KY conservation group says feds allowing too much logging in Daniel Boone forest area
A conservation group has called for a halt to logging in part of the Daniel Boone National Forest over a concern that more trees have been marked for cutting than allowed.
Kentucky Heartwood also said in a letter this week that the U.S. Forest Service has marked trees to be cut in areas near streams where logging should be barred.
“It appears that the Forest Service, in their efforts to sell more timber from the national forest, and sell it more quickly, is failing to monitor their own operations and are ignoring rules meant to limit environmental impacts,” Jim Scheff, director of the organization, said in a post this week.
A spokesman said the Forest Service will look into the complaint, but believes the agency has carried out the logging plan properly.
The logging at issue is part of a project in McCreary and Pulaski counties, known as the Greenwood project, aimed at improving forest health and wildlife habitat in the area.
The project, approved in 2017 after years of study, includes cutting select trees on more than 2,100 acres. The goal is to aid the growth of healthier or more desirable species such as shortleaf pine and white oak.
The project also calls for planting pine trees in some areas; using controlled fires to help clear areas to benefit plants and animals that need more open spaces; creating small ponds as water sources for wildlife; and using herbicide to get rid of non-native species.
When it was approved in 2017, the logging included in the plan was the most in a single project in the Daniel Boone in more than a decade.
The logging plan calls for leaving various numbers of trees in different sections based on what the Forest Service wants to accomplish.
On 674 acres, for instance, the plan calls for leaving enough trees to cover 30 to 50 square feet per acre. That count is based on the number and size of trees.
However, Scheff said the number of trees marked to be cut would leave significantly fewer trees in several spots.
Some logging started last year. The Forest Service has marked trees in other sections and sold them to commercial loggers to be cut this year, Scheff said.
Scheff said he was hiking in the area earlier this year when he noticed a potential problem.
Scheff went back and sampled tree counts and measurements on about 300 acres. He estimated that between 6,000 and 20,000 trees either have been cut, or will be, above what was allowed in the plan the Forest Service approved.
Scheff said he also saw some trees marked for cutting near streams in areas where it appears logging would violate the plan for managing the forest.
“It’s such a clear violation of the forest plan,” he said.
Tom FitzGerald, head of the Kentucky Resources Council, represents Kentucky Heartwood in the issue.
FitzGerald sent a letter this week to Forest Service officials asking them to investigate Kentucky Heartwood’s concerns, and to not allow further logging while doing the review.
Logging that exceeds the amount outlined in the plan would be a problem because it wasn’t studied and wasn’t subject to review or public input, FitzGerald said. It would also violate Forest Service and federal environmental standards, he said.
Tim Eling, a spokesman for the Daniel Boone National Forest, said the Forest Service will look into “the issues and information contained in the letter and we will take appropriate actions based upon our findings.”
Eling said the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, requires the U.S. Forest Service to consider the potential environmental impacts of proposals such as the Greenwood project before starting them, and also to consider reasonable alternatives.
The Forest Service did that with the Greenwood project.
“We believe the project has been carried out in accordance with NEPA and the approved plan,” he said.
The Daniel Boone National Forest includes more than 708,000 acres in 21 Appalachian counties, stretching from Rowan County in the north to Wayne, McCreary and Whitley counties along the Tennessee border.
