Kentucky Heartwood
  • Home
  • News and Events
    • Newsletters
    • Forest Blog
    • Music Festival 2022 >
      • Music Festival Pics
    • Past Events >
      • Stonecoal hike
      • Hemlock volunteer days
      • Red Hickory and Herbal Medicine Hike
      • Red Hickory Hike April '22
      • Music Festival 2021
      • Bat Meter Deployment Field Trip 2021
      • Virtual Membership Meeting 2021
      • The Three R's with Davis Mounger
      • White fringeless orchid mural
  • Forest Watch
    • FOIA
    • Jellico >
      • ORG COMMENTS
    • South Redbird Project
    • Blackwater (Cave Run Lake)
    • Red River Gorge
    • Pine Creek Forest Restoration Project
    • Greenwood
    • Pisgah Bay Project
    • Climax & Little Egypt >
      • Crooked Creek Photos 2011
      • Crooked Creek Photos 2010
    • Upper Rock Creek Logging >
      • Rock Creek Hike, November 2009
  • Issues
  • Donate
    • ANNUAL REPORT 2022
  • CONTACT
    • Volunteer
    • SUBSCRIBE
  • Links
  • About
    • Council & Staff

Kentucky Heartwood

We need forests we can get lost in; trees that make us gape; streams we can drink from. 
​Wild places sustain and define us; ​we, in turn, must protect them.

Help stop logging in the Pine Creek project! Comments due by September 4, 2019

8/24/2019

 
The Daniel Boone National Forest is currently taking comments on the Draft Environmental Assessment (EA) for the Pine Creek Forest Restoration Project. This is a complicated project, which proposes intensive and damaging logging on thousands of acres of forest, but also includes plans for beneficial restoration and management for rare species and natural communities. Below you will find a breakdown of the main proposed actions to help inform your comments to the Forest Service. Comments are due by Wednesday, September 4th, 2019. Directions on how to submit comments are the end of this post.
​
You can read our May 2018 comments to the Forest Service on an earlier draft (scoping) of the Pine Creek proposal here. Video of a presentation that we gave in Corbin in January 2019 can be found here.
Picture
Large northern red oak in a stand proposed for logging in the Pine Creek project area.

​Background

​
The Pine Creek project covers 45,700 acres of the Daniel Boone National Forest in Laurel, Pulaski, and Rockcastle counties. The area is centered on the lower Rockcastle River, from near I-75 to the confluence with the Cumberland River. This area includes some of the most popular recreation spots in the Daniel Boone, including Bee Rock, Rockcastle Recreation Area, Little Lick, Scuttle Hole, the Sheltowee Trace National Recreation Trail, Pine Island Double Falls, and the Wild River segment of the Rockcastle River. The area also includes a wide diversity of forest types and rare species, including some of the best old-growth and mature second growth forests in the Daniel Boone. The Forest Service first proposed the Pine Creek project in February 2018. Since the initial proposal the agency has made some improvements, but there are still major problems that need to be addressed. 
Picture
Forest proposed for logging in the Pine Creek project area.
The Bad Stuff:

Shelterwood logging on 1,300 acres for early seral habitat

Our most significant concern with the Pine Creek project is the Forest Service’s intent to log 1,300 acres for early seral habitat (young forest) using shelterwood methods (Action 1.A: Two-aged shelterwood). A shelterwood cut is a type of “regeneration” harvest where about 90% of the trees are cut. The Forest Service says that individual shelterwood cuts would be limited to 40 acres each, but some of these logging areas would be clustered to create logged areas of several hundred acres. The Forest Service originally proposed to approve an additional 2,000 acres of shelterwood harvests that would occur after 10 years (in stands managed under Action 5: Midstory removal), but has since agreed to drop logging these acres from the proposal.

Early seral habitat is important for a wide range of species. However, there are less impactful ways to create and manage for this type of habitat that are more consistent with prevalent natural disturbance regimes. For example, research from the University of Kentucky has shown that logging small, roughly half-acre patches of trees, along with light thinning around the edges (also known as “femelschlag” or “expanding gap” systems), can result in much better oak regeneration than large even-aged harvests like those proposed in the Pine Creek project. While uneven-aged and lower impact methods like expanding gap management could meet the Forest Service’s habitat and multiple-use goals, these methods don’t produce as much timber. 
Picture
Measuring and recording an old-growth white oak in a proposed logging unit in the Pine Creek project area.
​We strenuously urge the Forest Service to drop the proposed shelterwood harvests and instead manage for early seral habitat and oak regeneration in the following ways:

1) Manage the nearly 5,000 acres of forests harvested in the project area since 1980. Many of these areas are now forests of poor quality, with prior logging resulting in conversion of oak-hickory forests to tulip poplar and red maple. Expansion and modification of “Action 6: Crop tree release” could meet the Forest Service’s goals for early seral habitat;

2) Support the existing proposal for 980 acres of commercial and non-commercial management to restore fire-adapted woodland community types (Action 2: Woodland and wooded grassland/shrubland communities);

3) Support variable thinning along certain roadsides to create early seral and edge habitat and support rare species on 280 acres (Action 9.B: Roadside thinning);
​
4) Consider uneven-aged management with small group selection using expanding gap or femelschlag prescriptions where the above approaches aren’t sufficient.
Picture
Wood lilies (Lilium philadelphicum) require an open forest or grassland environment and are increasingly rare in the Daniel Boone National Forest.
​The Good Stuff:

The Forest Service is doing a lot in Pine Creek project that we largely support, and have made some changes since their original proposal that make it better. While Kentucky Heartwood generally opposes logging in our national forest lands, this project does include some commercial thinning prescriptions that offer a reasonable approach for restoring and supporting rare and declining species and natural communities.

