December 13, 2002

By Jane Braxton Little

Sacramento Bee Correspondent

QUINCY, California -- A U.S. Forest Service plan to test the effects of different levels of logging on California spotted owls calls for cutting up to 600 million board-feet of timber and building 160 miles of roads in the Plumas and Lassen national forests.

The 20-year study on more than 180,000 acres is designed to measure scientifically how owls and other "old forest species" respond to thinning or removing all vegetation in small patches, said Rick Alexander, a Forest Service spokesman.

Website for study: http://www.nwoldgrowth.org/infostation/doc_detail.cfm?docID=198

Critics of the plan developed by Forest Service scientists are alarmed by the magnitude and intensity of the proposed actions. Environmentalists who support a research-driven study of forest management practices said the plan released Thursday involves too much logging over too much time on too small a land base.

"This is a return to the bad old days under the guise of research," said Jay Watson, California director of the Wilderness Society.

Craig Thomas, executive director of the Sierra Nevada Forest Protection Campaign, called the scale of road building "too much to swallow."

Most of the 160 miles of new roads would be permanent and concentrated on 493,000 acres of national forest. In contrast, the current management plan for the entire Sierra Nevada range calls for 24 miles of new roads, he said.

The administrative study is one of several actions required by former Regional Forester Brad Powell in his 2001 decision to implement the Sierra Nevada Framework, a management plan that limits logging and protects wildlife and water quality throughout the 11 national forests in the Sierra Nevada.

It is designed to review whether the framework can be accommodated to the 1999 Quincy Library Group Forest Recovery Act, a five-year program to test how best to protect a forest and its habitat from fires and destructive logging, while still producing enough timber to keep the local timber industry alive.

Scientists planned the activities to test the effects of the Quincy program under conditions that allow them to measure the results, said Peter Stine, a Forest Service science team leader. Once the logging is complete, they will monitor each area for 20 years.

Under the plan, crews would remove brush and trees up to 34 inches in diameter on about 183,000 acres in two national forests in the northern Sierra Nevada. Three different levels of activity would vary the size and configuration of the trees and the intensity of the treatment.

One regime involves no "group selection," a logging system that removes all vegetation in up to 2-acre patches. It represents the forest management outlined in the Sierra Nevada Framework, "the conservative end of things," Alexander said.

A second regime includes group selection and more intensive fuel treatments than the Framework plan allows. It follows the forest management practices outlined in the Quincy plan, he said.

The third regime is the most intense, using group selection and more fuel treatment than either the Framework or the Quincy program allows. The plan is to complete the fuel breaks and small-patch clear-cut in the program's first three years, Alexander said.

The administrative study deliberately sets up a range of significantly different treatments to produce scientifically measurable results, Alexander said.

But Watson said current management activities of comparable intensities are already available in the Sierra.

"Why not study the effects on owls there?" he asked.

He called the plan "a give-back" to the Quincy Library Group, which has seen its program's logging levels cut in half.

But Quincy group members are among the study's most outspoken critics and have threatened to sue the Forest Service over it. They fear the program will be wrongly used to demonstrate the effects of their project.

"If the Forest Service really needs this study, do it somewhere else. We want to do our own program," said Michael Jackson, coalition co-founder.

He called the administrative study a deliberate attempt to misrepresent the Quincy program and avoid addressing "obvious brain-dead" problems in the Framework program.

"Why in the world would anyone put this program in the midst of our program if they weren't looking for chaos?" he asked.

Forest Service officials defended the study as a way to address scientifically the most significant uncertainties they face in managing Sierra forests.

"These issues are the very basis of the controversy with the Sierra Nevada (Framework) and are the reason the regional forester authorized the study," said Jim Pena, Plumas Forest supervisor.

Thomas, the Forest Protection Campaign director, challenged the commitment to monitor the results of the experimental treatments for 20 years by an agency that receives funding from Congress on a year-by-year basis.

"Failure to complete the monitoring would be a huge violation of the public trust and ... (would) destroy the credibility of the Forest Service research branch," Thomas said.

Funding is an unknown, Alexander admitted.

Regional Forester Jack Blackwell has made a commitment to request monitoring money for 20 years, "but we still don't have funding for this year," he said.

The Forest Service expects to complete an environmental assessment of the administrative study this spring, with a final decision this summer. The deadline for public comments is Feb. 3.

http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/story/5572205p-6550038c.html