WildEarth Guardians

Thursday, December 1, 2005
Residents Reject Forest Service Plan

The USFS has failed to convince these residents that the assumed benefits outweigh the real damages associated with this project, and has turned to misrepresentation, intimidation and the manipulation of public anxieties about fire and water resources.
Contact: Paul Davis Bud Latven

The U.S. Forest Service proposed Tajique Watershed Restoration Project is out of sync with local concerns as official objections were filed at the regional offices of the Forest Service in Albuquerque last week.

The project calls for thinning, logging and burning across 17,000 acres for 10 years in the Manzano Mountains above the villages of Tajique and Torreon.

A number of local residents have filed written objections to the project, and more than 90 percent of the landowners and residents from the in-holder community of Forest Valley signed onto a nearly 100-page objection co-written with New Mexico's WildEarth Guardians. Forest Valley sits in the middle of the proposed project area and would be most directly impacted by the project.

The USFS has failed to convince these landowners that the assumed benefits outweigh the real damages associated with this project, and has turned to misrepresentation, intimidation and the manipulation of public anxieties about fire and water resources.

A closer scrutiny of the Forest Service documents brings down this house of cards.

First, the Forest Service has failed to meet the intentions of the new Healthy Forest Restoration Act (HFRA). Congress directed the USFS to help communities develop a Community Wildfire Protection Plan prior to proposing any HFRA project. Congress wanted effective actions that were agreed upon by both the community at risk and the USFS.

In this case, the USFS failed to include the public in the project-planning phase, so the community of Forest Valley took it upon themselves to develop their own detailed Citizen's Alternative to the USFS proposal. This alternative was dismissed outright by the Forest Service, who refused to analyze the alternative in its recent Final Environmental Impact Statement, resulting in a string of citizen objections.

Second, when Congress passed the HFRA, they directed the USFS to focus on public/private land interfaces having specified minimum population densities. Areas that meet this HFRA wildland/urban definition include, for example, Cedar Crest, which borders USFS land and has a population density of 318 people per square mile. The Tajique project area has fewer than 1.7 people per square mile.

Residents believe that asking taxpayers to cough up a minimum of $5 million to $10 million for this ill-conceived project would be better directed to higher priority areas around the state. In the meantime, the USFS could work with the local residents to develop small-scale, cost-effective strategic projects that would be mutually beneficial, and beneficial to the forest as a whole.

Third, the 350-page Forest Service proposal failed to demonstrate the existence of a significant fire risk even though they skewed their own lightning-strike fire data and completely ignored the increased riskposed by their own "controlled" fires. In fact, fire risk will significantly increase if the USFS proposal is implemented due to increased public access and the continuous annual prescribed burns that will be required to maintain the proposed 33 miles of fuelbreaks.

Through careful analysis, residents have demonstrated that the likelihood of any naturally caused catastrophic fire is much less than one chance in 300 years and the likelihood is virtually zero that the entire forest area would be lost in one massive fire event. Indeed, the only "catastrophic" fire in recent history was lit by the Forest Service itself during a time of hot, dry winds.

Finally, the Forest Service has made a desperate attempt, contradicting its own words, to convince downstream water users and the public that the proposed logging and burning will improve water yield and quality. Nothing could be further from the truth. Actually, their own documents show that the action of thinning significantly increases sediment in creeks relative to existing conditions. The only way the agency can make their actions appear beneficial is by seriously misrepresenting the "no-action alternative."

In the end, the Cibola National Forest has failed to make a reasoned case that its proposed actions will truly benefit the residents and forests of 4th of July Canyon. Instead, the Forest Service is scapegoating trees and fire when the real problems, according to their own science, are continuous stand manipulation, an excessive eroding road network, natural fire suppression and continued livestockgrazing.

Residents have called on the Forest Service to scale back its proposal and first address the existing recurring problems while working with the community to develop a wildfire protection plan that all can agree upon. This can be done while providing firewood and thinning contracts to local woodcutters and not bidding out contracts to outsiders as is currently proposed.

Until the government can engage in a rational, fact-based discussion, residents and conservation groups will continue to resist this proposal.

To review the citizens' objections, please visit www.fguardians.org.

Paul Davis and Bud Latven live in the area affected by the proposedTajique Watershed Restoration Project. Bryan Bird is forest programcoordinator for the environmental organization WildEarth Guardians.

Copyright 2005 Albuquerque Journal - Reprinted with permission