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Bid awarded in contentious timber project
Southside story
Bid awarded in contentious timber project
BY HOLLY KAYS OUTDOORS EDITOR
Five years after it first proposed the controversial Southside Timber Project, the U.S. Forest Service has awarded a timber bid to cut the first 98 acres of 317 acres to be harvested — earning sharp criticism from environmental groups who say the project will destroy rare old-growth forest.
“The Southside Timber Sale was a bad idea when it was announced five years ago, and it is still a bad idea today,” said Susannah Knox, senior attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center. “By ignoring overwhelming public opposition and moving forward with this reckless project at rock-bottom prices, USFS leaders show they are more interested in logging old-growth forests — regardless of the cost — than listening to experts and scientific research.”
In a final environmental assessment completed in February 2019, the Forest Service laid out its plans for a project it said would improve forest health, diversity and wildlife habitat in the Nantahala National Forest in southeastern Macon County and southern Jackson County. The project aims to use timber harvest to create 317 acres of young forest spread across 23 separate stands in a 19,000acre project area. More than one-third of the openings created will be 1 acre or less, with an average opening of 22 acres on the remaining stands. Project plans also include establishing native nectar- and pollen-producing species in wildlife openings, log landings and roadsides to benefit native pollinators; rehabilitating existing wildlife openings; and improving fisheries habitat in Scotsman Creek.
During a scoping period conducted in 2017, the Forest Service received 229 comments on its initial proposal, of which 18 expressed support for the project. According to Public Information Officer Cathy Dowd, most of the comments were the result of a direct mail campaign conducted by the Chattooga Conservancy, which has adamantly opposed the project.
“In the management of national forests there are trade-offs,” then-District Ranger Mike Wilkins said in the 2019 press release announcing the final EA. “We make decisions based on the best available science that lead us to cut some trees to make room for others. Forests need diversity and all ages of trees. What’s missing from the Southside area is young forest.”
Removing patches of older trees gives young trees access to sunlight and water, allowing them to sprout and grow. Small and medium-sized forest openings provide fruit and nutritious foliage and flowers that attract pollinators and other insects and support populations of small mammals that, in turn, are prey for larger animals. Openings can be created by natural processes such as storms or intense wildfires, but in their absence need to be created through active management.
Young forest habitat makes up only 1% of the project area, while stands 100 years and older comprise about 33%, said Dowd. The Southside Project is necessary, she said, to improve wildlife habitat and forest health by creating young forest habitat.
DEBATING OLD GROWTH
Opponents say the project won’t just cut 100-year-old trees, which are increasingly common on a landscape that hasn’t seen much large-scale harvest over the last century.
The most contentious stands in the project include 17 acres on the top of Brushy Mountain and 20 acres on its side. In a written objection to the plan, the Chattooga Conservancy said that students in the Highlands Biological Station’s Institute for the Environment Program documented trees there older than 200 years.
“All old growth and near old growth should be protected,” reads the objection. “Because this area is an optimum location to protect, restore and connect the biologically rich and genetically superior forests exhibited by a large area of already protected old growth makes it a primary target for establishing a true network of connected, older native forests to address climate change and a myriad of unique, dependent ecological services.”
In its environmental assessment, the Forest Service found that the 17 acres atop Brushy Mountain did meet the agency’s internal definition of old growth forest and considered adding the stand to its network of designated old growth forest. However, it decided not to, noting in the EA that the guide containing the definition “is not a policy document with substantive and procedural requirements that must be met, but is rather a reference document” aimed at assisting national forests “with implementing the legal requirements in their forest plans.”
“The area is mostly an even-aged stand that grew up after being logged about a hundred years ago with some remnant older trees that weren’t cut then,” said Dowd. “The prescription for this harvest leaves trees that have dens or cavities for wildlife and a lot of the older larger trees.”
The EA concluded that the dry-mesic oak ecozone the Brushy Mountain stand represents is “already well represented and protected in existing old-growth designations,” which include 4,922 acres in the non-timber suitable land base with stands older than 100 years. Overall, the analysis area contains nearly 7,000 acres set aside as designated old growth.
