Widespread Opposition to Clearing & Logging Project Prompts Extension of Comment Period

The Los Padres National Forest is about 3,000 square miles, meaning that this proposal would damage or destroy about 12% of the entire forest. What an abomination!

What would Swabby do?

@ParvoPup
The Creek Fire began September 4, 2020, near Shaver Lake, California was declared 100% contained on December 24, 2020. Shaver Lake is an artificial lake on Stevenson Creek, in the Sierra National Forest of Fresno County, California. At elevation 5,500 ft (1,700 m), several smaller streams also flow into the lake, and it receives water from the tunnels of Southern California Edison's Big Creek Hydroelectric Project.

In 1917 Southern California Edison purchased the lake which had been owned by the Fresno Flume and Lumber Company for transporting lumber down to the San Joaquin Valley. The lake was formed with the construction of Shaver Lake Dam, which was built by Southern California Edison and completed in 1927. The 180-foot dam was built in 50-foot (15-m) blocks, with a keyway to hold it in place and a 75-centimeter (30-inch) copper sheet to make it watertight. Its capacity is 135,283 acre⋅ft (166,869 dam3). Some water from the lake is discharged into Stevenson Creek for fish and other wildlife, but the rest is diverted to Big Creek, where it powers several hydroelectric plants in succession.

The area now covered by the lake was extensively logged before the dam was built, and an extensive log flume system several miles long was constructed to bring logs down the mountain. The town to this day maintains a nostalgic logging theme. Several buildings in town are in fact old, converted sawmills. Adjacent to the lake is Camp Edison, built and operated by SCE

The French Fire was a wildfire that burned near Shirley Meadows west of Lake Isabella in Kern County, California in the United States during the 2021 California wildfire season. The fire was initially reported on Wednesday, August 18, 2021

The area was inhabited for millennia by the indigenous Tübatulabal and Owens Valley Paiute. Gold was discovered nearby in 1853, leading to a gold rush and the founding of Keyesville. The 1863 Keyesville massacre occurred a few miles north. The town of Isabella was founded by Steven Barton in 1893 and named in honor of Queen Isabella of Spain while her name was popular during the 1893 Columbian Exposition. Lake Isabella was created in 1953 by a dam on the Kern River, forcing the town to move about 1.5 miles (2.4 km) south of the original site

The dam's reservoir also inundated the original site of Kernville. Like Isabella, it was relocated, along with several of its historic buildings, to higher ground.

Shaver Lake lies 161 miles from Kern River Oil Field Yielding a cumulative production of close to 2 billion barrels (320,000,000 m3) of oil by the end of 2006, it is the third largest oil field in California, after the Midway-Sunset Oil Field s a large oil field in Kern County, San Joaquin Valley, California in the United States. It is the largest known oilfield in California and the third largest in the United States.

The field was discovered in 1894, and through the end of 2006 had produced close to 3 billion barrels (480,000,000 m3) of oil. At the end of 2008 its estimated reserves amounted to approximately 532 million barrels (84,600,000 m3), 18% of California's estimated total.
Shaver Lake is 185 miles from Midway-Sunset Oil Field.
The oil field runs southeast to northwest, with a length of approximately 20 miles (30 km) and a width of 3 to 4 miles (5 to 6 km), from east of Maricopa to south of McKittrick, paralleling the Temblor Range to the southwest. Most of the oil field is in the Midway Valley and the northeastern foothills of the Temblor Range.
While the Midway-Sunset field is a large contiguous area covering more than 30 square miles (80 km2), it comprises 22 identifiable and separately-named reservoirs in six geologic formations, ranging in age from the Pleistocene Tulare Formation (the most recent geologically, the closest to the surface, and the first to be discovered), to the Temblor Formation, of Miocene age (the oldest, and one of the last to be discovered).

While the pollution impacts from Midway Sunset oil production have not been as carefully examined, similarities between the composition of oil sands and Midway Sunset’s complex oil raise local air quality concerns. Nearby Bakersfield is home to the highest rates of particulate pollution in the nation, according to a 2016 American Lung Association report.

Refining heavy oils like Midway Sunset use coking processes to reject the excess carbon and turn these oils into more gasoline and diesel. These deep conversion refineries have high particulate emissions that are directly released into the surrounding atmosphere. The California Air Resource Board has recently proposed emission reduction goals aimed in part to reduce pollution in nearby communities over health concerns.

