Anonymous
Source: Los Padres National Forest Watch
“There is simply no place for commercial logging in California condor country,” said Bryant Baker, conservation director for Los Padres ForestWatch. “It’s highly concerning that the Forest Service would push this project through without a full environmental review and in spite of widespread opposition from local communities.”
The Forest Service approved the Tecuya Ridge project in April after excluding it from environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act. That limited public input and prevented consideration of alternatives, such as creating defensible space immediately adjacent to the communities at risk.
“Logging old-growth trees in remote forests will not protect homes from fire. In fact it’s a dangerous distraction,” said Chad Hanson of the John Muir Project of Earth Island Institute. “Instead we should focus our resources on helping people make their homes fire-safe.”
Studies have repeatedly shown the importance of retaining larger, fire-resistant trees to reduce the risk of high-intensity fire. The Forest Service has approved the removal of trees of all sizes throughout the project area.
Research also shows that community-focused fire-safe measures are more successful and cost-effective than removing trees and vegetation in the backcountry. Those measures include creating defensible space around properties, retrofitting homes with fire-safe materials, improving early warning and evacuation systems, creating fireproof community shelters and curbing new development in fire-prone areas.
“This destructive project will harm endangered condors by logging habitat that these magnificent raptors use for roosting,” said Justin Augustine, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The Forest Service should be helping people make their properties fire safe instead of logging wildlife habitat in a beautiful national forest. The Trump administration recklessly OK’d a project that can actually increase fire threats by cutting big, flame-resistant trees.”
The logging area includes prime habitat for endangered California condors in mixed conifer and pinyon-juniper forest.
According to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service condor tracking data, the project could harm more than 50 condor roost sites. These roost sites are typically large dead or live trees that are used by condors for resting overnight between long flights.
Federal standards require a minimum half-mile buffer from condor roosting sites to protect them from disturbances such as logging. The Forest Service has provided no protections for the roosting sites because it denies that they exist.
Local opposition to the project was substantial—98 percent of the comments submitted to the Forest Service were opposed to commercial logging in the area and the lack of environmental review. In June local community members submitted a petition with 275 signatures asking the Forest Service to stop the project.
The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.4 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.
These groups deserve our thanks and applause!
Those trees shouldn’t be touched. Destroying habitat of endangered species for what? This is sad, misguided and makes the future of our state look grim.
Poor CA condors just can’t catch a break. I hope this works out in their favor. Such majestic New World vultures. We should protect them always.
This article is one-sided and misleading. For the other side see USDA Forest Service plan document “Tecuya Ridge Shaded Fuel Break Project.” The Forest Service project is not a “commercial logging” project as claimed in the Edhat article, but is a project is designed to help protect the communities of Pine Mountain Club, Pinon Pines Estates, Lake of the Woods and Frazier Park from a potential large wildfire. Chad Hanson of the John Muir Project proposes instead that people make their homes “fire-safe.” We lived through the Thomas fire where cyclonic winds were pushing flame fronts directly towards our house in Montecito. If the flames had reached us that December morning in 2017 our home could have been built out of cast iron and it still would have burned down. There is absolutely no way to make a house “fire-safe” from conditions as terrifying as those. The only thing that saved us was the heroic firefighters battling the flames in the hills above our house. And those firefighters need all the help they can get- properly thinned forests, better fuel breaks, better access. Ask them.
Thank you Los Padres ForestWatch. We are in your debt.
There’s still commercial logging in California? I would figure that was gone in the 90’s!
I’m with the 5:30 comment. Cutting down trees is a way to reduce fuel and the risk of wildfires. You kind of have to pick your priorities here – wildlife preservation or wildfire prevention.
They need to leave the condors alone. All the time and money to get these birds back to sustainable numbers would go down the drain and result in the loss of an endangered species.
Do these people live under a rock or something or refuse to see reality? NO amount of defensible space would have protected DT from the out of control Thomas Fire. All of DT was shut down, entirety of state street up to MIssion went dark. Why? Because of lack of thinning and controlled burning, that’s why.; That fire didn’t just affect those in fire prone areas – it affected all of us.
Logging old growth trees (which are prime condor habitat and largely fire-resistant) under the guise of wildfire protection is disingenuous.
Nice sentiment Flicka, but the notion that there are sustainable numbers of California Condors is doubtful. A bad winter or avian flu episode and the species is extinct. When they last thrived they had many Grizzly Bears leaving lots of deer, elk, and cattle carcasses about the landscape. They seem too large and insufficiently robust to compete successfully with the Turkey Vultures.
I’d be more concerned about condors getting killed in large scale wind turbine installations. Raptors and other large birds of prey are regularly killed by them but we turn a blind eye. I wonder how many condors have already been killed by turbines?
Thanks Forest Watch. Any benefit from this program would be far out-weighed by the harm done to that incredibly special and beautiful far corner of the forest. It blows my mind how some people that live in and next to the forest refuse to take responsibility for living in the reality of wild fire and instead expect the authorities to bail them out of their risk with all kinds of preposterous ideas like this tree-cutting program.
Sounds like a dangerous place to BUILD a community.
I own three acres in the Central Sierra above bass Lake – we are part of the 149 million dead bark beetle killed pine trees.
Since 2015, two major fires have devestated the area around us. Luckily, our summer community decided to cut and clear so that instead of the jungle of tangled undergrowth that people thinks is natural – we have the traditional Sierra where healthy trees are stand 20 feet apart.
We didn’t burn last year when all around us did.
Managed forests in N Cal took far less damage that forests that were left natural.
Thin the forest or have it all burn down ! Millions of dead bark beetle trees need to go !
Lost all interest in the press release when I saw the cover photo of nicely cut firewood. Split it, age it, and burn it on a cold winter’s eve. But that ain’t a photo of timber logging.
Thank you, ForestWatch!
Love those “conservatives” that suppress natural fire activity for decades, allowing undergrowth to take over, and cause really intense fires. Then they claim that we have to “thin” the forests in order to save them (but primarily the development in the wildfire interface areas). Which shell is the pea under? Weren’t you watching? Just like when they killed off all the predators, then claimed hunting was necessary to cull the resultant deer herds and keep them healthy. So not conservative.