Sierra Club and Ebbetts Pass Forest Watch Score a Win against Clearcutting
By Perry Metzger and Addie Jacobson
The Sierra Club, along with regional partner, Ebbetts Pass Forest Watch (EPFW), recently won a small, rare victory over the range-wide clearcut logging being done by Sierra Pacific Industries (SPI). Clearcut logging removes almost all the trees and other vegetation from an area at one time, leaving only a few trees post-harvest. In California, clearcuts are replanted with seedlings that, if or when they grow, create a same-sized tree plantation, more resembling a Christmas tree farm than the naturally diverse forest it replaced.
During the process of clearcutting, vast quantities of sequestered soil carbon are released and wildlife habitat is destroyed. Adjacent rivers and streams are despoiled due to sediment runoff and from the herbicides used throughout the logging process. Additionally, plantations burn with high severity during a wildfire, putting nearby communities and forestlands at greater risk.
In September 2021, SPI submitted the Grindstone Timber Harvest Plan (THP) to CALFIRE for approval. The Grindstone THP area is located approximately 3 miles northeast of Dorrington, California in the central Sierra and borders Highway 4, a National Scenic Byway. As proposed, Grindstone was a 368-acre logging operation of which 332 acres were slated for alternative prescription harvests. The alternative prescription harvest described was, for all intents and purposes, clearcuts, harvested in groupings up to 22 acres in size.
A THP is considered a functional equivalent of a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) document, in which the timber harvester (SPI) is required to disclose all impacts or potential impacts caused by their proposed logging operation and their plans to mitigate those adverse impacts. CALFIRE has the final and primary responsibility for analyzing this CEQA-equivalent document, after which they approve or disapprove the THP. Even after thoughtful reviews and requests for alterations in the Plan submitted by other State agencies and the public, CALFIRE almost always accepts the submitted THPs, which claim to create no current or potential impacts with little or no change required.
This time it was different. Sierra Club and EPFW had their secret weapon — a mobilized public. When word got out of this logging operation, we started a letter-writing campaign drawing attention to, among other things, the adverse visual impacts this logging operation would cause along a National Scenic Byway. Because of our alerts and subsequent comments filed by Sierra Club, EPFW, and others, CALFIRE was forced to recognize that the Board of Forestry considers areas in the proposed harvest plan along Highway 4 to fall within a Special Treatment Area (STA). Accordingly, CALFIRE has delayed any approval of the Grindstone THP until the following conditions are addressed through revisions:
- The THP is to consider the Scenic Highway in the cumulative impacts assessment, since some of the THP’s clearcut harvest areas fall within 200 feet of a Scenic Highway which is an STA. In as much, CALFIRE has now asked SPI to revise their visual resources discussion to include the visual impacts of these clearcuts.
- The revised THP is also to include the Cottage Springs community in this visual resources’ discussion and cumulative impacts assessment.
The victory is not yet complete, and we are awaiting a revised THP whose analysis will hopefully include fewer acreage of clearcuts than the original plan. If it does not, the Sierra Club and its partners will again pressure CALFIRE to protect the public interests and keep our Highway 4 scenic for all to enjoy.
Due to its many negative impacts, the Sierra Club, along with many other organizations will also continue to push for an end to the environmentally egregious practice of clearcutting and promote, instead, the use of selective, more sustainable logging in California and elsewhere. The time has come to become better stewards of our precious forests. The planet is depending on us.
