The firm has spent £25,000
drawing up plans, which have been recommended for approval by
Derwentside District Council. Area planning officer Graham Blakey is
advising members of the development control committee to approve the
scheme when it meets at Consett Civic Centre on Thursday. He said:
“The designation of the site encourages the presence of this type of
development and there are no concerns over the design and appearance
of the proposed scheme.” The plan involves the creation of the 930
square metre single storey factory unit surrounded by a 2.4m security
fence as well as access roads and lighting columns. The council has
received a 500-name petition and 20 letters of objection from
residents of Leadgate outlining their concerns. They claim the
community has a strong bond with the woodland and that it should be
maintained as an asset. It is said the area is a natural habitat for
wildlife in the area including kestrels, red kites, deer, foxes,
squirrels and great crested newts. Dr Bellamy has written to the
authority supporting residents and urging members to protect what he
described as “a very important community resource in Leadgate”.
http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/4017772.David_Bellamy_faces_defeat_in_community_woodland_battle/

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Remember,
everything is possible if much effort and labor is exerted. Newer and
better projects came out in the open during the year 2002. The new
millennium has paved way for more realistic and goal oriented drive to
the conservation of Ethiopia’s forested areas. Their objective is to
retain the coffee plantation for the Ethiopian economy and at the same
time preserve the yet untouched areas of their jungles. Socio-economic
projects also came to support the expanding populace of the nation;
and their aim is to make the citizens as educated as possible. Various
research studies were also carried out to gain further knowledge
regarding their forests and the capabilities it brings.

With these in
mind, the possibilities of a better and more beautiful Ethiopian
environment are beyond doubt attainable. What it needs are people who
support against deforestation in Ethiopia. Willingness and cooperation
should be practiced by every people whether you are in the minority or
majority of groups. It doesn’t essentially count what your standing
is, what really matters is your actual standpoint in fighting against
the demise of our world.
http://www.thegreenhomeeffect.com/environment/deforestation/the-implications-of-deforestation-in-ethiopia

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Each investor must put down at
least $7,000.00 US; this would have an equivalent return of 7.8% per
annum once the Trees are being harvested. The first harvest would
happen after 5 years once the trees have to cleared due to the dense
grows wish would provide a first return on the investment, however the
large pay back would only happen 25 years after the initial planting.
One has to think of it as a retirement fund or College fund for the
Children or grand Children. The benefit would be that we would be able
to save the Rain forest and keep the farmers on the farm as well as
providing income through work, since the farmer has to tend to those
trees. Part of the investment goes into the cost of leasing the land,
Paying the farmer to tend to the trees and the rest goes into buying
Trees and planting those as well as later harvesting them. It is a
good idea and yes, the lop holes have been taken care of as well. The
Farmer is not allowed to buy more land and clear it with the gains nor
can he use the planted area. The business plan is in fact so well
though out that, it won recognition in College-sponsored competitions
aimed at promoting socially responsible ventures. Such as at the
University of Washington and the University of Texas. As Mr. Croston,
the brainchild behind this Idea said “We believe in a more inclusive
sort of capitalism.” In addition, I fully endorse him on that one.
http://www.nowpublic.com/environment/tropical-hardwood-save-panama-deforestation

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“In such a scenario,
the populations that are more vulnerable end up being penalized.
Indigenous peoples, extractivists and small peasants generally lose
the dispute to agribusiness and other groups that deploy greater
political and economic strength.” The findings draw on studies of the
states of Para and Rondônia where a high incidence of land conflict
and associated violence were linked to forest degradation and
destruction. Using satellite images of the state of Rondônia - one of
the Amazon region’s most deforested states, Ana Euler showed that
protected areas are proving effective instruments for containing
deforestation and conflicts resulting from land use. “It can be noted
that indigenous lands, extractive reserves, national and state
forests, and other protected areas work as barriers against forest
degradation,” she said. Also raised by Euler was the great influence
of infrastructure projects, as hydroelectric power plants, highways,
pipelines and waterways in increasing conflicts over land use and
occupation in the Amazon region. “The speculation generated by the
announcement of great infrastructure construction work, as well as the
lack of transparence in the project-licensing processes, has serious
impacts to local biodiversity and to surrounding communities even
before construction is started,” she said.
http://www.panda.org/about_wwf/where_we_work/latin_america_and_caribbean/country/ecuador/news/?139821