Extracting a barrel of Midway Sunset is estimated to release 180 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions (kg CO2 eq./bbl crude), making this field one of the highest-emitting oils produced in the state. Through the end of 2006 had produced close to 3 billion barrels (480,000,000 m3) of oil
, we are now in 2022.

While you unjustly try to blame the Fires on one person, multiple mitigating factors are at work, climate change, pollution, Ecosystems being pushed to the brink, a severe drought from 2011-2017 followed by the bark beetle infestation.

Logging forests are only going to make them drier and more susceptible to disease and then fires. If anything, we need to make forests retain more moisture, increase canopy to create more shade and thereby increase moisture, increase biodiversity which maintain the forests , protect Mycelium and mycorrhizal networks which transfer water, nutrients, and information between trees. These networks are a key part of the forest ecosystem and help our forests thrive. It's the fungi that decompose dead trees and return the nutrients to the soil to feed the forest. Healthy soils are huge part of healthy forests, the soils are huge carbon sinks, as are oceans, wetlands, etc....We need to increase water corridors.
Are best solutions are to mimic nature.
The Ocean,Wetlands, Lakes, Rivers, Streams, Forests, Fungi, biodiversity all work symbiotically together to manage all life filtering water, providing food, oxygen, managing weather which grant us opportunity to create jobs, have an economy, and provide security. Right now the balance is off, we are producing far too much C02 and pollution for the system to manage properly.

This is hilarious.

I wondered how long before one of you referred to that huckster Chad Hanson - the most hated person by any grunt that works for CalFire or the Forest Service. He and his attorney wife seem to live to file very profitable lawsuit after lawsuit to block any and all attempts to mitigate wildfire in this state.

Under the guise of saving animals or saving diversity, this clown blocks any and all attempts to clear, thin, rake, lift, cut or manage any part of any forest. His merry band of pranksters fought the Bass Lake Ranger district for years to block thinning projects supposedly to save the Pacific Fisher.

Meanwhile, the forest along the Minarets Byway became choked with trash trees and saplings, over grown, a bomb waiting to go off. Then two bombs exploded - the French Fire followed four years later by the Creek Fire. Two of the biggest fires in state history turned hundreds of thousand of acres into toohpicks. Nothing taller than grasses now grow in that area. Maybe one tree per acre survived, and that's being generous.

As for the Pacific Fisher, and the deer and the black bear and the hundreds of other species that lived in that area - they are gone. I can drive 40 miles of the byway to get to my cabin and only see lowland birds that have moved into the area that more resembles the foothills of Fresno than it does the forests of the Sierra. So much for saving wildlife. The huggers still stuck in the mindset of the 1970's have turned the forests into savannas.

Remember Paradise , the town that burned down to the ground.....

U.S. ‘Forest Thinning’ Masks Logging, Increases Wildfire Intensity
https://www.theenergymix.com/2021/08/31/u-s-forest-thinning-masks-logging-increases-wildfire-intensity/

The U.S. Forest Service promotes forest thinning to manage fires, but an expert ecologist says the practice is a euphemism for logging—and makes fires worse.

“Wildfires can always turn tragic, but the greater tragedy in…Paradise, which was largely destroyed during the 2018 Camp Fire, and other towns is that they put their faith in logging operations miles away rather than proven, community-based fire prevention measures,” writes Chad Hanson, an ecologist with the John Muir Project, in a post for Grist.

Hanson says Greenville, a town that burned in California’s recent Dixie Fire, was one of several to join together in a pro-logging consortium in the 1990s. The group petitioned Congress to initiate pilot projects to slow wildfires by creating fuel breaks through forest thinning. In theory, thinning creates buffers between forests and towns by removing trees that would otherwise feed flames. The practice allows companies to continue harvesting trees, and theoretically avoids the negative consequences of logging by providing better forest management.

But forest thinning makes fires burn brighter and hotter, Hanson explains. Mature forests reduce fire intensity because they have higher canopies, more shade, less wind, and greater moisture and water retention.

“Thinning and other activities that remove trees, especially mature trees, reverse those effects, creating hotter, drier, and windier conditions,” he explains.

The U.S. Forest Service—which, says Hanson, has a primary mandate for “selling public trees to private logging companies”—developed the term forest thinning in the 1990s in response to negative public perceptions of logging. Since then, he contends, the term has nearly replaced any reference to logging in much discussion, and politicians have thrown funding into supportive research for forest thinning as a management tool.

