[treeswarper]

[Ski]

[sten]

So the sale is funding the fixing of that road that's dumping loads of sediments into the streams and looks as though it will continue to do so for some time --- and other similar problems, and decom a few roads that probably aren't needed any more but could become problems like that with the right rainfall/snowfall-melt event before they become a similar problem? Sounds good to me.

[mossy mom]

[yew]

[mossy mom]

[RodF]

[mossy mom]

[RodF]

[Ski]

[wamtngal]

Has anyone here heard of the Skokomish Watershed Action Team? Might be helpful to read their webpage. Not sure if this is the same area you folks are talking about though.

[Ski]

[treeswarper]

The Smooth Juniper sale, which I'm thinking is in the Cispus AMA, has all been logged, except for the dreaded unit 31, where we might be doing the road building to in a month or so depending on weather and economics. The logging of the final unit is on hold pending better market conditions. There's cleanup work and road closing/waterbarring yet to be done. One unit had some pretty heavy blowdown happen to it last year. I'm thinking rootrot, shallow soils, and wind. The unlogged area across the road also had blowdown. A good part of the sale was logged during the winter and the upper units on top of snow, so it came out looking good. The happiest unit was down a long road by the river (the river was buffered) . Quite a few of the trees were too big for the processor and had to be felled by hand. The elk like to hang out down there too. This sale was/is 100% commercial thinning with different spacings so you might want to take a look at it. All through the Cispus Valley are stands of timber that have been commercially thinned at least once. Many areas make my mouth water, and I must control my inner timber beast instincts.

[wamtngal]

First, sorry for a bit of thread hijack, but it is relevant to the topic, I suppose. Treeswarper, what diameter trees were felled with the Cispus project? From your mention of falling trees by hand because they would not fit in the processor, it sounds as though these were fairly significant in size? And are you familiar with small diameter thinning (6-8" diameter), which is becoming more prevalent in the timber industry? Is this at all close to the work you do?

[strider]

I have "bigger picture" questions to pose. Before I pose them please bear with me while I provide some context to frame my questions. I know that historically there have been way too many instances of land use and natural resource mis-management. Many places (forests, rivers, estuaries, etc.) and the wildlife therein have suffered as a result of this mis-management. There have also been both laws and policies enacted to force government agencies responsible for oversight of public lands to follow strict planning and research guidelines. Private citizens and companies also are governed by most of these same laws and many of these same policies. These controls have been put in place primarily by us ("we the people, remember?"). They are in place to try to reduce (it's too much to hope that mere humans can completely eliminate) environmental errors caused by various combinations of human stupidity, greed, ignorance, etc.. Several examples of these laws and policies in action have been cited in earlier posts in this thread - long study and analysis of land use proposals, public comment periods, etc.. So, to my questions: When was the last time a public land use program was enacted in the U.S. without being studied, analyzed, public commented upon, restudied, ad infinitum? When was the last time a federal or state government bureaucrat enacted a controversial program that caused detrimental environmental impact to public lands without first following all of the pre-action environmental laws and regulations? I have no idea what the answers are.... I look forward to hearing the horror stories. Please provide a date (the year would be close enough) and a factual information reference for the stories. If anyone knows of an instance where a bureaucrat broke one of these laws and the statute of limitations hasn't run out, why aren't you screaming for justice? If any public employee does not now follow these laws they risk personal liability, both fiscal and incarceration. Those same bureaucrats know there are very passionate citizens who would LOVE to cry wolf and see the dastardly evildoers suffer. If I were one of the bureaucrats responsible for the administration of public trust lands, I would follow the regs and laws to the letter. I understand (and applaud) the passion of those who take it upon themselves to be citizen watchdogs over the bureaucrats as they do the jobs WE hired them to perform. However ... if someone really want to affect the process and the progress of land use initiatives and programs, they must get involved EARLY in the process. The time to make noise about land use initiatives is three or four years BEFORE they are actually working on our FS roads and thinning our trees. If you are passionate about these issues, you need to be proactively looking at public land use initiatives that are currently in the planning stages. The time to successfully affect those plans and decisions is now, not three years from now when the plans are executed. Just my .02....