what it afforded their Idaho neighbors on a similar challenge. The disparity of the eight meetings scheduled for Colorado is even greater when measured against the 26 held in the state when the Clinton administration explored the 2001 rule. http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/bush-does-texas-two-step-trample/story.asp\ x?guid=%7BA684E A82-59FB-478F-A31A-8DBD5CEEB315%7D & dist=hppr Illinois: 23) Whether they believe in it or not, Mississippi farmers can make some money off global warming. Through the Chicago Climate Exchange, farmers with forest land can receive payments for sequestering carbon dioxide, the gas that scientists believe is the primary cause of global warming and which trees convert into oxygen. Environmentally concerned companies buy credits voluntarily on the exchange to cancel out however many tons of CO2 they emit during business operations. For example, a steel company that released 100 tons of CO2 into the air would pay tree farmers to grow enough trees to store 100 tons of CO2. Some of the more well-known businesses participating include Ford Motor Co., Dupont, International Paper and IBM. Really, its a public relations gesture that says we are polluting the atmosphere to some degree, but were buying carbon to offset that, said Gene Sirmon, a Rankin County forestry consultant. Europe already has a similar system that companies are legally required to do, and Sirmon said it is anticipated that the new presidential administration will start a mandatory plan in the United States. Sirmons company, working through a subsidiary of the Iowa Farm Bureau, sold one-ton credits from Mississippi landowners for $5.75 last month and for $4 on July 14. An acre of pine or hardwood sequesters about 1.75 to 2.5 tons of carbon dioxide per year, Sirmon said. Yearly payments on land are, therefore, about $2 to $3 per acre. Landowners end up getting about 75 percent after fees are taken out, Sirmon said. In some cases you can get twice as much to pay your taxes, he said. Two types of land are eligible: Stands that have been planted since 1990 on farmland or pasture, and managed forests that may have been previously thinned. Farmers already receiving payments through the Conservation Reserve Program would be able to receive the carbon sequestration payments in addition to that money. Sirmon said much of the land in the Delta is on CRP. Once you get in the Hills region, you would find more pine stands, he said. http://gwcommonwealth.com/articles/2008/07/21/news/top_stories/news01.txt Mississippi: 22) The policy of cutting trees back 70 feet from the edge of interstates in South Mississippi - currently being done along a 14-mile swath in Jones County - exceeds what is done in neighboring states. Louisiana, Alabama and Tennessee all have policies to clear trees along the federal highway system, although they differ. All states clear the trees for safety reasons. " We have done a lot of clearing to 60 feet, " said Steve Walker, assistant design engineer for the Alabama Department of Transportation. " We are just clearing the right-of-way. " During ice storms, for example, 60 feet is the clearance needed when trees fall, he said. Although Alabama does not have public meetings to get community input on landscaping, the state replaces the clear cutting with some landscaping. " Our interstate landscaping is limited to interchanges, " Walker said. The state also regularly maintains the rights-of-way. " If you don't mow every year, it's going to reforest, " he said. Louisiana clears trees up to 50 feet from the interstate. " Controlling vegetation, you try to find the least costly method for public safety, " said Roy DuPuy, chief landscape architect for the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development. " The vegetation grows so fast in South Mississippi and Louisiana. Safety of the traveling public comes first, " DuPuy said. http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080727/NEWS01/80\ 7270318/1002 25) Before the arrival of white settlers, a vast swamp forest covered most of the Mississippi floodplain. The fertile soil supported the growth of huge trees, dominated by water-loving species such as burr oak, sycamore, silver maple and bald cypress. By the 1930s, timber production and drainage for agriculture had destroyed most of this rich forest and only scattered remnants persist today. Big Oak Tree State Park, in southeast Missouri, protects one of these, a 1007 acre stand of virgin swamp forest; the park is west of Missouri Route 102, 11.3 miles south of East Prairie. Accessed by a boardwalk trail, the woodland harbors twelve State Champion Trees, two of which are National Champions. Permanent avian residents include pileated and red-headed woodpeckers, hooded mergansers, barred owls and wild turkey; during the warmer months, they are joined