Now, the government response to the ongoing wildfires is to continue investing in forest thinning and other practices to remove “fuel” from forestland. Provisions in the recently-passed bipartisan infrastructure package in the U.S. “increase taxpayer subsidies for the logging, forest biomass incineration, and wood pellet industries by billions of dollars,” Hanson writes.

“They also include extreme rollbacks of bedrock environmental laws, including the National Environmental Policy Act, to facilitate widespread logging on public and private lands.”

Much lower-quality logged wood is incinerated in biomass facilities, emitting more CO2 per energy unit than burning coal, he adds. Biomass facilities also release large quantities of toxic particulates that disproportionately affect vulnerable communities, raising environmental justice concerns.

For Hanson, the evidence suggests the U.S. Fire Service should stop its current management strategies. Instead of funding “chainsaws and bulldozers in the forest”, he says governments should direct dollars to “home hardening” techniques that reduce properties’ flammability.

“We’ve seen one historic, thriving mountain town after another destroyed by fires in recent years,” he writes. “It’s almost entirely avoidable and preventable if we focus directly on community protection.”

So in actuality, the U.S. Forest Service Plan to log large trees and clear native chaparral habitat across 235,000 acres (368 square miles) of Los Padres National Forest WILL CREATE MORE SEVERE FIRES.
They plan to remove an areas 19 times the size the City of Santa Barbara.

Logging and thinning of forests can INCREASE FIRE RISK.

https://news.griffith.edu.au/2021/02/10/logging-and-thinning-of-forests-can-increase-fire-risk/#:~:text=Logging%20and%20thinning%20of%20forests%20can%20increase%20fire,
while%20%E2%80%98mechanical%20thinning%E2%80%99%20can%20also%20increase
%20fire%20risk.
The review used the data and findings of 51 peer-reviewed studies, including those that compared how hot or severe fire burned in different areas during the same fires, to assess the impact logging has on bushfires.

“The data shows that forest regrowing after logging burned more severely than unlogged forest during Black Saturday 2009,”

The lack of canopy following logging also results in increased drying of the young plants and soil by the sun and wind, and greater wind speeds on days with extreme fire danger

Native forest logging increases the severity at which forests burn, beginning roughly 10 years after logging and continuing at elevated levels for another 30+ years

Professor Brendan Mackey, Director of the Griffith Climate Action Beacon, said while the key contributor to a greater severity of bushfires was climate change, the science indicated that previously logged forest burned hotter than unlogged and old growth forest during fires.

“The data shows that forest regrowing after logging burned more severely than unlogged forest during Black Saturday 2009,” Professor Mackey said.

“The relationship between the forest having been logged and how severely it burns during a fire is quite clear,” Dr Taylor said.

Professor David Lindenmayer AO, from the Climate Change Institute, stated the link between fire severity and logging had been found in global studies, such as in the US and Patagonia, as well as locally in Australia.

Sun-Stop equating Oregon and Washington forest management to what is going on here.
It is not the same, but you keep trying to educate people here with your cut and paste knowledge that has almost nothing too do with OUR forest here.
Are those 2 states considered a coastal desert?
NO.
Well, we are.
The Indians knew how to take care of this and they didn't learn anything from tribes in the northwest.
You are talking rainforest science and that is like comparing apples to asphalt.

Compelling evidence' logging native forests has worsened Australian bushfires, scientists warn
https://ecoese.com/en/p/compelling-evidence-logging-native-forests-has-worsened-australian-bushfires-scientists-warn

“Beyond the direct and immediate impacts on biodiversity of disturbance and proximity to disturbed forest, there is compelling evidence that Australia’s historical and contemporary logging regimes have made many Australian forests more fire prone and contributed to increased fire severity and flammability,” the scientists write.

They suggest a number of responses to reduce the risk of further catastrophic fire seasons, including the “removal of logging from areas where it adds considerably to fuel loads and creates forest structures that increase fire severity and risks to human safety”.

Instead, he said governments needed to confine timber supply to plantations and look at ways to accelerate the industry transition in states such as Victoria, which plans to phase out native forest logging by 2030.

“Logging causes a rise in fuel loads, increases potential drying of wet forests and causes a decrease in forest height,” he said.
Australia’s natural disaster preparedness is currently being examined by the bushfires royal commission.

