Clearcuts beneath Grizzly Creek successful the Upper Yaak Drainage. Photo George Wuerthner
The Kootenai National Forest proposes a monolithic logging task successful Northwest Montana known arsenic the Black Ram “Vegetation” treatment.
The Black Ram task country includes Northwest Yaak from the Canadian borderline westbound to the Idaho border, southbound to the ridge enactment betwixt Pete Creek, and eastbound to the Yaak River. The Yaak drainage is 1 of the astir distant regions of Montana.
The Yaak drainage is 1 of the astir distant and chaotic areas of Montana. Photo George Wuerthner
The 95,000-acre Black Ram Project would commercially log 4,000 acres, including clearcutting 1,800 acres and 400 acres of mature-old maturation forests.
Note the usage of the connection euphemism treatment. The bureau ever sees the wood arsenic sick and needing a steadfast dose of chainsaw medicine.
They asseverate that they privation to amended resilience and absorption to insects, disease, and fire. However, notwithstanding insects, disease, and occurrence support steadfast wood ecosystems, the Forest Service Industrial Forestry paradigm sees these earthy agents arsenic thing to destruct oregon reduce.
Chainsaw medicine connected the Yaak. Thinning opens up the wood to greater heating, drying vegetation and expanding upwind penetration–all factors that summation occurrence spread. Photo George Wuerthner
Chainsaw medicine is similar the magic elixir the old-time snake lipid salesman utilized to promote. Chainsaw medicine cures everything and galore things that don’t request fixing.
So fto maine get this straight. The bureau claims if they don’t log the forest, trees “may” dice from insects, disease, oregon fire. So the mode to forestall this decease is to termination the trees with chainsaws. Does anyone different than maine spot immoderate disconnect successful logic here?
The grizzly carnivore colonisation of the Yaak is 1 of the astir endangered successful the United States with nary much than 20-30 bears according to immoderate estimates. Photo George Wuerthner
Other rationales for Black Ram are conscionable arsenic ludicrous. The FS claims that the Black Ram timber merchantability will, among different justifications, assistance grizzly carnivore recovery. The Cabinet Yaak grizzly colonisation endurance is 1 of the astir tenuous successful the country.
So the FS wants to use chainsaw medicine to the grizzly situation to increase, it claims, huckleberries.
Logging roads summation entree reducing information situation for grizzly bears. Photo George Wuerthner
No uncertainty determination whitethorn beryllium much huckleberries, but huckleberries are not limiting grizzly carnivore betterment successful the area. The main occupation for bears is road access and the precocious quality morality associated with them.
The Black Ram task volition make astir a 100 miles of unfastened roads. This roading is what volition harm grizzlies arsenic good arsenic different wildlife similar elk. What they each request much than thing is information cover. Chainsaw medicine provides none.
The Yaak Valley is already fragmented by past logging. Logging of the Black Ram country volition further fragment the scenery and destruct the fewer remaining earthy corridors.
The FS asserts that the Black Ram logging task volition mitigate clime warming. Yet, logging and wood products accumulation releases a tremendous magnitude of carbon. In Oregon, for instance, logging is the astir important root of Greenhouse Gas Emissions successful the full state—more than each the car, airplane, and motortruck emissions.
Cutting immoderate aged maturation volition trim the c retention of the area. Research by Bev Law of Oregon State University has shown that ample trees proceed to store c passim their lives. So logging the wood doesn’t assistance clime warming-it worsens it.
Dense forests chaaracterize the Yaak Drainage. Photo George Wuerthner
The Yaak drainage is an illustration of Inland Rainforest, characterized by spruce, occidental reddish cedar, and occidental larch. Photo George Wuerthner
Even if trees dice from beetles oregon fire, they stay on-site, storing carbon. Carbon is stored successful the soil, snags, and wood.
The thought that logging the wood volition someway support homes from wildfire is yet different story perpetuated by the Forest Service and timber companies. What drives each ample wildfires is climate and weather, not fuels. There is nary request to region fuels much than a 100 feet from home. And location hardening is acold much effectual astatine protecting homes than logging the forest.
Many researchers, including retired wood work researcher, Jack Cohen, suggest immoderate substance removal much than 100 feet from a operation provides nary other protection.
The Yaak drainage is an illustration of Inland Rainforest, characterized by spruce, occidental reddish cedar, and occidental larch. Photo George Wuerthner
The Yaak Valley forests are a uncommon inland rainforest that tends to beryllium represented by Pacific Northwest taxon that pain infrequently. Some of the larger histrion taxon connected the tract see occidental reddish cedar, occidental hemlock, subalpine fir, Engelmann spruce, and occidental larch, characterized by agelong occurrence rotations betwixt blazes. Some of the larch are estimated to beryllium 600 years old. The projected logging volition region older trees resistant to wildfire and regenerate them with invasive weeds and tiny trees. It is these good fuels that origin wildfires to dispersed rapidly.
They are a spot of classical old-growth forests with large-diameter trees, an abundance of down wood, and decomposing trees.
Dr. Dominick DellaSala, a starring authorization connected old-growth forests, conducted a tract sojourn to the Black Ram logging task area. He says, “I tin accidental unequivocally that this tract is aged growth, is critically important to its surroundings, has cardinal clime and refugia properties, including the imaginable for ample amounts of supra and beneath crushed c to proceed to accumulate implicit centuries.” Additionally, the U.S. Forest Service “claims [Black Ram] is for clime resilience, portion my observations amusement it would person the other effect.”
If you were to sojourn a doc who prescribed the aforesaid attraction for everything from a breached limb to a bosom attack, and thing worked, would you spot them to dainty you again and again? Yet this is precisely what the Forest Service is asking the nationalist to accept.
The Yaak River drainage is characterized by heavy forested rolling mountains. Photo George Wuerthner
To adhd insult to injury, The Forest Service estimates taxpayers volition suffer $3.2 cardinal subsidizing this deforestation.
A suit brought connected by the Alliance for the Wild Rockies enactment the task connected clasp successful February 2020. After receiving a biologic sentiment from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that deemed the Forest Service’s program “was not apt to jeopardize the continued beingness of the grizzly bear,” officials reopened the task for remark successful September 2020.
The Kootenai Tribe supports the Black Ram logging project.
The Black Ram task exemplifies the agency’s committedness to deforestation and ecosystem degradation. We should expect and request amended policies from the agency.
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