by hooded and prothonotary warblers, Mississippi kites, common yellowthroats, fish crows and Louisiana waterthrushes. The Park is one of the best places in Missouri to find Swainson's warblers, which nest in stands of giant cane that dot the understory. Mink, raccoons, white-tailed deer and river otters are among the floodplain mammals. The loss of swamp forest and marshlands along the Mississippi has reduced the ecological diversity of the floodplain, eliminated the natural filtering that wetlands provide and increased the risk of flooding in other low-lying areas. Furthermore, the agricultural lands and industrial ports that have replaced them are a steady source of pollutants that make their way into the River and, eventually, into the Gulf of Mexico. Naturalizing the floodplain, to the extent possible, is an essential step toward restoring this vital ecosystem. http://naturesblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/big-oak-tree.html Arkansas: 26) Drilling rigs will now have access to more than 10,000 acres of state forest land after the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission on Monday approved a five-year, $29.5 million lease with Chesapeake Energy Corp. Negotiations lasted more than a year, during which three other companies were vying to lease mineral rights for the land, including 3,949 acres at Gulf Mountain Wildlife Management Area in Van Buren County and 7,578 acres at Petit Jean River Wildlife Management Area in Yell County, commission chairman Freddie Black said. " Allowing exploration on our WMAs was not an easy decision, " Black said a commission meeting, noting that hunters, fishermen, birdwatchers and outdoorsmen will be displaced at certain times, but not during the roughly three-month long hunting season when drilling will cease. " The decision becomes easy when we see the opportunity we have to reinvest this money for Arkansans, " Black said. The money, including a 20 percent royalty on gas extracted, will be set aside for improvement and wildlife protection projects, though specifics weren't disclosed. http://wweek.com/wwire/?p=12620 27) In an attempt to restore health to the Ozark-St. Francis and Ouachita National forests, some experts are using some pretty counter-intuitive tools, including burning and logging. The varied group — including representatives of the National Forest Service, the Arkansas Game and Fish and Natural Heritage commissions, and The Nature Conservancy — believes that what we think of as " normal " in the forest may not be normal or healthy at all. Members of this partnership believe that the closed-canopy, thickly wooded forests immediately north and south of Fort Smith are very different places from what they were 100 to 120 years ago. At that time, they say, natural processes as well as some deliberate forestry by fire on the part of American Indians had created a far thinner forest, one with healthy oaks and pines and a diversity of ground plants. Such diversity benefits animal life in the forests, providing a nutritious diet that can carry animals through natural cycles that may impact one element or another in the food chain. The forest restoration experts believe that policies born at the turn of the 20th century have damaged much National Forest land. As people flooded the western states in the late 1800s, forest land was devastated both to clear out the terrain and to meet an insatiable desire for lumber. As people began to live closer to forests, even naturally occurring fires had a destructive, and in some cases, deadly effect on settlements. http://www.swtimes.com/articles/2008/07/27/how_we_see_it/opinion01.txt New York: 28) Woody Clark, a specialty wood buyer, stands in his log yard at 2350 Canaan Road swapping jokes with another man in jeans, wholesale buyer Jean Pierre Lavoie of Drummondoielle, Quebec. " We're waiting for logs, " said Clark, owner of Forestry Solutions. Clark sold his sawmill six years ago to concentrate on finding and selling logs full-time to buyers like Lavoie, owner of Can Am Log and Lumber. " He calls me his French connection, " said Lavoie, who then pours a stream of French into his phone as he moves toward the late-arriving logging truck. " Quelle heure? " he asks, ( " What time? " ) arranging a future transaction, then switching back to English explains the worldwide demand for fine wood. Lavoie resells logs intact or sometimes mills the wood, exporting finished wood products. " I ship some (logs) to Europe, to the Japanese market, to Germany, Italian market, Korean market, Portugal, " he said before pausing to inspect the walnut logs on the truck. " I cover from Missouri to Maine and in Canada from Manitoba to Nova Scotia for specialty wood, you know. " New York exports 28 percent of its timber harvest, about 48.6 million cubic feet of wood in 2006, according to records