Environmentalists sue USFS to not log Angora burn area
Reno Gazette Journal
Environmentalists are suing the U.S. Forest Service to try to block logging at Lake Tahoe that the agency says is needed to help guard against another wildfire like the one that destroyed 254 homes three years ago.
In addition to removing downed logs that hamper firefighting efforts, the Forest Service says the Angora project will help speed regeneration of the forest and restore wildlife habitat across about half of the 3,000 acres that burned on the southwest edge of South Lake Tahoe in June 2007.
But the Earth Island Institute and Center for Biological Diversity say the logging would do more harm than good.
They say the project would do little to reduce fire threats but would disrupt the natural regeneration of the forest and eliminate about 70 percent of the last suitable habitat for the rare black-backed woodpecker across the entire 230 square miles of the national forest surrounding Lake Tahoe.
The burn area from Angora Ridge on Feb. 13. Photo/Kathryn Reed
The Forest Service’s own research shows the woodpecker is highly dependent on burned forest where beetles and other insects are plentiful, especially where the fire burned intensely, as was the case across about a third of the Angora site, the lawsuit said.
The agency designated the bird the “management indicator species” for post-fire habitat throughout the Sierra Nevada in 2007. Last September, the Center for Biological Diversity and the institute’s John Muir Project petitioned the California Fish and Game Commission to declare it threatened or endangered under the state’s Endangered Species Act.
“If the black-backed woodpecker is going to survive here in California, we can’t keep logging its habitat. And this is exactly the kind of habitat it needs,” said Justin Augustine, a staff attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity who helped prepare the lawsuit filed on Friday in U.S. District Court in Sacramento.
GIVE ME A BREAK! THE WOODPECKERS CAN FIND ANOTHER PLACE TO LIVE-AFTER ALL, ALMOST 1/3 OF US ANGORA SURVIVORS HAVE LEFT,DIVORCED, BEEN FORECLOSED ON, CANNOT REBUILD, EXPERIENCED DOMESTIC PROBLEMS AND OR DRUG ABUSE. ANOTHER THING YOU OUTSIDERS THAT KNOW WHATS GOOD FOR US, WE HAVE SPENT OVER 3 YEARS MAKING AN ATTEMPT TO MAKE OUR PROPERTIES LIVABLE! Now maybe you can clean up that putrid ridgeline you call an eco wonder. Instead of pissing away all your legal clout dollars, subsidize our planting of mature trees and shrubbery! You visit we wake up to it daily-shame on you
Don’t feel bad Tony ,they never cleaned up the Gondola fire scene either…still looks like hell.
Now I hope they just keep the crap off the rings at the heads at the public rest rooms…Have any of you been out to any the beaches in the last 6 weeks this January spring break,it’s amazing there ,tissues paper ,crap,at every locked head and down right ugly ,unhealthy.
Even the wild bears wonder what going on here!They at least know how to do the Bear scoot in the meadows on dry shrubs for a little privacy.
Doesn’t make sense all this shoreline restriction with no public rest rooms open to the people who go there,even the Q-clams are gaging.
I’ve heard this phosphy before about dead trees till they burn more ,hotter, than a green wood blaze,you think they let commercial wood cutters come in thin some the burnt stands of eye sores,split, sell to some the poor under waged locals to help keep these public burns that put more carbon in the rain clouds than burned in EPA approved stoves.
People are ingorant to think that lighting doesn’t strike twice in the same place ,like burnt trees won’t burn twice.
You guys are both Ill informed opinionated morons.. The usfs is irresponsible with how they do business.. What a mess…
local 700- what a nice personal attack on 2 people who have an opinion-MORON? I stated why i feel this way-whats your excuse? why don’t you put your name where your 700 is. maybe you can be credible then.