ABQjournal: Forest Service Plans Cut Both Ways By Tania Soussan
The Forest Service’s Tajique plan calls for thinning with tree cutting and prescribed burns over 10 years starting this summer. The project also would create a series of 300-foot-wide fuel breaks and build 28 miles of temporary roads.
The $5.9 million effort would boost local economic development, creating 11 jobs and $600,000 in income.
The project is aimed mainly at protecting the Forest Valley and Sherwood Forest subdivisions and a private youth camp. It could help Torreon and Tajique, which are outside the forest in pi?on-juniper lowlands and less at risk.
The agency is taking public comments through March 21. [See below.]
The goals are to improve watershed health and wildlife habitat and to reduce fire danger by returning the forest to early 1800s conditions. …
[Neighbors] working with Forest Guardians, submitted an alternative plan with no new roads, no prescribed burns and a 12-inch-diameter cap on tree cutting. …
After hearing from the public, the Forest Service reduced new roads from 37 miles to 28 miles and said the temporary roads could be gated to keep out all-terrain vehicles and illegal woodcutters. The roads would be revegetated and obliterated after the project.
Still, the Forest Service plan acknowledges the potential for problems, including increased erosion and the spread of invasive plants and weeks.
So much for preserving roadless areas. Thirty miles of new roads in 17,000 acres. No way will they all be “temporary.” This “Healthy Forests” plan needs to be re-thought. mjh
Cibola National Forest – Contact Us
Send postal mail to:
Cibola National Forest
2113 Osuna Road, NE, Suite A
Albuquerque, NM 87113
Phone:
(505) 346-3900
Fax:
(505) 346-3901