By Patric Hedlund, TME
A decision to move forward with a 1,626-acre Tecuya Ridge forest thinning and commercial logging project “overlooking the communities of Lebec, Frazier Park, Lake of the Woods, Pine Mountain Club and Piñon Pine Estates” was announced by administrators for the Los Padres National Forest (LPNF) on Friday, April 26.
The statement said the Mount Pinos Ranger District “has completed environmental review of the Tecuya Ridge Shaded Fuelbreak project.” Los Padres National Forest Supervisor Kevin Elliott signed a decision memo on April 9.
The decision was issued under an expedited “categorical exclusion” process that avoids the public hearings required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). A similar decision memo came out last November for logging in Cuddy Valley. The statement said that allowing logging will create safer conditions for the population of the Mountain Communities.
Members of the public wrote OpEds and letters to this newspaper and began meeting to express concern about LPNF administrators’ refusal to engage in a public process before making major changes to the local forests. Some asked that the LPNF prove their scientific data is accurate regarding “increased density” of trees.
Bryant Baker, Conservation Director for Los Padres ForestWatch (LPFW), a nonprofit conservation advocacy group, wrote an OpEd in The Mountain Enterprise (“Cuddy forest project based on flawed data,” January 4, 2019).
Bryant said that a 1995 study counted trees above a certain size in its census—omitting seedlings, saplings and all piñon pines.
Now, Bryant wrote, LPNF’s count is including piñon pines in its count, using the 1995 study (in which no piñons were counted) to claim there is an increase in tree density, to justify logging on Tecuya Ridge and Cuddy Valley hillsides.
LPFW said this is poor science that misrepresents the facts. Outreach efforts by The Mountain Enterprise to invite the Los Padres National Forest forester to respond to that concern were unanswered.
The Mt. Pinos Ranger District statement said the Tecuya Ridge project “will provide safe and effective locations from which to perform fire suppression operations, to slow the spread of fire at strategic fuelbreaks and provide a buffer between developed areas and wildlands.”
The statement says the Los Padres Forest plan “was developed in collaboration with local individuals and community groups to establish priorities, cooperate on activities, and increase public awareness.”
This is the boilerplate language included in the Cuddy Valley Decision Memo.
When The Mountain Enterprise requested documentation about which local “individuals and community groups” collaborated in developing the plan, and where a “public awareness” process was advertised, it appeared there was none.
Reporters were told that consultation with “local individuals” took place about 12 years ago.
Mt. Pinos District Ranger Tony Martinez confirmed this in his OpEd [on page 7] in this week’s paper.
No record of present-day outreach was provided.
Martinez told a group of concerned neighbors in a meeting at the Frazier Park Library on April 2 that public hearings are not necessary under the “categorical exclusion” process supported by the new federal administration.
President Trump signed Executive Order 13855 to increase commercial logging on federal lands on December 21, 2018 as wildfire prevention, ordering the U.S. Forest Service to sell “at least 3.8 billion board feet of timber across 3.5 million acres of national forest lands….”
The order would result in a 31% increase in logging on national forest lands since 2017, bringing about $2 billion to timber industry interests, LPFW said.
See an OpEd on page 7 from Mount Pinos District Ranger Tony Martinez.
This is part of the May 3, 2019 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.
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