The BLM, S. Douglas RA, Louis Weaver Timber Sale Environmental Assessment is out, 9+ mmbf on 314 acres - all regeneration harvests. Comments were due on March 27. The decision in May was to clearcut the entire sale.
The EA offered us the usual two options, no action, or wipe it out. The 'wipe it out' option has very significant impacts on Louis Creek, which borders 8 of the 9 units. Louis Creek is a perennial fish-bear stream, providing some rare habitat for the endangered cutthroat trout and coho salmon.
There is more - lots of owls. A "may affect-likely to adversely affect" determination has been made because owl habitat would be reduced below the required 40% threshold. The "Finding of No Significant Impact" document from the BLM says: "Suitable northern spotted owl habitat would be removed from within the provincial home ranges of five owl sites.... There would be no significant adverse impacts to the spotted owl or other special status species."
Double speak speaks again.
The sale will build 11.1 miles of new and renovated roads.
"Cumulative impacts could include increased peak flows during rain-on-snow events" (EA pg. 12). More than half of the acres are within the Transient Snow Zone (TSZ), which has the "potential to increase peak flows due to rain-on-snow events."
Anybody remember the floods of '96? To top it off, part of unit 7 lies in a translational slide area as mapped in the watershed analysis on page 21.
And speaking of the watershed analysis - what an inadequate document! We have a mere 33 pages to analyze such an important watershed. Most of that is filled with chapter headings under which the text admits that "no data", or only "base line data" is available for important information - like Water Quality, Temperature, Fisheries, some wildlife species, (no surveys done on bats), neotropical species, no surveys done for some special status plants, no fire history data, etc. The Watershed Analysis says on page 31: "A key question that would assist the harvest planning process is: approximately how much harvest should each watershed within the resource area be expected to carry over time.... This is a data gap which is critical for long term harvest planning."
The EA for the Louis Weaver timber sale ends with a three sentence Cumulative Impacts analysis. The last sentence: "There are other BLM harvest activities (approximately 700 acres) planned in the USMWAU in the reasonably foreseeable future."
4/97 update: Only 6 mmbf of Louis Weaver was sold in 1996 under the logging rider. In 1997 BLM released the Upper South Myrtle Harvest Plan for 10 mmbf. Some of Louis Weaver, and some of the Myrtle Harvest Plan will be combined for the "Dream Weaver" timber sale. A rare slug was discovered in the old Louis Weaver units of the Dream Weaver timber sale.
December 4. 1995
from: Lynda L. Blumenthal, Myrtle Creek, OR
to: Allen R. Wood, Area Manager SDRA, BLM
777 NW Garden Valley Blvd., Roseburg, OR 97470
Dear Mr. Wood:
It has come to my attention that a timber harvest is being considered in a T28S R3W location, in the Upper Louis Sub-basin, the Louis Weaver sale. I am very very concerned about this possible harvest and want to register my opposition. I own, and live on acreage in the vicinity of the proposed harvest, so I am motivated by a strong desire to protect the forest, the riparian/water quality, soil productivity, and wildlife habitat in my "backyard", as well as by my observations of the condition of other sections that have already been harvested in this general area, including a clearcut on BLM land bordering my property to the west and similar harvests that have been done in the government-managed forest to the east.
A few years ago, after the clearcut on the west, I started making periodic visits to that decimated acreage. I would sit for hours on a stump and wait hopefully for signs of life. There were none, not a bird, not an insect that I could see. Over the years a modicum of some visible life has returned, though at a rate that makes "protection" a sham. And as for the replanting of the trees, very few have survived.
In the nearly twenty years I have lived here I have made frequent excursions up into BLM country and into the Umpqua National Forest. I have seen places where the clearcuts have been more successfully replanted, but what is there is not "forest" as I understand it. Rather, the terrain looks more like a schoolroom for marketable timber, with the trees of uniform age and size, all standing in regimental rows. The biodiversity of the natural forest has been destroyed.
How much more destruction of our forests will it take before those who are charged with the proper management of them will change their attitudes toward this precious resource, toward all the different life forms who inhabit it? I oppose clearcutting, I oppose the cutting of ancient trees, I oppose the further cutting of an already over-cut watershed that threatens the survival of fish, eg. I hope that my voice can have an impact on your environmental analysis.
Sincerely,
Lynda L. Blumenthal
March 14, 1996
from: Lynda L. Blumenthal, Myrtle Creek, OR
to: Allen R. Wood, Area Manager SDRA, BLM
Thank you for sending to me the Environmental Assessment (EA) for the proposed timber harvest in the Upper South Myrtle Watershed. I had hoped that my letter of 12/2/95, in which I shared my observations of the vast negative impact this kind of harvesting has had on this area, would have some impact on your proceedings, but I find your EA discouraging. Reading it, I get the sense that the analysis is a mere bureaucratic formality, and that there is a determination to proceed with this harvest no matter what.
Nevertheless, I shall continue to be a voice crying in the wilderness, or rather in the Upper South Myrtle Watershed.
I suppose the key word in your "Finding of No Significant Impact", is significant. Significant to whom, and by whose definition, I wonder. As I stated in my prior letter, I have witnessed and mourned the impact that past harvests have had in BLM holdings adjacent to my property and in outlying areas. The clear-cut land with little survival of the planted seedlings, the roads that remain as ugly scars, the erosion, the disappearance of insects, birds, and other wildlife... all this gives me no reason to trust that the timber harvesting proposed would or could be done without similar negative results.
I urge the Douglas Resource Area of BLM to adopt Alternative 1 - No Action. Let the habitat remain, let nature be in charge of the plants and animals, leave unmolested this small area of mature and old-growth trees. Whatever "need" Alternative 2 is supposed to meet, I submit there is a greater need: the preservation of this precious resource.
Sincerely,
Lynda Blumenthal