kept by the state Department of Environmental Conservation. Canada is the largest importer of New York's industrial timber harvest; our neighbor to the north bought 30.7 million cubic feet in 2006 of New York timber. http://www.mpnnow.com/news/x1346895408/World-buys-wood-in-New-York 29) On May 29 New York state's top environmental officials assured state lawmakers that plans to drill for natural gas near the watershed that supplies New York City's drinking water posed little danger. A survey of other states had found " not one instance of drinking water contamination " from the water-intensive, horizontal drilling that would take place across New York's southern tier, the officials told lawmakers in Albany. Reassured, the legislature quickly approved a bill to speed up the permitting process for a huge influx of wells that could bring the state upwards of $1 billion in annual revenue. Gov. David Paterson has until Wednesday to decide whether he will sign the bill, and the state's Department of Environmental Conservation, or DEC, says drilling permits could be approved in as little as 12 weeks. But a joint investigation by ProPublica and New York City public radio station WNYC found that this type of drilling has caused significant environmental harm in other states and could affect the watershed that supplies New York City's drinking water. " There is a little bit of learning curve...and that is where the concern falls, " said William Kappel, a hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Ithaca, N.Y. " The tremendous amounts of water used for these processes -- where are you going to get it and what are you going to do with that? " DEC officials could not answer those questions. They also acknowledge that they don't track the process drillers use to dispose of " produced water, " as the gas and oil industry refers to its waste. http://www.propublica.org/feature/new-yorks-gas-rush-poses-environmental-threat-\ 722 Vermont: 30) " The concept is to get the wood from state forests to concentration zones, then get it cut up and sent out to the people who need it, " Wood said. " I'm trying to find every stick of wood I can for people to burn this winter. " The Douglas administration last month unveiled " Wood Warms, " a three-part initiative that will provide a limited supply of firewood. One part relies on a decades-old initiative that the Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation is beefing up to meet rising demand. " We used to be more reliant on our backyards and forests for fuel, " says Jonathan Wood, Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation. " I think we have to head back there in the future. We're kind of going forward into the past. " The state opened its first roadside firewood lots back in the 1970s so the public could fell their own trees and transport the wood home for splitting, Wood said. Now the state has nearly 80 roadside lots and expects to open more soon. The wood is cheap, selling for $60 to $10 per cord, but only about five cords are available at each lot and it not be dry enough to burn this winter. " The reason this is up and running is this has been an ongoing program " Wood said. " It stalled and got smaller ... but we're ramping them back up substantially. " The state also plans to supply dry, split wood to low-income Vermonters who don't qualify for the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. LIHEAP pays 60 percent of winter heating bills, but only covers residents who earn less than 125 percent of the poverty level. It's unclear how much seasoned wood will be available. Volunteers, the National Guard and possibly even prison crews will split the wood, Wood said. http://rare-earth-news.blogspot.com/search/label/Pacific%20Lumber Virginia: 31) Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards and the Sierra Club, Virginia Chapter, took an unprecedented step today when the groups acted to halt illicit mining practices at A & G Coal's proposed mountaintop removal mine in Wise County, Virginia. About a week ago workers with Mountain Forest Products began clear cutting land, the first step in opening the Ison Rock Ridge Mine, which does not yet have a permit from the State. Though illegal, clear cutting the mine site before the mine has been approved, as is happening with the Ison Rock Ridge Mine, is a common practice, today's legal action is the first to challenge this practice for mountaintop removal mining in Virginia and could have significant implications for future mountaintop removal coal mining operations. Everybody around here knows that clear cutting the land is just the first step-- next they'll start blasting the mountains and burying our streams and valleys, said Gary Bowman, a member of the groups who lives adjacent to the mining site. The clear cutting has caused more than a dozen large rocks