Help Stop a Clearcut in the Medicine Bow!

Your Comments are Needed on the
"Spruce Gulch Bark Beetle and Fuels Reduction Project"

The Forest Service is proposing to “implement timber harvest activities to reduce the spread of mountain pine beetles and spruce bark beetles in the Spruce Gulch analysis area.” However, in a recent Denver Post newspaper article Regional Forester, Rick Cables, is reported to have stated,“…there is no way to stop the beetles....” and "Mountain pine beetles are an agent of [forest] regeneration."

Recent scientific studies by independent scientists, Bill Romme, Dominik Kulakowski, and others find that wildfire risks due to the recent beetle epidemic are “overblown.”

BACKGROUND
The Spruce Gulch area includes or is near Fox Park and WyoColo. Pelton Creek, Illinois Creek, and Highway 230 run through the area proposed for logging. The project encompasses high quality interior forest wildlife habitat and stands of old growth lodgepole pine. Clearcuts are planned totaling over 1,859 acres, and so-called “Adaptive Management” (which can include clearcutting) totals 1,833 acres. Under the proposal, the total clearcut acreage could be up to 3,700 acres.

Road construction and reconstruction would total nearly 12 miles.

On a Positive Note: Critical lynx corridor habitat occupies the eastern part of the project area, but because of BCA advocacy, the Forest Service has agreed to minimize proposed logging within the designated lynx corridor. This means a significant portion of the original 630 acres of proposed logging within the lynx corridor may be preserved.  Since the lynx has been successfully re-introduced in Colorado, this corridor is important for its recovery in southern Wyoming so YOUR voice of support for preserving the lynx corridor is still needed!

Tell the Forest Service to change the Spruce Gulch project as follows:

• Green, living, and old growth trees should not be logged,

• clearcutting should not be used because it is one of the most destructive forms of logging for rare interior forest wildlife, which is already struggling due to the beetle infestation,

• the project as it proposed would threaten soil stability and fertility, watershed quality, amphibians and interior, old growth forest species (typically the most threatened of forest dwellers),

• the project threatens a number of species dependent on intact old-growth forests for their survival, such as the boreal owl, pine marten, lynx, Abert’s squirrel, black bear, heather vole and red-backed vole, golden-crowned Kinglets, brown creeper and red-breasted nuthatch,

• the project threatens bird diversity, abundance of breeding birds and small mammal diversity and therefore biodiversity in the Medicine Bow because it threatens to disturb stands of old growth forest, which are already few,

• interior forests needn’t be logged in the name of protecting private property and communities far from the interior: creating defensible space directly around communities and developments is a better use of time and effort,

• logging in the name of the beetle infestation is a waste of taxpayer dollars; studies show logging does not slow or stop the infestation,

• likewise logging in the name of fire prevention is foolhardy: scientific studies show that beetle-killed stands present no greater wildfire threat than do healthy forest stands and that logging may even increase fire risk, and

• the Forest Service must adequately consider the project's cumulative effects on soil, watershed quality, wildlife and recreation, especially when considered with the huge, forest-wide so-called "hazard tree" logging project or in light of lingering forest destruction due to past logging projects.

Comments Due Friday, February 15, 2008:

Medicine Bow-Routt National Forests
ATTN: Melissa Martin, Project Coordinator
2468 Jackson Street
Laramie, WY 82070

E-mail Comments to: mmmartin@fs.fed.us

For more information contact duane@voiceforthewild.org or call 307-742-7978