The Daniel Boone Forest deserves better treatment than proposed logging project

Two months ago, the organization I work for, Kentucky Heartwood, filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service to stop a massive logging project in the one of the most remote and beautiful parts of the Daniel Boone National Forest. Located in Clay and Leslie counties, the South Red Bird project would log nearly 4,000 acres, cutting most of the trees and bulldozing up to 93 miles of logging roads to pull them off of the steep mountain slopes. The lawsuit comes after years of having our input, concerns, and reasonable alternatives largely ignored by the agency.

Our monitoring of other Forest Service logging in the area has uncovered dozens of landslides – some hundreds of feet long – resulting in large amounts of sediment, rock, and debris in otherwise clear streams. Documents we obtained through the Freedom of Information Act revealed that the agency has long known that the steep slopes of these mountains are extremely prone to landslides, with “a substantial number of slope failures” having occurred after previous logging projects. The agency failed to disclose this information, then downplayed it as inconsequential.

Many of the area’s streams are designated “critical habitat” for the Kentucky arrow darter. This colorful fish was protected under the Endangered Species Act in 2016 after major declines caused by pollution, including sediment. Yet the Forest Service refused our requests to protect streams by reducing logging in the most landslide-prone areas. In negotiations over the project, Forest Supervisor Scott Ray responded that our concerns about landslides were a “non-issue.”

The project would also fragment mature forests occupied, and needed, by endangered Indiana and northern long-eared bats. This includes probable locations of “maternity colonies” where northern long-eared bats raise their young, which we documented through acoustic surveys in 2021.

We’ve also documented more than 400 acres of old-growth forests with trees over 200 years old, including 160 acres approved for cutting. But the Forest Service insists there is no old-growth here. Our review of agency data found forests mischaracterized through inadequate, biased, and error-prone surveys, with old-growth incorrectly ascribed ages as young as 70 years.

The Forest Service additionally approved cutting most trees across 600 acres they said were “badly damaged by wildfire… and need to be salvaged to prevent insect invasion and disease.” Yet we’ve now discovered that more than half of those “badly damaged” forests didn’t actually burn.

Since filing our lawsuit, the Forest Service has moved on to even bigger endeavors. They’ve now proposed logging 10,000 acres in the Jellico Mountains on the Tennessee line west of Williamsburg, with plans to cut half of all national forest in the area over the next 40 years. Despite the outstanding scenic character of this section of the Daniel Boone, the agency maintains no trails and only four campsites. And, just as in Redbird, these national forest lands are intermixed with private lands where logging, surface mining, and other land uses continue to create young and fragmented forest habitats.

Forests, and forest management, are complicated. Young forests created by natural disturbance, and in some cases logging, are important for wildlife. And of course, wood products are an important part of our lives and economy. But public lands represent just 10% of Kentucky’s forests, and 4% of the state. More land has been strip mined here than protected as the Daniel Boone National Forest. Our shared public lands provide the best, and perhaps only opportunity for the restoration and recovery of the great forests that once dominated eastern Kentucky. These lands need stewardship and care. But the agricultural underpinnings of traditional forestry too easily sideline other values and risk degrading and diminishing our public forests. In their aggressive push to increase the cut on the Daniel Boone, the Forest Service has demonstrated their willingness cut corners and sacrifice most anything that hinders their ability to get timber out of the forest. The forest, and the public, deserve better.

Jim Scheff is Staff Ecologist for Kentucky Heartwood

Community members have organized a public meeting to be held Nov. 17 at 6:00 pm at the Whitley County Extension Office in Williamsburg to discuss the Jellico logging project.