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In a notice the GFC
stated that it is a breach of procedures to use these expired tags in
2009. As such all TSA and WCL concession holders are now required to
report all produce, and the tags used on those produce that have been
harvested in 2008 but which have not yet been removed from the forest
or declared to the GFC. Produced harvested in 2008 will only be
accepted if they are tagged with numbers declared. Beginning 2009,
timber companies which do not have forestry concessions in Guyana will
not be allowed to export logs. This decision is in keeping with an
announcement by President Bharrat Jagdeo to deter the exportation of
the forest produce and to allow for more value-added activities in the
country. The policy on the concession issue is clear, and if exporters
do not have a concession they will not be granted permission to sell
logs overseas. This decision was made earlier this year with notices
going out to companies since, according to Minister of Agriculture
Robert Persaud, some persons think that the GFC is not serious with
such a decision.
In July, the Minister stated that some stakeholders think that ‘we are
not serious’ and from past experiences act surprised when the
implementation period arrives for changes in the sector. At least
three companies are currently exporting logs without operating
forestry concessions in Guyana.
http://guyanaforests.blogspot.com/2009/01/forestry-concessionaires-must-return.html

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The markets have almost just seized up,”
Wilkeson said. “It’s grim.” The economic impact is rippling through
logging communities, affecting truckers, suppliers, even restaurants,
Bernhardt said. That, in turn, will affect state tax revenues. Last
year, lumber production at Western sawmills fell for the second
straight year, to the lowest annual volume in more than a decade.
Mills in 12 Western states produced 16.3 billion board feet of lumber
in 2007, decreasing 9.3 percent from 2006. A board foot is equal to
144 cubic inches of wood, or a piece 1 foot long by 1 foot wide by 1
inch thick. The association expects production to fall to 13.4 billion
in 2008 and 11.8 billion in 2009. “The market’s bad. Things are very,
very challenging in our business right now,” said Steve Zika, the
chief executive officer of Hampton Affiliates. Hampton’s dimension
lumber mill in Willamina is one of the largest in North America.
Meanwhile, prices are down to near-historic lows, Bernhardt said. The
price of Douglas fir, the predominant species in the West, dropped
from $404 to $250 per 1,000 board feet between 2005 and October 2008.
Hemlock fell from $394 to $204 per 1,000 board feet during the same
period. “It’s even worse than 1981-83, which was a depression for this
industry,” Bernhardt said. In Oregon, the nation’s largest
lumber-producing state, sawmills cut 6.2 billion board feet of lumber
last year. That’s down 12 percent from 2006 and the smallest amount
since 2001. http://www.statesmanjournal.com/article/20090104/NEWS/901040323&referrer=FRONTPAGECAROUSEL

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Smith and his wife, Stacey
Simpson, were grateful they and their two young daughters were able to
scramble through a damaged window to safety. Heavy rain, combined with
melting snow, has battered the region in recent days, causing
flooding, landslides and road closures. But Smith says he has seen his
nightmare coming since 2005, when nearby landowners clear-cut property
on a hillside above his home. “The minute I saw all the trees cut
down,” Smith recalled Saturday, “I said one of us is going to get
wiped out.”

For the neighbors, it is a prime example of the state’s
failure to protect homeowners from the potential dangers of logging
steep slopes. The clear-cuts, they say, were the essential ingredient
to cause a saturated hillside to give way. ODF officials couldn’t be
reached for comment Saturday, and the forest landowners either
couldn’t be reached or declined to comment.
http://www.oregonlive.com/clackamascounty/index.ssf/2009/01/clackamas_county_residents_pre.html
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The agency also must pay the
environmental group’s $23,000 legal bill. In its lawsuit, the Alliance
argued the Moose Creek project, which could have resulted in nine
million board feet of lumber, would have allowed clearcuts on
old-growth forests home to species such as boreal owls and northern
goshawks. Both are considered sensitive species in the northern Rocky
Mountains requiring special attention when decisions are made about
the forests where they live. “The Forest Service…agreed to protect
old growth forests throughout the Salmon National Forest and old
growth dependent species instead of pressing ahead on clearcutting,”
said Michael Garrity, the group’s executive director. “This is an
important step in stopping the decline in these species and keeping
them off the Endangered Species list.” When the environmental group
sued just over a year ago, it contended Salmon-Challis National Forest
supervisor William Wood violated federal environmental laws by failing
to scrutinize whether the Moose Creek sale would negatively affect
species such as the owls and goshawks, as well as fishers, wolverines,
three-toed woodpeckers, and great gray owls. Among other things, the
group argued Wood wasn’t meeting the Forest Service’s own requirement
to maintain at least 10 percent old growth trees outside wilderness
areas to help dependent species. That amounted to at least 71,879
acres. On May 18, Judge Lodge sided with the Alliance for the Wild
Rockies and told loggers to halt work at Moose Creek, located within
just a few miles of Salmon. “At most, the Salmon National Forest has
69,880 acres of verified old growth or of stands capable of being
managed for old growth characteristics, significantly short of the 10
percent requirement,” Lodge wrote. “The court believes that the record
presents serious questions as to whether the Salmon National Forest’s
implementation of the old growth standard is currently in compliance.”
Neither Wood nor Salmon-Challis National Forest spokesman Kent
Fuellenbach returned phone calls Saturday afternoon seeking comment.
According to the settlement, one reason why the sides reached the pact
was that further litigation would waste taxpayer money.
http://www.theolympian.com/northwest/story/715522.html

