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Thursday, April 14, 2005

Guest View: Citizen's Plan Better for Forest

By Jan Moore, Bud Latven, Paul Davis and Bryan Bird

    The Mountainair District of the Cibola National Forest has proposed the first Healthy Forests Restoration Act (HFRA) project ever in the state of New Mexico, allegedly designed to protect communities in the Manzano Mountains.
    The proposed project area includes Fourth of July canyon, where thousands of visitors come each fall to view the maple leaves in their glorious colors. Citizens from the local community have formed a coalition challenging the Forest Service initiative and have proposed their own Citizen's Alternative.
    In the last part of the 19th Century, massive logging for an ever-growing railroad industry largely stripped the Manzanos of trees. In 1905, the Forest Service was established to gain some control over misuse of Western forests, but logging continued in the Manzanos well into the 20th Century. The first time the people of Tajique stood together to oppose deforestation in the mountains above Tajique was in 1907. Unfortunately, two community members were killed in the confrontations between loggers and traditional forest users.
    Under Forest Service management, grazing became a dominant use and in the 1960s thousands of acres of juniper, piñon and oak trees were ripped out to create openings for grazing. The use of "controlled burns" was initiated in order to stimulate forage and provide more rangeland for livestock; one of these burns got out of control, forcing residents to evacuate their homes. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., even initiated a congressional inquiry into the practice. Despite the acknowledgement in the Tajique management plan that overgrazing is contributing to declining forest health, this destructive land-use continues unabated.
    Now, the USFS has proposed yet another aggressive management plan in Fourth of July Canyon. Under the guise of protecting local communities from catastrophic wildfires, this HFRA plan is yet another giveaway of public resources to private interests. At a cost of $6 million to $12 million, the plan would log more than 17,000 acres in 10 years with the creation of 33 miles of 300-foot-wide fuel breaks and 28 miles of new roads. The USFS estimates the plan will require the removal of 175 truckloads of biomass a week, running five days a week from March to November for at least seven years. And all of this is to protect about a dozen homes from catastrophic wildfires that are shown to be statistically unlikely by the Forest Service's own fire frequency data.
    Virtually all of the citizens living or owning properties within the project area now oppose the Forest Service proposal, believing that private business interest— not forest health— is the driving force. The Forest Service met with local citizen groups but has failed in its effort to convince them of the project's value and honesty. As a result, the citizens formed a coalition and produced an alternative plan that minimizes negative impacts and puts fire protection and forest health first and economic concerns as a secondary benefit.
    The Citizen's Alternative takes a measured approach to restoring forest and watershed health. The plan calls for the separation of larger forest health projects from community fire protection in order to minimize potential misuse and negative impacts. It also calls for monitored thinning projects, the creation of just enough fuelbreaks to protect private in-holdings— eight miles as opposed to 33 miles— and the removal of livestock in order to restore riparian and upland habitats and natural fire regimes.
    Logging and road construction are also eliminated under the Citizen's Alternative. Since most of the larger trees in the Manzanos have already been removed, removing any trees larger than 12 inches in diameter is not justified. On the contrary, the HFRA itself discourages the removal of large trees. To do so is simply a giveaway to logging interests. Because the watershed is already three times the legal road density, the Citizen's Alternative removes the 28 miles of new road construction.
    The citizen's coalition believes that the Forest Service proposal is an overambitious project that will have negative impacts on forest and watershed health through an increase in erosion, an increase in human-caused fire starts, an increase in vandalism, poaching and forest product theft, and continued livestock grazing. We are asking the broader community to join with us in our effort to restore forest health in the Manzano Mountains by using an open, monitored and reasonable approach to forest stewardship for the benefit of all of us and not just a few special interests.
    The Citizen's Alternative can be read at www.fguardians.org.
    Jan Moore, Bud Latven and Paul Davis are longtime residents of Forest Valley Subdivision in the Tajique project area. Bryan Bird is forest program coordinator for Forest Guardians.
#EQ#The Associated Press**misformed if statement**