the size of watermelons to tumble down the mountain on to his lawn and family garden. They want to break our hearts by taking all these trees so we won't have the heart to keep fighting. But these mountains are our legacy and our home and we're not going to stop fighting to save them, he added. Located just northwest of Appalachia, Virginia and only a few miles from the historic town of Derby, the proposed Ison Rock Ridge mine will destroy over one thousand acres of forested mountains-- work that has already begun despite the lack of government approval. Plans for the Ison Rock Ridge mine include filling 9 lush valleys with more than 11 million cubic yards of mining waste and destroying more than 14,000 feet of streams. Mountaintop removal mining destroys everything we hold dear: our mountains, watersheds, and streambeds; the purity of air and water for our future generations; our communities, our people's health, our quiet nights and our daily peace of mind, said Kathy Selvage, vice president of Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards. What does it give us? Turmoil. --Aaron Isherwood, Senior Staff Attorney, Sierra Club Environmental Law Program Maine: 32) Plum Creek Timber Co. officials said they are talking with several potential buyers interested in protecting a rare, 220-acre forest near Elliotsville containing trees older than the state of Maine itself. Plum Creek has temporarily shelved any plans to harvest in what some people have dubbed the Big Wilson Stream " old-growth " forest. The company has been under pressure from some local residents and environmental groups to abandon plans to harvest on the land later this summer. Mark Doty, Plum Creek's regional resource manager, said Thursday that several " conservation buyers " have approached the company as a result of the attention. He declined to provide specifics, saying the negotiations were preliminary. But Doty said Plum Creek is " certainly willing " to work with the buyers to protect the land. " We're going to work pretty hard at it, " Doty said. " We want to work something out. " Located in Elliotsville Township south of Greenville, the property is wedged between Big Wilson Stream and a steep ridgeline that carries the Montreal Maine and Atlantic Railway tracks. That topography has deterred logging on the property, which explains why ecologists found many trees more than 150 years old and some as old as 250 to 300 years. Two independent organizations — the Maine Natural Areas Program and Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences — conducted field surveys of the property in response to public concerns. Representatives from both organizations said Thursday that while the land does not meet the definition of " old growth, " it is rare in Maine to find such a sizable old forest with so many rich ecological qualities. " We come across them on 15 to 20 acres, " said Andy Cutko, an ecologist with the Maine Natural Areas Program. " But it's uncommon to have a patch of 200 acres in the state of Maine. " The Maine Natural Areas Program, which is part of the state Department of Conservation, released a report Thursday calling the property " an excellent example of a late successional forest with characteristic old trees, stand continuity and a long history of natural processes. " http://bangornews.com/news/t/midmaine.aspx?articleid=167582 & zoneid=182 Florida: 33) When most people visit the national forest, they expect to hear the sounds of a forest - chirping birds, a gurgling stream, wind rustling through the leaves. One of the last sounds many probably don't want to hear is that of an off road vehicle (ORV) as it travels over hills and through streams. Unfortunately, according to U.S. Forest Service managers, that sound is becoming all too common in places where it shouldn't be on the national forests in Georgia. " We provide an opportunity within the national forest for off road vehicle enthusiasts to ride on designated trails designed specifically to withstand that type of use, " said Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest Supervisor George Bain. " However, we are seeing more and more illegal riding taking place on the national forests and it is causing unacceptable resource damage. " Illegal ATV (all terrain vehicle) use can cause a host of problems in a forest environment. Forest Service Soil Scientist Dick Rightmyer has seen some of the extensive damage caused by illegal off road vehicle use. " Riding off of designated trails can cause all sorts of problems in the forest, " Rightmyer said. " By creating trenches or trails on hillsides, these vehicles are causing soil erosion which leads to sediment in streams, " he added. http://www.accessnorthga.com/detail.php?n=211898 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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