Dear HCN,
The
unstinting praise for the Sierra Nevada Framework in your last
issue is praise for a remarkably one-dimensional and frankly
unsound plan.
The Sierra Nevada Framework – like
virtually every other current national forest planning effort, from
the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project to the
Quincy Library Group – has a myopic focus on logging and fire, and
fails to take an ecologically sound look at protecting and
restoring damaged ecosystems in their integrated terrestrial and
aquatic complexity. The Framework actually continues the failed
paradigm of trying to manage forests chiefly for
trees.
It is not widely understood that, in the
Sierra Nevada, forests are in vastly better shape than the streams
and other more vulnerable parts of the ecosystem. In fact, it is
the streams (and the critters that depend on them) that are,
according to the independent scientific analysis in the Sierra
Nevada Ecosystem Project, “the most altered and imperiled habitats”
… in the Sierra. The regional pattern of species at risk,
including amphibians and riparian nesting birds, points to the
depth of degradation, not of the forests but of the aquatic and
riparian systems.
Species like the Yosemite toad
will suffer under the Framework’s focus on fire and fuels, and its
failure to address grazing as a major issue. Anybody who has seen
the toad in its native habitat knows that it makes no sense to let
cattle graze in such fragile meadow systems, as the Framework does.
One reviewing scientist went so far as to state: “While the Forest
Service clearly views that forest trees have other values to
society besides utilitarian ones … there is not a single
provision in the Sierra Framework EIS that would similarly provide
for conservation of meadow and riparian vegetation. Each blade of
grass is viewed solely for its consumptive
value.”
An ecologically sound restoration plan
for the Sierra Nevada ecosystem – rather than one aimed at only
trees – would include massive retirements of grazing, dams and
diversions, and a huge program of road deconstruction, none of
which the Framework requires. Such a restoration program would do
much more to begin recovery of the ecosystem than any combination
of thinning and burning, which, by the way, require keeping open an
excessive road system that is one of the prime sources of
continuing degradation.
As elsewhere, the
obsession with fires in the Sierra overstates their importance.
Fires, even so-called catastrophic fires, are much less a threat to
the ecosystem than the chronic and continuing damage from cows,
roads, dams and diversions.
The article could be
understood to suggest that only Pacific Rivers Council and the
Center for Biological Diversity filed legal appeals to the
Framework. For the record, the Sequoia Forest Alliance, Tule River
Conservancy, Kerncrest Audubon Society, Forest Conservation
Council, John Muir Project, National Forest Protection Alliance and
concerned individuals also appealed the plan.
But
you are correct in observing that Pacific Rivers Council and the
Center for Biological Diversity did appeal the Framework EIS. This
reflects our ecological perspectives, which take us beyond concern
only with fires and logging. We make careful policy choices based
on ecologically informed consideration of scientific information
and expert advice. All too often the agencies do not. You may have
noticed that we frequently prevail in the courts. This is the main
reason why we do.
David
Bayles, Conservation Director,
Pacific Rivers
Council
Kieran Suckling,
Executive Director,
Center for Biological
Diversity
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline A myopic framework.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
