The U.S. Forest Service gave conflicting answers on whether to expect chainsaws on Arizona’s Mount Lemmon or Mount Graham, and its own map indicates logging trucks could also be coming to southwest New Mexico’s Gila Wilderness.
The recently published Forest Service map puts much of Southern Arizona’s Coronado National Forest and at least some of the Gila Wilderness as among more than 112 million total forested acres nationally that could be opened to commercial logging under vastly reduced environmental restrictions compared to those in force today.
U.S. Forest Service officials and the agency’s parent, the Agriculture Department, classify these lands as being in an “emergency situation” due to wildfire risk and insect or disease infestations.
In a memo published early this month, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said these areas are now authorized to allow timber-cutting under streamlined or greatly reduced environmental restrictions aimed at protecting water supplies, endangered species and historic sites, among other things.
At the same time, however, the Coronado National Forest’s most recent management plan, from 2018, said none of the Coronado’s 1.178 million acres across Southern Arizona are suitable for timber production.
And commercial logging in federal wilderness areas has been banned since Congress and President Lyndon B. Johnson enacted the Wilderness Act in 1964, except on wilderness lands that had pre-existing logging rights before the act was passed.
Between them, the Coronado National Forest, the Gila Wilderness and two neighboring areas in Southwest New Mexico contain more than 2,100 square miles that are already set aside as wilderness or recommended or being studied for possible wilderness protection. At least parts of those wilderness areas in both states are shown on the Forest Service map as having an “emergency” designation to qualify them for logging.
Asked about the possibility of these areas being logged, Forest Service officials gave contradictory responses.
On Monday, the service’s national press office said the Coronado won’t be open to logging under the Trump administration’s new orders, noting that the 2018 Coronado forest plan found no suitable timber-cutting acreage.
It observed, “There is not commercial logging on the Coronado National Forest ... The Coronado National Forest will continue to use the land and resource management plan, published in April 2018, as a guide for its land management. That includes using small scale timber projects to meet resource management objectives for forest health and fuels reduction.”
But after the Star wrote the press office about the presence of Coronado forest lands on its map, the press office walked back its denial on Wednesday.
“Thank you for pointing that out. You are correct, we erred in the part of our response. ... The Coronado is included, and as we said, we don’t have forest-level or state-specific information to share right now.”
Wilderness areas
Forest Service officials also were quoted in a Bloomberg News article early this month as saying the recent emergency order doesn’t apply to wilderness areas and that those areas will be left alone.
But Bloomberg reported that several other noteworthy wilderness areas, including the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness in Idaho and the Boundary Waters Canoe Wilderness, are on the service’s map. But the Forest Service wouldn’t comment further on the question of logging in wilderness areas, Bloomberg reported.
The Forest Service’s national press office didn’t respond to questions from the Star seeking to confirm Bloomberg’s reporting. The press office also didn’t answer a question about why the various wilderness areas are shown on the service’s map if it doesn’t intend to authorize logging in them.
Nationally, more than 36 million acres of land is protected as wilderness in national forests, Bloomberg reported. Congress banned roads and logging within wilderness boundaries because the areas provide habitat for endangered species, support recreation, and protect watersheds that supply drinking water to millions of people.
National forest land on Southeastern Arizona's Mount Graham.
“Including wilderness on the maps is either an attempt to grease the skids for logging in wilderness, or sloppiness,” Brian Nowicki, of the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity, told the Star. “If it’s the latter, the Forest Service can easily clear things up by putting in writing that they don’t intend to undertake emergency action in wilderness. If they won’t do that, it looks more like a plan to log everywhere.”
Mark Allison, executive director of New Mexico Wild, told Bloomberg he’s skeptical the Forest Service intends to avoid logging in wilderness areas. The Gila Wilderness Area was designated 101 years ago at the behest of pioneer ecologist Aldo Leopold.
The Agriculture Department’s order calls for numerous environmental shortcuts to promote logging, including cursory environmental reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act, emergency provisions of the Endangered Species Act and Clean Water Act, and exemptions for emergency logging projects under a forest planning rule, Allison said.
“The way the memo is written raises red flags about whether projects will comply with other laws and regulations, such as the Wilderness Act and a rule blocking road-building in some other parts of national forests,” he said.
Timber industry’s position
The American Forest Resources Council, a timber industry trade organization, doesn’t favor logging in wilderness areas, said Nick Smith, a spokesman for the group.
