Forest Service Announces Plan to Clearcut old Growth on East Rim of Grand Canyon
by Flagstaff Activist Network
Saturday, Jan. 20, 2007 at 10:11 AM
info@flagstaffactivist.org
The Warm Fire Recovery Project is a Salvage Logging Project in the North Kaibab National Forest. They plan to log 85 million board feet of old growth from an area that beneficially burned this summer. They are accepting comments until Jan. 26 on the project.
The North Kaibab National Forest (NKNF) has recently announced that it will be accepting scoping comments for a project that looks suspiciously like the East Rim Timber Sale. A sale that was recently stopped in a lawsuit brought forth by the Sierra Club and Center for Biological Diversity.
The Warm Fire burned over 59 thousand acres in and around the East Rim Sale area from June 8 to July 3, 2006. The NKNF immediately did a survey of the fire area and now claims it is imperative to "Recover the Economic Value from Burned Timber" before it all dies.
In September of 2006 the Arizona Daily Sun ran an article in their newspaper of an eyewitness account of the Warm Fire burn area. He states:
"To me, the burn area was a hopeful scene. Whatever the political fallout or the most accurate characterization of the Warm Fire might be, clearly a step has been taken back towards a more natural state for the Kaibab. If the powers that be can force themselves to stay out of the way, the plateau will eventually return to the state of nature in which all that lives and grows here originally evolved to best succeed."
--Andy Upgrove
Wilderness Journal
Read the Full Eyewitness Account
The Forest Service has yet to release promised pictures (click the pictures link in the new window) of the burn area and the road in is closed from October to May each year so we will just show you older pictures of the area.
It is important to note that the Forest Service is asking for meaningful comments on this project, yet have made no real data available to make an informed comment. Most of their links say coming soon, if you followed the pictures link above you will know what I mean. Please let them know this in your comments.
Send In Our Form Letter if you don't have time to write your own comments, but be sure to put your mailing address. Only comments that have an address will be included.
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