BLM Hopes to “Regenerate” The Lower Applegate- Please Send an Auto-letter Today
Cheney-Slate Timber Sale Proposes to increase fire hazard near communities.
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Please click here to send an auto letter to the BLM right now, or read on to learn more.
A Return to the Bad Old Days.
For the past 15 years timber sale planners at the BLM and the Forest Service have focused their timber sale program in the Lower Applegate Watershed on thinning thick forest stands to improve forest health and reduce fire hazard.
Forest Collaboration Works.
The Forest Service is continuing its collaborative work to reduce fire hazard by working with its neighbors, the environmental community, and the timber industry to develop the “Butcherknife-Slate” timber sale in the Lower Applegate Watershed. This timber sale will address the effects of fire suppression by thinning small-diameter trees that have encroached on forest stands.
Clearcutting Puts Resources At-Risk.
In contrast, the BLM is proposing to increase fire hazard by “regenerating” (logging) over 500 acres of large fire-resilient trees and converting those stands into dense tree-plantations.
Even the BLM recognizes that such “regeneration” logging is harmful to forest and watershed health. Hence the Cheney-Slate Environmental Assessment (page 77) concludes that this logging:
• “would simplify stand structure”
• “the potential for intense fire behavior will remain”
• and “the potential for windthrow will increase.”
Indeed the BLM acknowledges (page 94) that “Proposed regeneration harvest units will increase fire severity for several decades until trees dominate the site and re-establish an overstory canopy.”
Help the BLM Help the Forest.
Please take a moment to send an automatic letter to the BLM and let them know that you support collaborative forest restoration projects like Butcherknife Slate, and that you oppose “regeneration” logging like that proposed in the Cheney-Slate timber sale. Please mention that you value older forests and would like to see the BLM focus its timber management on thinning smaller-diameter trees that contribute to fire hazard rather than logging big fire-resilient trees.
