>Forests

Logrolls and Logjams

Where: Twin Sisters and Hoodoo Roadless Areas, ColvilleForest, Washington
Threat: Timber sales

As you fly west from Glacier National Park, in northwestern Montana, mountain ranges fall and rise and blend one into the other: the Cabinets, the Bitterroots, the Selkirks. A swath of blue, the Columbia River valley, yawns quickly under the plane before the landscape climbs into the Kettle River range, gentle mountains that roll south from Canada over the border into Washington. For nearly 300 miles you've been over grizzly and Canada lynx country; you're now at a crossroads—"a melting pot of interior and coastal forest and the desert to the south," observes Tim Coleman, director of the Kettle Range Conservation Group, a grassroots organization formed to protect wilderness areas.

There are also mule deer below, as well as whitetails and cougars living in the mix of aspens, western larches, Douglas firs, ponderosa pines, red cedars, western white pines, hemlocks, and cottonwoods. Says Gary Blevins, president of the Spokane Audubon Society, "Fragmentation of these forests really hurts a lot of Audubon WatchList species, such as calliope and rufus hummingbirds and olive-sided flycatchers."

Last year the U.S. Forest Service planned a timber sale in the Twin Sisters and Hoodoo Roadless Areas, the "poster child" among the 105,000 acres of inventoried roadless area in the Kettle River range. A coalition of local conservationists used legal means to block it. But this year the Forest Service is attempting to resurrect the sale on hundreds of acres in the Twin Sisters Roadless Area. "Given the Bush administration's new commitment to ease environmental restrictions on logging,," Coleman says, "such areas will receive the most pressure to be cut immediately."

Logging would diminish an international corridor for grizzlies and put more pressure on mule deer, which are declining in parts of the West as their winter range is developed. It would also threaten a pure strain of redband trout, says Allen Palmanteer, a habitat biologist for the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Woody Myers, a wildlife research biologist who also works for the department, agrees. In addition, he points out that some of the mule deer of the Kettle River range don't migrate to lowlands in winter, as do most mule deer. Instead they depend on the conifer forest's closed canopy to provide cover for browse. Take away the trees, he says, and "you'd expect the population to decline."

The Kettle Range Conservation Group supports designating the area as a federal wilderness. Although prospects for this seem remote in the current Congress, such action would aid the local economy, for which the timber industry provides only a few hundred jobs. "Wildlands left undeveloped have a higher economic value than those exploited for commodities," says Thomas Michael Power, an economist at the University of Montana who has studied the issue closely. "Because people care where they live and act on those preferences, higher-quality living environments also tend to attract both people and economic activity."

—Ted Kerasote

To get involved:
Contact Tim Coleman of the Kettle Range Conservation Group (509-775-2667; TColeman@kettlerange.org; www.kettlerange.org). To learn more, go to www.umt.edu/econ/papers.htm, the Lands Council (www.landscouncil.org), or the Spokane Audubon Society (509-838-5828; www.spokaneaudubon.org).

Slow Burn

Where: Duncan Canyon Roadless Area, Tahoe National Forest, California
Threat: Salvage logging

Old-growth red and white firs, sugar pines, and incense cedar mingle in this California forest west of Lake Tahoe, but it's the giant red firs that give these mountains an air of dignity. Standing a stately distance from one another, the trees allow easy walking, and their crowns filter the light and cool the air.

Winter wrens and hermit thrushes sing from the streamside vegetation, while golden-crowned kinglets call from high in the canopy. At dusk a California spotted owl—a subspecies of the spotted owl proposed for endangered-species listing—begins to hoot, and the ghostly forms of three mule deer slide between the trees. In short, the 8,703-acre Duncan Canyon Roadless Area is a snapshot from the past—a rare example of an unlogged, mid-elevation Sierra forest containing several species of old-growth conifers.

In August 2001 the Star Fire swept across the Tahoe National Forest, including 4,300 acres of the Duncan Canyon area. Given this place's pristine nature—Senator Barbara Boxer has proposed that 3,000 acres be designated as federally protected wilderness—the Forest Service has recommended conducting salvage logging by helicopter, to remove large charred trees before they fall. Salvage logging is allowed under the Roadless Rule, after all, and doing it by helicopter is usually less destructive than sending in log trucks.

Rich Johnson, a district ranger, wants to log only the large trees that are dead or dying from the fire, but not small ones, because he believes it is not economical. Since the fire reduced much of the area to bare soil, he would leave the branches and limbs from the logged trees as ground cover.

But Craig Thomas, director of the Sierra Nevada Forest Protection Campaign, would leave big trees—measuring at least 20 inches—in place, to mimic an old forest's ecology. "Large dead trees are incredibly important for the function of the ecosystem."

Ed Pandolfino, of the Placer County Conservation Committee and a board member of the Sierra Foothills Audubon Society, agrees. "Selectively take the big dead trees, and you impact a whole host of woodpeckers, including hairy and white-headed and even black-backed woodpeckers," he says. "These trees attract insects that provide food for the woodpeckers, and sites where they can excavate nesting cavities, which, in turn, provide homes for other birds, such as mountain bluebirds."

