Pisgah, Nantahala forest plan drew a lot of objections. What did they help change?
ASHEVILLE - Just more than a week after it published and then withdrew an announcement heralding the publication of a final management plan for the Nantahala and Pisgah national forests, the U.S. Forest Service has completed its review of objections.
The result is a 445-page document responding to thousands of objections raised by local conservation advocacy groups like I Heart Pisgah and Friends of Big Ivy and Forest Plan Report Card Coalition.
In total, according to the response document, there were 825 eligible objectors.
More:Approval for a final Pisgah, Nantahala forest plan was posted online. Then it vanished.
More:Pisgah National Forest trail to get facelift from local mountain biking nonprofit
“We recognize that healthy forests and communities are interdependent; it’s one of our Forest Service values,” Deputy Regional Forester Rick Lint said in a Jan. 19 news release. “We take public engagement seriously; we modified the plan based on what we heard at the objection meetings.”
According to the release, a summary of changes included:
Wild and Scenic Rivers: Added a newly eligible Wild and Scenic River segment for the North Fork French Broad River, with a recreational classification. Designation as a wild and scenic river is our nation’s strongest form of protection for free-flowing rivers and streams.
Special Designations: Voluntarily expanded the amount of Special Interest Area management in the Big Ivy/Craggy Mountain and Shope Creek areas, recognizing the ecological, scenic and recreational value of the land. The plan expands the area to more than 12,200 acres overall, an increase of about 800 acres.
Species protections: Clarified how the plan protects species of conservation concern and the recovery of federally listed species.
Sustainable Recreation: Clarified aspects of management for user-created trails, updated guidance on managing climbing routes through unique habitats, and added management approaches related to visitor management at equestrian campgrounds, all based on input from objectors.
Updated process documentation on ecological modeling, species analyses and Wild and Scenic Rivers evaluations.
“There were a couple of things that look promising in there,” said MountainTrue Public Lands Field Biologist Josh Kelly, who was able to peruse the detailed document following its mid-January publication. Kelly is also part of the leadership team at the Nantahala-Pisgah Forest Partnership but spoke to the Citizen Times as a MountainTrue team member and ecologist.
Previous coverage:
Asheville protesters urge US Forest Service to decrease logging in Pisgah National Forest
Final Nantahala and Pisgah forest plan charts course for recreation, timber, climate change
Nantahala, Pisgah plan: Only about 5% of almost 14,000 objectors eligible, says Forest Service
“It looks like they're going to recommend the North Fork of the French Broad for wild and scenic designation, which is great. And it looks like they're going to probably add some acreage to the Craggy Mountain special interest area, which I think is also great.”
But, he added, “Beyond those items, I'm not not sure if there's much substantive.”
Moreover, Kelly said, it has some shortcomings.
“There were some pretty frustrating things in there too, just reading through the issues where it just still seems like the Forest Service after 10 years either doesn't understand the issues that I've raised or is mischaracterizing them. So I was pretty frustrated about that,” Kelly said.
Kelly’s frustrations were echoed by Pisgah and Nantahala advocates who want to see more substance from the plan, but fear it may be lacking when published.
At the heart of a litany of concerns over how the management plan will impact the Western North Carolina forests are fears it will quadruple logging in the national forests, building hundreds of miles of new roads and weakening protections for trails, trout streams and old-growth forest.
More:Trail shelters in Pisgah National Forest to be rebuilt; helping hikers, campers, forest
Related:Pisgah View park closes on 230 acres of land for $2 million, gears up for master plan
“Based on these responses to the objection, it doesn't appear that anything substantial is going to change in the final draft,” Barnardsville scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity Will Harlan said. “And this is utterly heartbreaking. The Forest Service received a record-setting number of objections. And after this deluge of public and community input, and, frankly, opposition, nothing has changed. If you read through all of their recommendations, nearly all of them are just minor clarifications, or no changes at all.”
Even after the plan, which may be published before the end of January, advocates and scientists could continue to call for alterations.
“We're still going to continue to try to protect the unprotected old-growth forests and rare species habitat and places that really don't need to be logged for their health,” Kelly said. “We're going to stand up for those places at the project level, regardless of what's in the plan. We were hoping that this plan would be more efficient and not make us have to fight those fights at the project level, but the Forest Service seems pretty intent on continuing to fight those fights. I guess that's how it's going to be.”
Andrew Jones is an investigative reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at @arjonesreports on Facebook and Twitter, 828-226-6203 or [email protected]. Please help support this type of journalism with a subscription to the Citizen Times.
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: U.S. Forest service responds to Pisgah, Nantahala plan objections