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The BLM
said it has completed its revision of the land use plans that will
guide the management of 2.6 million acres in western Oregon in the
BLM’s Salem, Eugene, Roseburg, Medford, and Coos Bay Districts, and
the Klamath Falls Resource Area of the Lakeview District. It said the
Resource Management Plans comply with all applicable Federal laws
including the O&C Lands Act, Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act,
and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act. “Substantially all of
the existing older and more structurally complex forests outside the
Late-Successional Management Areas would not be available for harvest
until the year 2023. This means that the issue of harvesting old
growth forest on BLM lands is ‘off the table’ for the next 15 years,”
BLM Oregon State Director Ed Shepard said. “Additionally, there are
approximately 1.1 million acres of mature and structurally complex
forest today on BLM Lands. Under the plan, 100 years from now it is
anticipated that there will be 1.7 million acres of mature and
structurally complex forest – a 50 percent increase from the current
level,” he said. The BLM provided a protest period that ended on Dec.
8. In all, the BLM received 264 formal protests. Shepard said after
all the protests were analyzed and resolved, the BLM made minor
changes as a result of the protest process. Besides increasing timber
available to Oregon mills, the new logging plan is intended to restore
federal timber payments to Oregon counties which have suffered since
logging was cut back in the 1990s. BLM officials said it would likely
be 2011, when federal safety net funding for timber counties runs out,
before the logging plan is in full swing. Legal challenges are likely,
and the plan cannot go forward without a critical habitat plan for the
northern spotted owl. The O&C Association sent a message to the 18
counties saying the action culminates five years of work by BLM and
many other federal resource agencies, 10 state agencies, tribal
representatives, and the O&C counties.
http://www.currypilot.com/news/story.cfm?story_no=18833

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And then at logs. Logs with
diameter twice a man’s arm length, chained onto trucks snaking down
the opposite lane of the winding East-West Highway in Gerik. In our
45-minute ascent along the highway to the public jetty in Pulau
Banding, the main gateway to the forest located somewhere in the
middle of the giant lake, at least five trucks were spotted pregnant
with freshly felled logs. It was harder to pinpoint the feeling that
came with the latter sight. The contrasting welcome, of inviting
greenery on one side and red, barren hill slopes on the other, invoked
sadness and anger, a bit of bitterness perhaps.

For corporate figure
and activist Molly Fong, it was “injustice”. “I felt angry. I felt a
sense of injustice, the feeling that this is not right,”Fong, the
general manager of The Body Shop, West Malaysia, pointed out later
into the journey. Organised by environmental group Malaysian Nature
Society and funded by The Body Shop, the trip was a maiden voyage into
the ancient rainforest of northern Perak for most of the media
personnel and The Body Shop people present, Fong including. It was not
hard to understand Fong’s disappointment. For two years now, the
British cosmetics and toiletry brand has backed MNS’s cmpaign for the
protection of the 300,000ha Belum-Temenggor forest complex, an area
four times Singapore’s size.

