Task Force Appeals Plans For Destructive Timber Sale

For over seven years the Gifford Pinchot Task Force (Task Force) has been working with collaborative partners on the Gifford Pinchot National Forest (GPNF) to plan restoration based thinning projects, which provide benefits to both the local communities and forest ecosystems. We have learned the value of working with Forest Service staff and other partners early on while projects are being planned so solutions can be developed and good projects that are diversely supported can be created. Unfortunately, the Forest Service didn’t allow a collaborative process throughout the development of the Wildcat Thin Timber Sale and regrettably there are a variety of negative impacts to water quality, fish, and wildlife making it impossible for us to support the project. The Task Force has decided to appeal the decision to encourage the Forest Service to reconsider some of the project plans that would have the most damaging impacts on fish, wildlife, and their habitats. This is the first timber sale we have felt compelled to appeal in seven years.

Bull trout and other species will be negatively affected by road building proposed in the Wildcat Thin.

The Wildcat Thin Timber Sale is in a Tier 1 Key Watershed, the Muddy River Watershed and Pine Creek Subwatershed, meaning activities are supposed to contribute directly to conservation of at-risk salmon, bull trout, and resident fish species. The Wildcat Thin Timber Sale is clearly not consistent with this direction. In fact the Fisheries Biological Assessment states that the proposed action determination is likely to adversely affect bull trout.

The timber sale will build and reconstruct eleven miles of roads with thirteen stream crossings, which cause erosion, sedimentation, and increased peak flows to nearby streams.

Reconstructing roads that are already beginning to recover naturally (as seen in this photo) undoes important progress and causes unnecessary impacts to terrestrial and aquatic species.

All of these changes can dramatically impact fish habitat and recovery. Moreover, the GPNF already has over 4,000 miles of roads to manage, and if you have been out there lately, you have personally seen what a $50+ million road maintenance backlog looks like. The Forest Service should be focusing thinning projects in areas that are easily accessible and where benefits to habitat and species could be created, not in areas where negative impacts to both fish and wildlife are certain. In addition, instead of creating new roads to manage, they should be reducing the number of road miles they are required to manage by decommissioning unneeded roads.

The proposed timber sale is planned in an area with sensitive soils and very high to moderate potential for landslides. The project entails a forest management plan amendment to allow logging on steep slopes and in areas that have high risk of landslides, which will result in destruction of fish habitat in nearby streams. In areas that have experienced landslides, soil and plant recovery can take centuries to reach even modest levels of vegetation. 

Logging on steep slopes adjacent to Pine Creek, which provides critical habitat for bull trout and other species, will introduce sediment and destroy fish habitat.

 Additional project concerns include thinning in riparian reserves. Riparian areas are supposed to be managed to maintain or enhance wildlife and fish habitat, protect water quality and other aquatic and riparian resource values. The timber sale plans to thin in riparian reserves with the same objectives as the upland portion of stands rather than trying to benefit water quality and old growth dependent species including salmon.

In future project planning, we hope the GPNF is willing to collaborative early on in project planning to resolve these damaging impacts. But for now we hope you will support our work to stop these destructive activities planned by the GPNF.