It changes forest composition and leaves these areas of forest both hotter and drier, they say.

@ Chip of SB....think again if logging does not cause mudslides...a mulslide happened on Dec 11, 2011 in Northwest Oregon...previously clear cut by Oregan State University Department of Forestry. This gets worse the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) the Federal Agency that Manages Forests in Oregon increased clear cutting of all Old growth Forests on 2.6 Million acres of land in creasing 700% known as the Western Oregon Plan Revision.
Watch video of mudslide
https://oregonwild.org/forests/learn-about-oregons-forests/logging-landslides

Mature and old-growth logging sale undermines Biden climate policy; threatens McKenzie River, habitat
Old Growth Forests are under attack...
https://oregonwild.org/about/press/mature-and-old-growth-logging-sale-undermines-biden-climate-policy-threatens-mckenzie

Logging such a large areas will cause mudslides during flash floods and heavy rains.

Glyphosate used by forest management is killing forests Mycelium and mycorrhizal networks weakening out forests

****The quickest way to kill a forest is to cut down trees and the network of information and resources they provide. The quickest way to increase climate change is to destroy a carbon sink found in biodiverse soil.***

Mycelium and mycorrhizal networks transfer water, nutrients, and information between trees. These networks are a key part of the forest ecosystem and help our forests thrive.
https://www.betterplaceforests.com/about-who-we-are/

Mycelium is made up of tiny threads that bore into tree roots and grow into large networks. These networks are called mycorrhizal networks

Through these networks, trees in the forest exchange water and valuable nutrients with one another. They have a symbiotic relationship with the fungi, which retain some carbon and sugars for their own growth.
https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1365-2435.12208

Trees living near one another transfer water and nutrients to one another through mycorrhizal networks. The older, more established trees in the network are called “hub trees” or “mother trees.”
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mother-trees-are-intelligent-they-learn-and-remember/

Their roots go deeper into the soil, which means they have access to even more resources to pass to other trees. Research also shows that trees “talk" to each other by sending chemical signals through mycorrhizal networks. They can send and detect distress signals, and send resources to trees in need.

Mycelium and the mycorrhizal networks that they create are integral to a healthy forest.

Good for Tree Health
It was previously believed that trees created all of their food through photosynthesis. However, research on the mycorrhizal networks revealed a woodwide web through which trees pass and receive water, carbon, sugar, and other valuable nutrients. If a tree has additional resources that it doesn’t need, they are absorbed by the mycelium at its roots. A tree in poor health can then access those excess nutrients through the mycelium network.

They promote the growth of new trees
Sharing of resources can be particularly beneficial for young trees. Saplings in the understory have limited access to sunlight, an essential part of photosynthesis. In the absence of enough light, mycorrhizal networks allow saplings to receive food from established trees with plenty of access to sunlight.

Help protect trees from threats
Chemical signals that trees send through the mycelia help protect against threats. If a tree is being attacked by an invasive species, pest or disease it may send out distress signals and information. For example, in the case of insect herbivores, trees can produce chemicals that are harmful to the pests, or compounds that will attract their natural predators.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3493419/

They play an important role in processing carbon

Mycorrhizal fungal networks are a major global carbon sink. When we destroy them, we sabotage our efforts to limit global heating
Soil is a natural carbon sink, similar to plants and oceans. Mycorrhizal networks process carbon that is brought in by trees. They capture large amounts of carbon and retain it in the soil. Keeping more carbon out of our atmosphere.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780128043127000024
State of knowledge of soil biodiversity - Status, challenges and potentialities

https://www.fao.org/documents/card/en/c/cb1928en
There is increasing attention to the importance of biodiversity for food security and nutrition, especially above-ground biodiversity such as plants and animals. However, less attention is being paid to the biodiversity beneath our feet, soil biodiversity, which drives many processes that produce food or purify soil and water. This report is the result of an inclusive process involving more than 300 scientists from around the world under the auspices of the FAO’s Global Soil Partnership and its Intergovernmental Technical Panel on Soils, the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Global Soil Biodiversity Initiative, and the European Commission. It presents concisely the state of knowledge on soil biodiversity, the threats to it, and the solutions that soil biodiversity can provide to problems in different fields. It also represents a valuable contribution to raising awareness of the importance of soil biodiversity and highlighting its role in finding solutions to today's global threats.