A natural jewel in Malaysia’s heirloom,
it is the largest continuous forest complex in Peninsular Malaysia,
stretching all the way from Perak up into southern Thailand. Over
3,000 species of flowering plants, some 270 species of birds, and more
than 100 species of mammals, including heavyweights like the Asian
Elephant, Malayan Tiger, Sumatran Rhinoceros, Malayan Tapir, leopard
and sun bear, call it their home. It is also only in Belum-Temenggor
that all 10 hornbill species of Malaysia can be found, including the
globally threatened Plain-pouched Hornbill, present in large flocks of
over 3,000 birds.
http://wildsingaporenews.blogspot.com/2009/01/malaysias-belum-jurassic-wonder.html
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The annual review is based on a thorough assessment of
corporate economic, environmental and social performance, covering
issues such as corporate governance, risk management, labor practices,
climate change and supply chain standards. The DJSI results are
available to asset managers around the world for a variety of
sustainability-driven investment portfolios. “As people around the
world focus on climate change, Weyerhaeuser has an important role to
play,” said Dan Fulton, president and chief executive officer. “Our
expertise in managing forests puts us in a unique position….”
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2008_Sept_18/ai_n28569318

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Nepstad wrote in a report co-authored
last year with Stephan Schwartzman of Environmental Defense and Paulo
Moutinho of the Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazônia (IPAM).
“To succeed, national REDD programs must be consistent with UNFCCC and
other UN principles, be transparent and have the active involvement of
indigenous peoples and forest communities.” “Rejecting REDD will not
defend indigenous rights. Substituting official aid from developed
countries for carbon market funding will not be a better, less risky
alternative for reducing deforestation. Indigenous rights abuses,
often caused by the same activities that drive deforestation, must be
addressed directly.” Still other groups are taking a harder line,
opposing any incorporation of REDD into international climate policy
until the rights of forest people are determined and other issues are
worked out. “To attain sustainable forest and climate initiatives,
forest peoples must be fully consulted about their design,” said Tom
Griffiths of Forest Peoples Program, an indigenous rights’
organization. “International donors must also ensure that human rights
and forest sector reforms are guaranteed before any international
funding is released to developing countries for their national actions
on forest and climate issues.’ “It is alarming that such dangerous
forest carbon trading proposals are getting traction at the UN talks
while so many critical questions are left unanswered,” Kate Horner,
Friends of the Earth US climate campaigner, said in a statement
following the group’s release of a critique on the World Bank’s Forest
Carbon Partnership Facility, an initiative to kickstart REDD projects.
“We fear that this could be disastrous for biodiversity, the rights of
forest-dependent communities around the world and even our climate. If
forest carbon trading proposals are accepted, it would create the
climate regime’s largest loophole by allowing rich countries to buy
their way out of emission reductions.”
http://www.ecoearth.info/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=114571

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Then
there are patrolling actions to tackle illegal activity threats which
are linked to land property and occupation (”grilagem”), to
agribusiness and to large infrastructure works. Finally, we must have
financial offset actions to reward those who protect the forest. “We
acknowledge some positive actions taken by the federal government, but
we urge some improvements,” Scaramuzza said. “In particular, we call
for the continuation of the protected areas creation process, the
strengthening of implementation efforts in the already created
protected areas, the allocation of personnel and their management
capacity building, plus the effective implementation of the new forest
policy, including forest management capacity development in the Amazon
states.”

The Amazon Fund, created by the government in August 2008, is
also an important policy to make financial offset viable for those who
protect the forest. Nevertheless, WWF-Brazil claims that funds should
be applied in the end of the chain. “It is crucial that funds reach
the field, direct to local communities, land owners and protected
areas”, Scaramuzza said. “We hope that the Amazon Fund implementation
will encourage innovation, creativity, experimentation and the
involvement of civil society; and that it will be complemented by
public funds, instead of being used to fulfill the blanks and gaps in
governmental programs”.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090104093542.htm
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To Forsman and other
biologists, the bizarre turn is not a refutation of past decisions but
a sign of the volatility to come for endangered species in an
increasingly erratic world. As climate chaos disrupts migration
patterns, wind, weather, vegetation and river flows, unexpected
conflicts will arise between species, confounding efforts to halt or
slow extinctions. If the spotted owl is any guide, such conflicts
could come on quickly, upend the way we save rare plants and animals,
and create pressure to act before the science is clear. Forsman
stopped.

“You hear it?” he asked. I didn’t. Above the twitter of
winter wrens I caught only the plunk of a creek running through hollow
logs. Then Forsman nodded at a scraggly hemlock. Twenty feet off the
ground, a cantaloupe-size spotted owl stared back at us. “It’s the
male,” he whispered. Before I could speak, Forsman was gone. The
61-year-old U.S. Forest Service biologist zipped down one
fern-slippery hill and up another. For years, he’d explained, this
bird and its mate pumped out babies like fertile field mice, producing
more offspring than other spotted owls in the range. Forsman wanted to
reach their nest to see if this year’s eggs had hatched—and survived.
Both creatures stared intently at Forsman, who absently picked at a
clump of fur and rodent bones—an owl pellet regurgitated by one of the
birds. Moments later the female launched herself to a tree crevice
some 40 feet off the ground.

