Forest Service To Triple Sierra Nevada Logging - LA Times

[hatrack]

"The U.S. Forest Service announced Thursday that it would triple logging in the Sierra Nevada to levels not seen in a decade as part of a fire prevention strategy that casts aside Clinton-era restrictions on timber cutting. Regional Forester Jack Blackwell, who presented the plan in Sacramento on Thursday, said the changes were necessary to step up forest thinning that would lessen the threat of forest fires. "If we don't take those actions, we're going to burn 'em up. It's as simple as that."

Under the new plan, logging levels will climb in the Sierra to 330 million board-feet of green timber a year, roughly three times what is now allowed. However, that is still less than half the amount cut during the peak years of commercial logging in the range in the late 1980s.

EDIT

The latest plan officially drops many of those restrictions, permitting not only the removal of far more trees but cutting ones as large as 30 inches in diameter in old-growth stands. It also loosens habitat protections for rare species such as the California spotted owl, Yosemite toad, Pacific fisher and willow flycatcher.

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Others noted the Forest Service had retreated from promises that 75% of the logging would occur near communities vulnerable to wildfires. In its final form, the plan lowers that figure to 50%.

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First outlined in detail last year, the new Sierra blueprint has been controversial within the Forest Service as well as outside. In internal reviews, Forest Service biologists and other government scientists said they were aware of no scientific justification for weakening the Clinton-era standards and warned that increased logging could harm declining wildlife species."

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[tom_paine]

1. Imperial Amerika will be a barren, pulluted place

I don't envy those who will be living in the Empire in 2050...and 2100?

I shudder to think of the environmental, social, and political condition of that sad Third World Nation of the future.