Pandolfino views helicopter logging as a way of selling the larger and most profitable trees without addressing the real problem of clearing out the underbrush. To that end, he'd have the Forest Service go in with foot crews, cut small trees and brush, and reduce it through prescribed burns—all actions that would truly address the forest's ecological health and that would be allowed under the Clinton Roadless Rule.

Coincidentally, President Bush seemed to approve of just such a scheme during the intense wildfire season of 2002, saying, "For too long, America's fire-prevention strategy has been shortsighted. Forest policies have not focused on thinning, the clearing of the forest floor of built-up brush and densely packed trees that create the fuel for extremely large fires like those experienced this year." We'll soon see if this is anything more than a rhetorical smoke screen, meant to justify helicopter logging in U.S. forests instead of enacting a sound fire policy.

—Ted Kerasote

To get involved:
Contact Ed Pandolfino of the Placer County Conservation Committee (ERPfromCA@aol.com) or the Sierra Nevada Forest Protection Campaign (www.Californiawild.org/SierraCampaign.html).

The Big Drill

Where: Springhouse Park Roadless Area, Gunnison National Forest, Colorado
Threat: Coal-bed methane development

The Springhouse Park Roadless Area sits at elevations between 6,000 and 10,000 feet, bridging a gap between the West Elk Mountains and Grand Mesa—the largest flat-topped mountain in the United States. To the east you can see the snowfields and towering peaks of the Ragged Mountains. Ridge after ridge of vivid aspens shiver in the warm fall breeze. Pods of dark-green spruces and firs line the northern drainages and, at lower elevations, hillsides of dry gambel oak lead the eye to willows and cottonwoods along streams.

The area's 17,600 acres, which lie north of Somerset, Colorado, are home to elk and deer and provide habitat for such endangered species as the Southwest willow flycatcher and the Canada lynx. They also cap some potentially rich deposits of coal-bed methane, a form of natural gas that's tapped by pumping out vast amounts of groundwater. Not only can this drilling method seriously deplete aquifers, the pumped-out water can also be both highly saline and hard to dispose of safely.

In addition, methane-contaminated water can seep into aquifers used as sources of drinking water. As troubling as these effects are, they don't begin to address how energy development will affect wildlife, recreation, and the local economy in the long term.

As Sandy Shea, lands director of the High Country Citizens' Alliance, put it, "Ten years ago there were no existing oil and gas leases within the roadless area. … Now, all of a sudden, virtually the entire roadless area is overlaid by gas leases." Shea says that the Bureau of Land Management is using an old environmental-impact statement that doesn't address coal-bed methane drilling. "We're looking at potentially hundreds of wells whose effects the Forest Service has not even looked at."

Despite these potential consequences, in November 2001 the Bush administration leased 84 percent of the Springhouse Park Roadless Area for oil and gas production. In March 2002 the Western Slope Environmental Resource Council, along with the High Country Citizens' Alliance and the Wilderness Society, filed an administrative appeal with the Interior Department's Board of Land Appeals, claiming the leasing analysis failed to adequately consider the impact on threatened and endangered species. The decision is pending.

In April 2002 the Gunnison Energy Corporation proposed drilling several exploratory coal-bed methane wells on nearby private land, with a long-range plan to drill 600 wells on both private and federal lands for which the company also held leasing rights. Two months later Delta County denied Gunnison a permit for all but one exploratory well, citing concerns about the effect the drilling would have on the quality of local water, both for drinking and irrigation.

Unfortunately, Delta County's decision, which was backed up by local residents, may do nothing to limit coal-bed methane development on federal lands. If energy development in nearby Wyoming—where the BLM is fast-tracking natural gas development over millions of acres (see "Powder Keg,," Audubon, December 2002)—is any guide, the Springhouse Park area will probably also be developed, another victim of the White House's shortsighted energy policy. After all, if the administration put as much muscle into promoting conservation and the development of alternative energy forms, drilling in any of our national forests would be unnecessary.

—Ted Kerasote

To get involved:
Contact Jeremy Puckett of the Western Slope Environmental Resource Council (970-527-5307; wserc@wserc.org; www.wserc.org) or Sandy Shea of the High Country Citizens' Alliance (970-349-7104; www.hccaonline.org).

Off-Road Rage

Where: Burke Branch Roadless Area, Shawnee National Forest, Illinois
Threat: All-terrain vehicles

Located in the far southeastern corner of Illinois, the Burke Branch Roadless Area typifies many of the problems associated with preserving wildlands in the eastern half of the nation. Its 5,500 acres, which are covered with mixed hardwoods—oak-hickory, maples, and beeches—make up the only roadless area in the United States that lies in the southern floodplain forest. Green-fringed orchids, narrow-leafed sunflowers, and big bluestem grass bloom in its "barrens"—sparsely timbered open areas. The Burke Branch's mature, closed-canopy forest is important habitat for neotropical migrants like the scarlet tanager, the Kentucky warbler—the latter is on the Audubon WatchList—and the wood thrush; turkeys and deer abound, making it a prime spot for hunters. In a state that ranks 48th in per capita public lands and that has had 98 percent of its bottomland forests cleared, this big block of fairly intact landscape is, in the words of Mark Donham, a local grassroots advocate, "critical habitat for our state."