Why do mycorrhizal networks need to be protected?

It’s clear how fundamental mycorrhizal networks are to forest health. Sadly, changes to environments largely driven by humans pose a threat to their existence. Deforestation and chemical pesticides can all severely damage and disrupt mycorrhizal networks. This has a knock-on effect on all the trees and wildlife in the surrounding area. And of course, it hampers the networks’ abilities to absorb carbon. This is just another reason why it’s so important to nurture and protect our forests.

Next time you’re in the forest, take a moment to think about the amazing mycelium network beneath your feet. Amidst the peace and quiet, the forest floor is a hive of activity, working hard to make the forest the beautiful place it is. Take a breath and appreciate this natural wonder that’s sustained our forests for thousands of years and will continue helping them thrive in years to come.

This is like hording. For years the garage fills up with stuff. People think it's okay because there's no problem. Then it becomes a fire hazard and harbors rats. Then a "solver" comes by and just wants to throw it all away. But Johnny wants his baseball cards buried in the back. Salud then hires a team of consultants who assign a team of "diverse and inclusive" pickers to map out and plan an entry path to retrieve the cards. In come the hazmat suit team to prepare an agenda of what may or may not work. Johnny realizes before the entire thing is tossed out, he may just have to sneak in after midnight to get his gosh darn cards. Salud comes in for a photo op and ribbon cutting next to the mailbox.

More left wing propaganda spread by the very predictable cast of liars. Even going as far as interjecting race (Green Latinos?) into their tangled web? Has anyone ever calculated the amount in metric tons of carbon which is spread into the atmosphere from unplanned, uncontrolled fires? How were forests managed as little as 150 years ago? Exactly!
As for Carbajal, try focusing on doing your job, worrying less about endangered bugs and more about lowering energy costs for working constituents by fracking on federal lands!
That’s right, get off your ass and get to work improving the lives of people you claim to care about instead of greasing your palms by these environmental, green shakedown artists!
Wait, hold on…I thought the Department of Interior was controlled by the Biden administration?

If the Los Padres Forest Watch could combine the fracking and oil leasing layer with the proposed logging map into one interactive map ,we'd get a better picture how the forest clearing relates to road access in and out to fracking and oil leases . This might be why they don't want an EIS, it would show the Enviromental Impact to the habitat from the fracking and oil leases....

Los Padres Forest Watch can you please update with a new interactive map which includes both maps below, thank you!

Proposed logging Map
https://forestwatch.maps.arcgis.com/apps/instant/sidebar/index.html?appid=bc79b99c114d4bd98669e06a474b1f7a

Drilling and leasing licenses map
https://forestwatch.maps.arcgis.com/apps/View/index.html?appid=96d9c40f4bdb48c880d19fb8d1229bc7

How much is this about creating access to the Oil and Fracking leases, see maps, view overlap ...might this be the rush in not wanting the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS)?

Proposed logging Map
https://forestwatch.maps.arcgis.com/apps/instant/sidebar/index.html?appid=bc79b99c114d4bd98669e06a474b1f7a

Drilling and leasing licenses
https://forestwatch.maps.arcgis.com/apps/View/index.html?appid=96d9c40f4bdb48c880d19fb8d1229bc7

- Clearly, our 50 decades of environmentalists hand in forest management has been a failure. Not allowing control burns and natural lightening burns have made our forests overgrown with more trees and undergrowth per acre than, in some areas, 150 yrs ago (namely the Tahoe Basin ). Wildland fires are becoming conflagrations that scorch mineral earth hot enough to sterilize the soil rather than provide nutrients to medium and old growth trees. We need aggressive forest fuel management, especially near interface areas.

I understand the reasoning behind this proposal. I’m not sure this is the best solution to the problem. Why not specify that large-diameter trees must remain? Why not do a full EIS? I realize the process is expensive, but there may be risk to endangered species. If there isn’t, that should be proven. Seems to me the logging companies want to make money on this deal, and that is understandable, but is it the right thing for the environment?

This is crazy! I just can’t believe that so called environmentalist organizations are fighting to make sure this land is all burned down to a moonscape. If they truly cared about saving the habitat for endangered species, why on earth would they advocate for policies that guarantee its destruction? I hope this project can be completed before it’s too late and the next wildfire destroys everything. Time is of the essence here!