Our forests deserve better
By Mason Osgood, Columnist, Enviro Update
Since its founding in 1988, Sheep Mountain Alliance has been closely following timber projects in our local forests. Since first fighting against logging on the slopes of our namesake mountain the forests of Colorado’s Western Slope have undergone extensive stress. From the spruce beetle epidemic to sudden aspen decline to wildfires, our forests are feeling the effects of a changing climate.
The Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre, and Gunnison (GMUG) national forests capitalized on the magnitude of these landscape changes to pursue “big, bold action” in the form of a forest-wide logging proposal dubbed the Spruce Beetle Epidemic and Aspen Decline Management Response, or SBEADMR. Formally approved in 2016, SBEADMR is a 120,000-acre logging project designed by the agency to increase efficiency and adaptability to quickly log these diseased forests. In making its case to the numerous communities and counties within the project area that such a massive and longterm logging project was necessary, GMUG staff in 2015 stated: “Most of it will probably be in the form of salvage harvest, removing dead and dying trees on or around infrastructure like campgrounds …”
However, this emphasis on removing dead and dying beetle-killed trees to address wildfire and safety issues did not last very long.
Beginning in 2019, the U.S. Forest Service shifted SBEADMR from focusing on diseased and dead trees to “resiliency” treatments, which is agency-speak for logging living, healthy, green trees.
This shift came at the behest of the timber industry — specifically Montrose Forest Products — because their milling operations could not make the dead trees profitable. Now, instead of logging dead or dying trees to reduce fire danger while helping the local economy, the Forest Service is authorizing loggers to remove healthy, living spruce-fir and aspen trees.
With so much of western Colorado’s spruce-fir already dead or dying because of beetles and other stressors, the agency’s decision to target tens of thousands of acres of green trees for logging is a dramatic shift, one based on economics rather than forest ecology.
The Forest Service authorized SBEADMR using a framework called “condition-based management,” ostensibly to allow a greater degree of flexibility and adaptability in approval of logging operations. [Text Wrapping Break]Now, though, condition-based management looks more like a tool to circumvent site-specific environmental analysis while abridging meaningful public participation. For example, the Forest Service recently approved 8,500 acres of steep slope logging that was previously excluded from SBEADMR without any new environmental analysis or public comment. Likewise, the project now exceeds the thresholds for logging in suitable lynx habitat, but the Forest Service has not undertaken any new analysis or implemented new safeguards.
This could threaten the continued presence of this iconic species in our local forests, but the Forest Service hasn’t even consulted with experts at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Despite SBEADMR having morphed into something far from what the Forest Service pitched to communities, there has been little opportunity for the public to engage meaningfully to steer it back on track. Since the SBEADMR decision was signed, the Forest Service has logged approximately 36,000 acres of forest on the Western Slope without opportunity for the public to provide meaningful comments on the site-specific environmental impacts of the project.
There is no legally binding environmental analysis or corresponding public comment when these timber sales are proposed.
There is no formal consultation with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service about threatened and endangered species. In practice, SBEADMR has become a blank check for the Forest Service to meet its timber targets and exclude the public from commenting or challenging massive logging projects.
SBEADMR has become severely flawed, with negative impacts to both the environment and the public’s trust in the agency.
However, the Forest Service has options to sustain its flow of timber to Western Colorado mills while authorizing lawful timber sales. First, the agency must pause SBEADMR implementation until it complies with federal law, which requires the Forest Service to supplement its environmental analysis and provide an opportunity for public feedback on the project. If that’s too burdensome for the agency, then the Forest Service should initiate environmental analysis on each timber sale it proposes and initiate public comment periods for each sale.