It's not that Burke Branch is pristine. In fact, much of it has been logged, farmed, and replanted with nonindigenous pine. There is a network of old roads, some overgrown, others kept open by the illegal use of ATVs—all-terrain vehicles, whose knobby tires trample vegetation and cause erosion, and whose noisy engines scare wildlife. For a westerner or an Alaskan, this patch of woods on the great bend of the Ohio River would hardly be called wild. Yet the Forest Service Land and Resource Management Planning Handbook recognizes that most of the East has been settled and that signs of "human activity and modification" do not preclude an area from being called roadless or even being designated a wilderness. That said, there are some virtually undisturbed bottomlands and high-quality old forests in the Burke Branch.

Nonetheless, in 1986, when the first Shawnee National Forest Plan was issued, the Burke Branch area was opened to ATVs. After a decade of habitat destruction, erosion, and stream sedimentation, a U.S. District Court banned all ATV use in the Shawnee pending the results of a new environmental-impact statement—it's due out in 2004. Still, the Bush administration's track record on the use of off-road vehicles offers little hope for restrictions on ATV use, regardless of the results of the environmental review. Last November, for example, officials ignored National Park Service reports about the disastrous impacts of snowmobiles on wildlife in Yellowstone National Park and rescinded the agency's ban on the machines in that park.

What's more, ATVers have a history of ignoring closed areas and abandoning designated trail systems for the thrill of cross-country travel. And the Forest Service is at a loss to stop them.
Woefully underfunded, it simply doesn't have the manpower to patrol all the land under its jurisdiction. As Robert Harris, patrol captain on the Shawnee, points out, "We have two enforcement personnel for 270,000 acres. We'd love to have five more, but there just aren't the funds."

—Ted Kerasote

To get involved:
Contact Mark Donham of Heartwood (618-564-3367; Markkris@earthlink.net; www.heartwood.org).

Eastward Ho

Where: Wilson Creek, HarperCreek, Lost Cove, Dobson Knob, and Linville Gorge Addition Roadless Areas, Pisgah National Forest, North Carolina
Threats: Multiple

Photo by Kim Hubbard

In recent years researchers and volunteers have hiked deep into the mountains of western North Carolina, into the Grandfather Mountain/ Linville Gorge area of the Pisgah National Forest, to do what they call ground-truthing. Like conservationists nationwide, they are hell-bent on documenting the woods before the U.S. Forest Service turns them into wood. These North Carolina ground-truthers have found 25 different tree species, from basswood to buckeye. They have also found 30,000 acres of old growth, where hemlocks soar to more than 150 feet, and tulip poplars, six feet across, stand like sturdy sentinels. "Trees this big are something we associate with the West," says Chris Canfield, executive director of Audubon North Carolina. "They take your breath away and give you a taste of what the eastern forest was like before it was logged."

Last spring Canfield dispatched a biologist to do some "sky-truthing." In one roadless area, Wilson Creek, the biologist recorded peregrine falcons, Swainson's warblers, cerulean warblers, and 81 other kinds of birds, half of them on Audubon's WatchList of at-risk species. As a result, the region is now an Important Bird Area. Besides birds, the area has 60 rare plant and animal species, including northern flying squirrels and one of two known populations of the spruce-fir moss spider, a penny-size tarantula.

On the face of it, logging five roadless areas totaling 27,200 acres hardly makes sense. First, the very ruggedness and remoteness that have kept loggers away in the first place probably means that the timber sales would lose money (although that hasn't stopped the government elsewhere). Second, in the South, just 2 percent of logging is on public lands. "But industry is zealously opposing the roadless ruling,," Canfield notes. "I don't know if it's for symbolic value or that they see the roadless areas as resources for more timber once the private lands have been cut." The Bush administration has been tight-lipped. But the Maple Sally Timber Sale—which would occur across a 6,000-acre tract near Wilson Creek on an expedited schedule, with little environmental oversight—is in the pipeline.

To make matters worse, national forests in the densely populated eastern United States are gradually being chewed up. In the Pisgah, road building, housing development on private inholdings, and off-road-vehicle use are all taking their toll. Logging would further degrade vital connections between habitats. "In my worst dreams, 20 to 25 years from now, I'd picture second and primary homes sprinkled all along the mountainsides, and logging roads carved through them,"says Hugh Irwin, conservation planner for the Southern Appalachian Forest Coalition. "And, if the roadless policy doesn't stand, timber sales dotting it all."

More than half the U.S. population lives within a day's drive of nearby Great Smoky Mountains National Park, where each year more than 30 million people hike, paddle, camp, fish, and bird. The Grandfather Mountain/Linville Gorge area offers enormous potential as a rival attraction—if left alone.

—David Seideman

To get involved:
Contact Audubon North Carolina (919-929-3899; www.ncaudubon.org) or the Southern Appalachian Forest Coalition (828-252-9223; safc@safc.org; www.safc.org).