Her head bobbed as she picked at her
nest. Over the next hour, we looked through binoculars hoping to spy a
chick. It was here, not half a mile away, above a trickle of runoff
called Greasy Creek, that Forsman saw his first spotted owl nest in
1970. He had grown up chasing great horned owls in the woods outside
an old strawberry farm near Eugene, and as an undergraduate at Oregon
State University he prowled the forests in search of rare breeds. One
day he shimmied up a tree and poked his head inside a crack. He
escaped with brutal talon marks on his cheek and one of the earliest
recorded glimpses of a spotted owl nest. He also scooped up a sick
chick—its eyes were crusted shut—planning to nurse it back to health
and return it to its nest. When he came back, though, the adult birds
had vanished, so Forsman raised the baby bird himself. It lived in a
cage outside his home for 31 years. Drawn by the romance of this
obscure creature that hides in dark woods, Forsman became a spotted
owl expert. He was the first to note that the birds nest primarily in
the cavities of ancient trees or in the broken-limbed canopies of
old-growth forests, where they feast on wood rats, red tree voles,
flying squirrels and deer mice.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/The-Spotted-Owls-New-Nemesis.html#
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Three sections of the city will be the
initial focus for tree removal as workers from Northern Tree Service
and Mayer Tree Service take chain saws and chippers to infested trees
in a 2.2-square-mile area in hopes of halting the beetle’s spread.
Workers will begin felling trees on Fairhaven Road and Greendale
Avenue, on Quinsigamond Community College property and at Kendrick
Field, according to the federal-state-city partnership overseeing the
eradication effort. All tree removals and chipping will be performed
at no charge to the homeowner. Residents with infested trees were
notified by certified mail and asked to return a signed release form.
Door-hangers announcing the operations have also been distributed to
impacted homes, and Asian longhorned beetle program employees have
visited communities to answer questions and collect the property
access permission forms required for tree removals on private
property. http://www.telegram.com/article/20090104/NEWS/901040403/1008/NEWS02

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The state-owned mining company has dealt with
violent clashes with local landowners, striking workers, attacks from
the media and unfriendly police who arrested more than 200 Chinese
technicians on charges of illegally entering the country. But today it
is transforming the economy of Papua New Guinea. Its $1.4-billion
nickel and cobalt mine (all figures U.S.), the biggest construction
project in the country, will employ 4,000 people at its peak, adding
at least 10 per cent to the national economy every year. Already, its
workers have built the country’s longest bridge, eliminating the need
for those canoes. They have built the country’s biggest wharf. They
have carved out a 25-kilometre access road in the mountains. And now
they are working on a 135-kilometre pipeline to the company’s new
refinery on the coast. This remote Pacific country is the latest
outpost in the New Chinese Empire — a far-flung network of trade and
investment that also generates political
power.http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081231.wyorkchina0103/BNStory/International/home

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Nearly all of
the 100 cherry trees, which were planted by a Japanese immigrant in
the 1950s, are scheduled to be removed soon to make way for the
wide-reaching Mill River revitalization project. Bright yellow notices
stapled to the trunks said the public had until Dec. 26 to appeal the
tree removal in writing. Taking down the trees is planned as a step in
a decades-long effort by the city to renovate the river corridor, a
move that advocates say would transform the rundown riverfront
promenade into a world-class urban park similar to Central Park. But
some residents maintain that once the trees are gone, a part of the
city’s history will be lost, too. “I’m not a tree hugger,” said Mary
Spinei, 53, who plans to mobilize a protest against the tree removal.
“Don’t get me wrong. But I think these trees stand for something. In
the 1940s, when Japanese were being interned across the country, this
one man was warmly welcomed into Stamford. His gift to the city was a
symbol of that.” The man, Junzo Nojima, a Japanese immigrant who
opened a restaurant on Atlantic Street in 1933, planted the trees in
the late 1950s. For years, he cared for them, often filling buckets
from the river to water them. Each spring, a profusion of pink cherry
blossoms from the trees brighten the park, known informally as Cherry
Park. In the past, the town has celebrated the display with a cherry
blossom festival in the park called Sakura Matsuri to highlight the
floral fireworks enlivening the banks of the drab, concrete-walled
river running through Stamford’s downtown district.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/nyregion/connecticut/04cherryct.html?_r=1

