You are here: Home

Help the Forest Service Do the Right Thing

The Forest Service needs a nudge in the right direction. The High Cascades Ranger District recently released an Environmental Assessment for the Rustler Timber Sale, an area near the Sky Lakes Wilderness on the Upper Rogue River. The tributary streams to Big Butte Creek are in the project area, as are many old clearcuts and fire-suppressed forests that could be thinned and restored. KS Wild supports these actions, along with road decommissioning in this heavily impacted forest.

The project would be great if the Forest Service could just stop there and do the right thing. Unfortunately, in addition to several thousand acres of thinning, the Forest Service is proposing to log large overstory trees in order to, in their own words, “establish a new crop of trees.” They are also proposing to build 10 miles of road and log near streams, both activities know to harm water quality and wildlife habitat.

We need your help to convince the Forest Service to stay out of the old-growth logging and road building business. They should embrace forest restoration and thinning small trees that are the result of clearcut logging/plantation forestry and decades of fire exclusion. Please Comment Today!

Subject:

Your Letter:

Dear Ranger Kerwin Dewberry,

I am very interested in forest management on the High Cascades Ranger District of the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest. I support management that preserves our remaining old-growth forests and clean water, while restoring our public lands.

The Rustler timber sale is an important opportunity to move forward with a restoration-based thinning timber sale in a large project area in the Big Butte Creek Watershed. We agree that many of these areas could use thinning, road removal and stream restoration to benefit the forest ecology.

Unfortunately, Alternative 1 in the Rustler Environmental Assessment involves “Overstory Removal” of old-growth trees, logging near streams and the construction of 10 miles of new road. I cannot support this project unless these aspects are removed and the Forest Service focuses on thinning fire prone plantations and small diameter trees in fire suppressed forests, road removal and stream restoration.

Cutting old-growth trees, building road and logging streamside areas, as outlined in Alternative 1, threatens the overall integrity of the Rustler project. In order to protect the old-growth forest, prevent the loss of water quality and maintain good wildlife habitat, you should choose to implement Alternative 2. Alternative 2 would thin nearly 6,000 acres of forest, while providing log to mills and avoid most of the negative impacts of Alternative 1.

This project area has already been heavily roaded and logged. Please do the right thing and implement alternative 2.

Please keep me apprised as this project moves forward.

Thank you,

Kerwin Dewberry

USFS

Personal tools

Sections

Help the Forest Service Do the Right Thing

Kerwin Dewberry

Learn More...