LARAMIE – Biodiversity Conservation Alliance filed an administrative appeal against the Medicine Bow National Forest’s Devils Gate Timber Sale on Monday. The timber sale authorized the logging of almost 11 million board-feet of timber, half the entire Forest’s  allowable quota for a year. It included 283 acres of clearcutting, a controversial practice that levels every tree in the forest, leaving behind a field of stumps of little use to most forest wildlife.

Satellite image from 2000 showing the existing level of clearcutting and forest fragmentation in the Devils Gate analysis area.

“This is the biggest timber sale we’ve seen in years on the Medicine Bow, yet the Forest Service issued the sale under a ‘Finding of No Significant Impact,’” said Duane Short, Conservation Advocate with Biodiversity Conservation Alliance. “Considering the fragmentation of mature forest that has happened over the past 50 years on the Medicine Bow, the clearcutting in this project will only make the condition of wildlife habitat worse.”

According to Forest Service tallies, 65 percent of people who commented on the project asked that no clearcutting be allowed in the Devils Gate project. In addition, the Forest Service received over 800 comments seeking an end to the destructive practice and a move toward more sustainable types of logging. Yet despite the public controversy over clearcutting, all of the logging alternatives considered by the agency contained major amounts of clearcutting.

“The Forest Service did take a step in the right direction by canceling clearcuts in old growth forest and big game winter range, but on the whole this project is still going to have a major negative impact on the wildlife habitats connecting the Savage Run and Platte River wilderness areas,” remarked Short.

One of the primary goals of the project was to reduce populations of bark beetles and dwarf mistletoe, two species native to the Medicine Bow. “Dwarf mistletoe almost never causes the death of its host tree, and recent studies conclude that bark beetles are an important part of natural forest cycles, not a threat to forest health,” Short concluded. “And since no amount of logging can halt or even slow a beetle outbreak, it’s pointless for the Forest Service to convert perfectly good forest habitats into stumps just to create the illusion that it can do something about it.”

Duane Short, Conservation Advocate, Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, (307) 742-7978