Josh Kelly, public lands biologist for MountainTrue, says that’s a misleading argument. Much of the acreage contained in the forest’s designated old growth and in the Old Growth Network being finalized in the new Pisgah-Nantahala Forest Management Plan does not currently contain old growth forest — and the designation aimed at allowing it to reach that point one day is not guaranteed to remain past the next 20-year planning cycle.
“They’re really conflating some existing old growth that they want to cut with some forest that may be old growth someday elsewhere in the project area,” Kelly said.
The rare green salamander requires moist, rocky habitats like those found on Brushy
Mountains. Lori Williams/NCWRC photo
CONCERN FOR THE GREEN SALAMANDER
A core sample reveals this tree to be more than 200 years old.
Chattooga Conservancy photo
The project’s critics are also concerned about the potential impact on the green salamander, which the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission classifies as rare and the Smithsonian National Zoo lists as near threatened. Native to the Appalachians, the salamander prefers moist, rocky habitats. According to the Wildlife Commission’s species profile, clearcutting and other “intense” timber harvesting activities directly around the rocks they live on can be “detrimental” to their habitat.
In response to objections that the project would harm green salamander populations, the Forest Service agreed to place a 100-meter buffer around locations with documented green salamander populations and dropped a stand from the project that included historically productive green salamander habitat.
“It is worth noting that from my field visit that the most recent documented (green salamander) occurrences are within a stand that was clear-cut in 1989 and that this most recent inventory finds that green salamanders persist in stands that have recently been harvested,” reads a 2019 objection response letter from then-Forest Supervisor Hurston A. Nicholas to the Southern F
The Anthony Toineeta 7 Clans Rodeo will return to Cherokee 6 to 10 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 3, and Sunday, Sept. 4.
Gates open at 6 p.m. with the rodeo beginning at 7 p.m. Top cowboys and cowgirls will compete at the three-time Southern Rodeo Association Best Rodeo of the Year.
Adult tickets are $13 in advance or $15 at the gate; children 4-12 can attend for $8 in advance or $10 at the gate. Purchase advance tickets at the Cherokee Welcome Center at 498 Tsali Blvd. in Cherokee. Cash only.
Visit Cherokee photo
Environmental Law Center.
Kelly does not share Nicholas’ confidence in the salamander’s ability to withstand such disturbances.
“Unfortunately, there’s no hard science on the effect of buffers on green salamanders,” said Kelly. “We also know that they do forage up to a half a mile or maybe more from the breeding rocks, and they need to travel between rocks in order to breed and exchange genes. And so we believe that the conservative thing would be to just preserve all the green salamander habitat, including the foraging and dispersing habitat.”
The Southside project is located just east of Highlands and borders
the South Carolina state line. USFS
AN UNUSUAL BID
MountainTrue is so adamantly against the project that it proposed a unique approach to stop it — paying the Forest Service not to log the land.
“We’ve made an offer to purchase the 37 acres — or at least not purchase exactly, but we made an offer to pay the Forest Service not to cut the trees,” Kelly said. “We proposed as a mechanism to that that we buy the carbon rights for the forest, but we would have been happy just to pay under some guarantee that the area would remain uncut for at least 100 years.”
When the Forest Service first put the project out for bid in August 2021, it didn’t receive any responses — likely due to long haul distances and a down timber market, Dowd said. In July the Forest Service bid the project again, this time at much-reduced rates to “reflect the economic situation and increased fuel costs.” One company responded, and the Forest Service awarded the 98-acre timber sale for $55,604.
Meanwhile, MountainTrue offered to pay $30,000 for the 37 controversial acres atop and on the side of Brushy Mountain, and to match any offers for the value of the timber. The Forest Service would make more money this way, said Kelly, because not only would it get an up-front payment, but it would avoid expenses associated with administering the sale and overseeing roadbuilding and logging activities.
However, the Forest Service did not respond to MountainTrue’s offer and instead awarded the sale to the bidder, who the Forest Service declined to name until the financial response is complete. Dowd said that a reply to MountainTrue is “forthcoming” but that the nonprofit’s offer did not line up with the process the Forest Service uses to receive and accept bids.