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“This is needed
work,” Sequeira said. “The lanes are rather narrow and any time you
can provide widening and comfort room between vehicles, that is a huge
thing.” The work on Highway 12 will be between Arnold Drive and
Trinity Road, a distance of about seven-tenths of a mile. Highway 12
itself will be widened and paved between the two intersections. At
Arnold Drive, an intersection that is the heavily traveled entrance to
Glen Ellen, Highway 12 will be realigned to soften the curve and new
stoplights will be installed. At Trinity Road, a scenic and twisting
road that winds its way over to Napa County, southbound Highway 12
will get a left-turn lane.
http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20090102/news/901020257

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The scenic buffers are designed to
provide a minimum number of trees along highways for “enjoyment of the
motoring public while traveling through forest land,” according to
Oregon statute. The buffer is supposed to be 300 feet deep from the
edge of the pavement. Landowners (of more than five acres) along
highways designated as scenic are required to keep the trees in either
the 150 feet closest to the highway, or the deeper 150. Since it is
the deeper 150 feet that is adjacent to most logging activity,
landowners usually decide to log that section. The other 150 feet can
be logged when the previous 150 feet reach an average height of 10
feet, with a minimum number of trees per acre. Lepschat said he writes
the waivers about 95 percent of the times that he is asked to do so.
The applications he denied were for areas where windstorms didn’t pose
significant problems. He also estimated that he wrote between 20 and
25 waivers last year. And though the Oregon Department of Forestry can
refuse to grant the waivers, it hasn’t because the waivers are issued
to promote safety. “Safety’s our No. 1 thing,” Lepschat said. “Scenic
highways are a nice idea, on the north side of the highway. On the
south side - when you log - that’s a problem.” Lepschat said the
restrictions for logging along scenic highways work better in Eastern
Oregon than on the coast because the forests are different. The trees
in the east are slower-growing, harder trees.
http://www.dailyastorian.info/main.asp?SectionID=2&SubSectionID=398&ArticleID=57219&TM=73168.73

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During December 2008,
wild elephants had invaded a number of villages in Aceh, damaged a few
houses and injured several people. Basrul said his agency could not do
much to stop the animals’ incursions because they were merely reacting
to the damage being done to their habitat. Villagers were known to
have tried to fight the elephants by poisoning them but Basrul said
the villagers’ actions would not be effective and only cause the
elephant population to shrink.

The root cause of the present conflict
between elephants and humans was the damage done to the enimals’
habitats by illegal logging, he said. The wild elephant problem
existed in the districts of Aceh Jaya, South Aceh and North Aceh, he
said. The only way to solve the problem, according to Basrul, was the
consistent implementation of the Aceh provincial government’s
moratorium on forest logging.
http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v5/newsworld.php?id=381411

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These included restrictions on the allowed silvicultural methods and
direction to avoid harvests in older unentered second growth stands,
stands near to parks or old-growth reserves, and more generally stands
with an abundance of larger trees. The initial period constraints were
part of a consensus agreement for resuming operation in Jackson Forest
after the near decade-long halt in logging. During the initial period
of up to 3 years, the JAG is to develop a long-term landscape plan for
the forest. The constraints were designed to minimize the impact of
any logging operations on the long-term options for the affected
stands. In simple words, logging in the interim should not seriously
impact the possibility that the stand might be designated for
old-growth development or for enhanced recreation opportunity. A
problem with the harvest plans proposed in the management plan has now
become apparent, a problem that has been exacerbated by the housing
collapse and general economic downturn. Many of the harvest plans were
developed long before the form of the present management plan took its
final shape. Indeed, a number of these plans were initially developed
in the 1990’s under the 1984 management plan that was declared invalid
by the courts. The priorities and goals for forest management in the
new plan differ greatly from those of the 1984 plan (which primarily
addressed managing the forest for maximum timber yield, with no
attention to endangered species and ecological diversity and little
attention to recreation). The proposed plans included substantial
even-age management (clearcuts and variations) and group selection
(small clearcuts). Both of these are prohibited by the interim period
guidelines. Essentially, the plans are limited to single-tree
selection. Further, no more than 30% of the trees can be removed, and
the average size of the trees cannot be decreased. Further, some of
the plans with the highest potential harvest profitability were
excluded by the guidelines.
http://jacksonforum.org/blog/2009/01/02/harvest-plans-need-reconsideration/

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