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Take Action: Comments on Eastside Community Destruction Project Due 11/6

 

The US Forest Service has already targeted the Central and West portions of Plumas National Forest (PNF) for aggressive “thinning” (AKA industrial logging)– near communities such as Quincy, La Porte, Graeagle and Portola. This heavy handed approach decimates habitat and releases massive amounts of carbon.

Now, they are targeting Eastern portions of the PNF near Janesville, Milford and Doyle with herbicides and mechanical devastation. You can read the plan here. You have until the end of the day on November 6th 2023 to submit your comments.

Every comment matters! Please comment now.

E-mail: comments-pacificsouthwest-plumas@usda.gov

Cc: public@countyofplumas.com

ryan.bauer@usda.gov

Rep. Kevin Kiley

Make sure to e-mail Ryan to confirm that your message was received. The USFS “lost” our comments during the Central and West Slope comment period, so do not trust the system!

Example comment (please add your own language):

Dear Supervisor Carlton,

Thinning projects such as the “Eastside Community Protection Project” are known to damage habitat, increase carbon emissions that are driving high intensity wildfires, dry out forests and increase wind speeds through forests, reducing evacuation times for communities and putting our lives at risk. ‘

Yet, the USFS refuses to consider this scientific evidence, relying on outdated and discredited studies to promote timber extraction at the cost of community safety and ecological integrity. We support Feather River Action!‘s campaign to halt these ill-conceived and inappropriate projects. This is not “caring for the land” or “serving people”– this is serving the timber and biomass industries at the expense of both.

Scientific research (Syphard et al. 2014) indicates that only the 100 ft. directly surrounding communities has any impact whatsoever on structure survival. I am outraged that the nearly billion dollars of our tax money being spent on these projects is not going where it is really needed– community hardening, defensible space, evacuation planning and grants for low income people to harden their homes. This is government corruption at its worst.

Please abandon the “community destruction project” immediately. I plan to take personal action to ensure that our communities stay safe and local forests protected from industrial exploitation.

Thank you,

<your name>

<your town>

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Ridin’ the Rails Through Feather River Country

Shame one has to break the law or be a railroad employee in order to ride the beautiful rail route through Plumas County! A few years back there was an excursion passenger train on offer, but we’re not sure that is planned again. We need a better passenger rail system in the U.S.!

If we took the nearly billion public dollars that the Forest Service is handing to the logging industry instead of actually protecting homes (as part of the Community Destruction Project) maybe we’d have at least the beginnings of passenger rail along the Feather River from Oroville to Reno so people would have choices. Anyway, enjoy the scenery in these videos…..Plumas County portion in first video starts around 17:40 and second video at 6:45.

RIP Stobe the Hobo. Gone but not forgotten…..

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FRA! Comments to Plumas County Board of Supervisors October 10th, 2023

Plumas National Forest Threatened Area / Photo Credit: the Lorax

We are Feather River Action!. Our group is based in Eastern Plumas County and we defend the watershed and help build community.

FRA! began 2 years ago to oppose not one but two ill-conceived proposals for asphalt plants next to Portola and on the Feather River in Delleker.

Now we are laser focused on extreme logging and resource extraction plans by the Forest Service that threaten more than a quarter million acres of forest lands within the Feather River watershed.

Ironically and perversely called “community protection,” the Forest Service plans a mechanical and chemical assault on wild habitat, degrading and drying out forests, and increasing wind speed and wildfire spread within the forest canopy, endangering both fire fighters and communities. This will not only damage views and natural features, it will also harm the tourism economy by turning wild landscapes in high demand with city dwellers into sterile tree plantations bereft of wildlife.

Congress, the president, and the USFS are essentially subsidizing the timber extraction industry with $650 million of our tax dollars, while leaving communities flammable and vulnerable to the next inevitable ember storm.

More than 70,000 acres have already been approved under an “emergency authorization” that short circuits the NEPA process and excludes the public from the decision process. This is the most extreme logging plan ever planned for Plumas National Forest, making significant amendments to the 2004 Forest Plan, stripping protections for spotted owl, all without a single public meeting.

You can have your own opinion about this project, but you can’t have your own facts. The facts are the facts, and the USFS has ignored the science by approving this project. Here are the facts and what the science says:

— Fuel reduction work has little to no effect on home survival when done more than 100 feet away from structures (Syphard et al 2014)

—Zald and Dunn 2018 found that in the dry western forests, logging intensity is the second most important predictor of wildfire intensity. 

—Bradley et al 2016 reported that across the entire western U.S., fires burn with less intensity on lands that have the highest protections from logging 

— Banerjee 2020 found that forest thinning uniformly increased in-forest wind speeds capable of carrying a wildfire through the crowns despite crown thinning and that fire moved fastest through thinned, dry forest. 

The direct loss of sequestered forest carbon is on average far higher annually than forest carbon losses from fire (Harris et al 2016)

The increase in area burned every year is primarily a climate related phenomena and is not something that we will be able to log our way out of (Zhuang et al 2021) 

The USFS has ignored this science in approving the CPP Project. The wild forest, our communities and our lives at stake. Please visit FeatherRiverAction.org to learn more about what the science tells us are the impacts of industrial thinning (AKA industrial logging) and how you can get involved in defending the forest from fear based logging that will only dig us deeper into a climate and extinction emergency.

Thank you.