“There is no mechanism for us to set aside that bid in order to consider an offer that doesn’t meet all the criteria of the solicitation, nor do we have the authority to sell carbon credits,” she said. “Our key priorities are fostering forest health and ecosystem integrity, and within this context we work to balance multiple goals, including carbon stewardship, but will not maximize carbon or any other goal at the expense of forest health.”
Timber sales like this one are needed to create healthy and diverse forests, Dowd said.
“We are continuing to implement this project, which is the outcome of a public process in which many people took part and many supported, because it moves us towards our goal of improving wildlife habitat and forest health, which includes creating the early successional habitat that is the goal of this timber sale,” she said.
Critics of the project disagree, worrying that the outcome of the Southside Project bodes poorly for the forest’s future under the new forest management plan the agency expects to implement this year.
“It portends badly for the new forest plan and the kind of things the Forest Service wants to do in the new forest plan, where they explicitly leave these kinds of decisions up to district rangers at the project level to make very subjective decisions,” said Kelly. “We see different rangers handling these issues very differently. I really hope the Forest Service both locally and nationally takes a really hard look at this case and realizes that there needs to be more consistency in the policy across the agency.”
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Volunteers are wanted for Kids in the Creek, an annual environmental education program that’s been teaching eighth-grade students in Haywood County about watershed ecology since 1999.
During this field trip, students learn about watershed hydrology and water chemistry, and collect fish and aquatic bugs. Volunteers are welcome to pitch in for full or half days, and no experience is necessary.
Kids in the Creek will take place 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Sept. 12-14 and 8:30 a.m. to 11 a.m. Sept. 15, rain or shine, at the Canton Recreation Park. Volunteers should bring sunscreen, a hat, sunglasses, a camp chair, a change of clothing and an old pair of lace-up sneakers. Stay-dry volunteer positions are available as well. Lunch, snacks and waders provided.
RSVP to Christine O’Brien by Sept. 6 at 828.475.4667, ext. 11, or christine.haywoodwaterways@gmail.com.
Land navigation course offered
Learn how to stay found with a land navigation course offered 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday, Sept. 2, in Haywood County.
Course instructor Steve Kuni, who is a trainer for the Haywood County Search and Rescue Volunteers and a former U.S. Army Officer, will cover the fundamentals of traditional map and compass land navigation, and apply those fundamentals to navigation with modern cell phones. The course, offered through the Haywood County Recreation Department, will repeat on the first Friday of October.
Sign up at secure.rec1.com/catalog. For more information, contact recreationandparks@haywoodcountync.gov or 828.452.6789.
Culvert project to improve fish habitat
A portion of Connelly’s Creek Road in the Nantahala National Forest will close starting Sept. 6 to upgrade an existing culvert to a bottomless arch culvert that improves fish habitat.
The road, also known as Forest Service Road 86, is expected to reopen Nov. 18. It will be closed from the intersection of FSR 70 for about 0.6 miles to the existing wildlife field Alarka Laurel. No access to the area will be allowed during the closure due to construction activity.
The project will improve about 1 mile of stream habitat for native brook trout spawning and rearing, and the new stream crossing will reduce long-term road maintenance, increase the stream crossing’s flood capacity and reduce sediment.
The N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission and Trout Unlimited are partnering on the project.
Bottomless arch culverts like this one on Buck Creek improve passage for
fish and other aquatic organisms while reducing road maintenance. USFS photo
Cades Cove, Clingmans Dome closures planned
Education programs in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park will prompt temporary closures of Clingmans Dome Road and Cades Cove Loop Road over the coming weeks.
Clingmans Dome Road will be closed until 1 p.m. Friday, Aug. 26, and Wednesday, Sept. 7. Cades Cove Loop Road will be closed until 3:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 8. The closures will go into effect the night before each program day.
Trail repairs done on Tennessee A.T.
New bog bridges and repaired steps are now in place on the Bradley Gap Section of the Appalachian Trail through the Cherokee National Forest following a joint project of the U.S. Forest Service and Tennessee Eastman Hiking and Canoeing Club.
