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April 11, 2003
Contact: Patty Clary, Californians for Alternatives to Toxics (707) 445-5100 x 205
Chad Hanson, John Muir Project (530)273-9290
Sacramento, CA. Californians for Alternatives to Toxics (CATs), John Muir Project (JMP), Plumas Forest Project, and Forest Issues Group filed suit today in federal court to halt logging on the Tahoe, Plumas, and Lassen National Forests until environmental analyses regarding herbicide use to maintain fuel breaks and impacts of logging to wildlife habitat are completed. In a ruling on an earlier lawsuit filed by CATs, the Forest Service was required to produce a maintenance plan to deal with the highly flammable brush that grows back after logging of Defensible Fuel Profile Zones (DFPZs). DFPZs are being cut across a quarter of the land base of the three national forests under the ìQuincy Library Groupî program which intends to cut large trees and reduce fuel load for forest fires, dual aims criticized by many experts as incompatable and destructive to the environment.
In the earlier lawsuit, Judge Lawrence Karlton noted that based upon existing science, "DFPZ construction will result in increased growth of grasses, forbs, and shrubs, including noxious and invasive weeds, because it involves thinning the stand of trees, which increases the amount of sunlight that reaches the forest floorÖAt some point, the amount of understory vegetation within a DFPZ cannot only compromise its efficacy as a fuelbreak, but can result in greater fire risk than existed prior to the creation of the DFPZ." Karlton ordered an analysis of this issue, but the Forest Service has failed to complete it in eighteen months and continues to produce proposals for DFPZs without a plan to maintain the resulting brush.
"Accumulation of fuel for fire in our national forests is a huge problem, but the cure wonít be found in making the situation worse," said Patty Clary of CATs. ìRemove big trees the least likely to burn and Nature will force a choice between living with even more brush choking forests or resorting to the use of herbicides on thousands of acres to keep brush down. The Forest Service must take a hard look at the results of its actions and come up with a better plan."
The Sierra Nevada Framework forest plan which oversees the Quincy Library Group program allows the Forest Service to remove trees as large as 5 feet in girth, but only where removal of much smaller material would fail to effectively reduce severe fire risk. The Plaintiffs in todayís lawsuit included claims alleging the Forest Service failed to follow these guidelines on several DFPZ timber sales.
"The Forest Service has a habit of removing the larger, commercially-valuable trees even where their own documents show itís unnecessary," said Chad Hanson, Executive Director of the John Muir Project of Earth Island Institute. "Not only can this increase the incidence of severe fires down the road, but it will also severely damage the home ranges of dozens of California spotted owls and northern goshawks," he added.
Members of CATs, based in northern California, are opposed to the use of herbicides in the headwaters of the stateís drinking water. JMP is based in Cedar Ridge near the western portion of the Tahoe National Forest.
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