“It is our understanding that the (Agriculture) secretary’s memo with the emergency designations for where they will treat designated forests do not go into designated wilderness areas because that requires an act of Congress,” said Smith. The group supports the Agriculture Department’ and the Forest Service’s plans to boost logging in general, however..
“Across the national forests, only one-third of the national forest land base is available for timber harvesting,” Smith said. “The question is, what more can be done with the third of the land base where the forest can be actively managed? We think more can be done. We’ve harvested less than half the timber that can be harvested under existing forest plans.”
The Forest Service won’t have firm plans for specific areas they intend to prioritize for future logging until two things happen, the service’s national press office told the Star.
First, the national Forest Service office must produce a plan outlining “goals, objectives and initial actions related to increasing active forest management,” said an April 3 letter from Acting Associate Forest Service Chief Chris French.
Second, the service’s regional foresters were directed by French’s letter to develop five-year strategies to boost their forests’ timber production enough to produce a 25% increase nationally over the next four to five years. French directed that both these tasks be completed in 90 days total.
The Coronado forest falls under the control of the Southwest Regional Forester’s office, based in Albuquerque.
“We want to ensure we are providing accurate information, and we anticipate having a detailed map we can share next week. We’ll make sure you have it as soon as it’s available,” the Forest Service’s national press office told the Star on Thursday.
Environmentalists here weren’t surprised by the service’s conflicting directives.
“We’ve been seeing this kind of contradictory, confusing things happening with the (Trump) administration,” said Louise Misztal, director of the Tucson-based Sky Island Alliance, a nonprofit group that tries to protect the Coronado from environmental damage.
“There’s not even a legend on this thing,” said Misztal, referring to the Forest Service map. “Having it in writing — it’s better than not having it in writing, but we’re just seeing a pattern of sidestepping laws and trying to remove regulations. That’s what this administration is doing.”
Cost-efficiency issues
Specifically on the Coronado, the Forest Service’s most recent long-range management plan for the forest, from 2018, found 45,657 acres “tentatively suitable” for timber production.
But it also classified all but 55 of those acres as “not cost efficient in meeting timber production objectives.” The remaining 55 acres are recommended to be set aside as wilderness areas where commercial logging isn’t allowed, the plan said.
“Lands (in the Coronado) having potential commercial-grade timber are located at very high elevations of mountain ranges on four ranger districts. These areas are isolated and difficult to access, making it extremely unlikely for a single processing facility to develop a feasible business model that could incorporate most timbered lands,” the 2018 Coronado plan said.
“None of the ranges contains more than 15,000 acres of commercial-grade timber, and most contain much less. Even within each range, timber lands are often separated by major topographic features and/or have little or no road access.”
After reviewing the Forest Service map, University of Arizona Professor Donald Falk, who specializes in fire ecology and ecological restoration, said, “I can confirm that the shaded areas (on the map in Southeast Arizona) are unequivocally forested areas on the Coronado National Forest.
“I don’t know what the criteria were, but it appears to be all of the middle and upper elevation areas of most of the major Sky Islands, nearly all of which is managed by the Coronado, the National Park Service, or other public agencies. There is no question that the Coronado is on this map.”
Take a trip up to the top of Mount Lemmon with drone footage showcasing breathtaking spots along the way.
Mount Lemmon, with a summit elevation of 9,159 feet, is the highest point in the Santa Catalina Mountains. It is located in the Coronado National Forest north of Tucson.
Falk added in an interview, “The Coronado in today’s climate and wildfire and land use is really not a good candidate to be a timber forest. One question is whether the Coronado is an appropriate place to be doing commercial timber extraction? The second is will this new directive minimize wildfire risk?
“The two things are not the same. The reason for that is if you do timber extraction, you always want larger trees. For minimizing fire risk, you want the opposite, you want smaller trees.
“Small trees, maybe 10 to 15 feet, are the key to minimizing fire risk. Those are the trees that spread wildfire,” said Falk, of UA’s School of Natural Resources and the Environment.
“Once it gets up into the canopy, the upper part of the trees, they are all connected. They’re growing together,” Falk said. “Once they catch fire, they send fire to adjacent trees.”
But timber industry spokesman Smith told the Star his group is not advocating industrial-style logging in national forests. “The Forest Service’s forest plans are informed by the best available science, developed to meet very specific objectives on these unique landscapes. To say we favor industrial style logging on the forests is (creating) a straw man,” he said.
The group favors the thinning of tree densities that encourage insects and disease and increase fire mortality in forests, Smith said.
“Thinning and controlled burning can and should be done to reduce wildfire risk,” he said. “If we’re taking care of the forests, the forests will take care of us.”