The TEHCC maintains the A.T. in the Watauga District. Last summer, the group reached out to the Forest Service with a proposed solution to improve the trail section, which they identified as being constantly wet.
TEHCC subsequently built bog bridges and installed locust posts to rehab steps. Forest Service officials provided UTV support in transporting all the materials from the bottom to the top of the mountain.
Potted plants stand ready for the Southern Highlands Reserve’s native plant sale.
Donated photo
Bring home native plants
A native plant sale 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Friday, Aug. 26, will offer a variety of trees, shrubs and grasses at the Southern Highlands Reserve.
Plants will be available in 1-gallon and 4inch containers. Only checks made payable to Southern Highlands Reserve will be accepted as payment. For more information, visit southernhighlandsreserve.org/2022native-plant-sale.
WCU gets new air quality monitors
New air monitors measuring particulate matter, temperature and relative humidity are now up on the Western Carolina University campus.
WCU’s Sustainable Energy Initiative funded the project, which was led by Assistant Professor of Environmental Health Sara Duncan and Graham Seigel, who graduated in May.
The data is reported to the PurpleAir map every minute and is completely open source. The data is available to students, faculty, staff and the larger community for research, student learning and community engagement. Already, students use PurpleAir data for a course-based undergraduate research project in Duncan’s Air Quality course.
Outdoor sensors are located at the Health and Human Sciences Building, the outdoor track and the Jordan-Phillips Field House, and two indoor sensors are inside Courtyard Dining Hall and the Hinds University Center. There is also a sensor outside the Apodaca Science Building operated by Damon Smith of the Department of Chemistry and Physics.
For more information, visit air.wcu.edu.
Lecture to explore conservation and climate resilience
Find out how land protection impacts climate resilience during a lecture at 6 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 1, at the Highlands Nature Center in Highlands.
Dr. Maria Whitehead, vice president and director of land at the Open Space Institute, will explore challenges conservationists face, tools for addressing them, and how natural solutions to climate change may increase resilience for both natural and human communities. Through her professional career, Whitehead has held positions as an ornithologist, professor and conservation professional, including 15 years in the direct conservation of land and water and the interdisciplinary realm of climate adaptation and community resilience.
The lecture is part of the weekly Zahner
Dr. Maria Whitehead.
Donated photo
A second deer has tested positive for chronic wasting disease after North Carolina’s first CWD-positive deer was found in December 2021.
The second deer came from a farm in Yadkin County less than a mile from the location where the first CWD-positive deer was harvested. It was one of 28 deer tested as part of ongoing CWD surveillance efforts cooperative with farmers that have active depredation permits. The deer hunting season starts Sept. 10.
“It’s imperative that hunters understand how important it is to submit samples to help determine how prevalent CWD is here in North Carolina,” said Brad Howard, chief of the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission’s Wildlife Management Division. “It’s also crucial that we enlist their help to not give the disease a ride to new areas.”
CWD is caused by abnormal proteins, called prions, that slowly spread through the nervous system of cervids like deer and elk, eventually causing spongy holes in the brain that lead to death. The disease is spread between animals through direct contact and environmental contamination from infected saliva, urine and feces of live animals or carcasses and body parts.
Because infected deer may appear healthy, it is important to take precautions when transporting or disposing of deer carcasses. Hunters should bury deer remains where the animal was harvested whenever possible, double-bag deer remains for disposal at the closest landfill, or leave deer remains on the ground where the animal was harvested.
Since the two infected deer came from the same area, no changes to surveillance areas set up following the first positive are planned at this time.
For a comprehensive overview of special CWD regulations, visit ncwildlife.org/cwd.
New supervisor on the Cherokee National Forest
The Cherokee National Forest in Tennessee has a new forest supervisor after Mike Wright began his official duties in the role Aug. 15. Wright had filled the position in an acting capacity since April.
Wright has served as the Ocoee district ranger since 2012. Previously, he was a district ranger on the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forests in Colorado and Wyoming, and Thunder Basin National Grassland in Wyoming.
The Cherokee National Forest covers 660,000 acres, with separate northern and southern sections divided by the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
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