1) The Pine Creek project proposes using a variety of methods, including non-commercial and commercial tree removal and prescribed fire to restore upland, fire-adapted wooded grassland and shrubland communities (“woodlands”) in areas that were identified through collaborative work with the Kentucky Office of Nature Preserves, Kentucky Heartwood, and The Nature Conservancy (Action 2: Woodland and wooded grassland/shrubland communities). Most of the areas identified in the proposal for woodland management are good, or at least reasonable, choices given the specifics of the existing and historical vegetation.

Integrated with the woodland restoration is the proposed restoration of shortleaf and pitch pine communities (which were decimated by the southern pine beetle 20 years ago) through “cluster planting” of pine seedlings. Unlike prior pine restoration activities on the Daniel Boone that are more akin to plantations, “cluster planting” would restore a pine component in a manner that supports mixed species, spatially diverse stands.

2) The Forest Service added to the proposal, as a response to input from Kentucky Heartwood and others, Action 8.D, which would approve thinning of the forest along the margins of a 1-mile section of powerline right-of-way that contains good quality native grassland remnants (read about the Cumberland Barrens here). Combined with ongoing application of prescribed fire, this management would create a gradient, or “ecotone,” between the native grassland remnants restricted to the right-of-way and the closed-canopy forest adjacent to them. This approach, which leverages existing native grassland flora as indicator species and seed source, offers a viable bridge between the Forest Service’s logging mandate and legitimate ecological restoration efforts. The Draft EA states that “If this activity successfully achieves the desired habitat condition, it may be replicated along other ROWs through separate project planning.” We have been working with the Southeastern Grasslands Initiative to promote a similar emphasis at Land Between the Lakes.

3) In response to our earlier comments, the Forest Service has proposed relocating 1 mile of the Sheltowee Trace National Recreation Trail off of Poison Honey Road and in into the forest, while also buffering trails and recreation areas from logging impacts (Action 9.D).

4) The Forest Service has also added Action 9.C to close and rehabilitate up to 23 miles of user-made trails that are negatively impacting the Rockcastle River. 
Picture
Proposed old-growth addition on slopes above the Rockcastle River.
​The “Sounds Good But is Actually Underwhelming” Stuff:

The Forest Service has proposed adding 500 acres of “Designated Old-Growth” in the project area. This is good. However, the Forest Service has restricted these old-growth additions to hemlock mixed mesophytic forests below cliffline (where logging is already restricted), and neglected to allocate any upland forest communities to the old-growth management prescription. While the Draft EA points out the project area already includes 830 acres of an existing “Designated Old-Growth” prescription area, that particular area doesn’t actually include any old-growth or near- old-growth forest. Most of the best upland forests meeting, or nearing, operational old-growth definitions are being left out of the Designated Old-Growth management prescription. We wrote extensively about our old-growth concerns in our previous comments on the project in 2018, which can be read here. 
Comments on the Pine Creek project are due by Wednesday, September 4th, 2019.

Comments can be submitted through the Forest Service’s web portal here or emailed to: SM.FS.r8dbloncom@usda.gov

Comments can also be sent via postal mail to:

Jason Nedlo, District Ranger
761 South Laurel Road
London, KY 40744
 
Official project documents can be found on the Forest Service’s website here.

More information can be found on the Kentucky Heartwood page here. 

If you appreciate this information please consider making a donation to Kentucky Heartwood or becoming a member today. Our work can't happen without the support of people like you. 

    Archives

    November 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    May 2021
    March 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    April 2020
    February 2020
    December 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    July 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    December 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    December 2015
    May 2014
    February 2014
    November 2013
    February 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    February 2012
    October 2011
    August 2010
    June 2010
    May 2010
    February 2010
    November 2009
    August 2009
    July 2009
    May 2009
    April 2009

    Categories

    All
    Adventure Tourism
    Bats
    Big South Fork
    Coal
    Comment Letters
    Dance
    Daniel Boone Nf
    Dbnf
    Division Of Forestry
    Event
    Film
    Forest Council
    Forest Plan
    Forest Resource Assessment
    Fundraiser
    Great Places
    Greenwood
    Health
    Heartwood
    Hemlock Woolly Adelgid
    Horses
    Invasive Plants
    Landfill
    Litigation
    Logging
    Mountaintop Removal
    Natural Bridge
    Pipeline
    Redbird
    Robinson Forest
    Rock Creek
    State Nature Preserves
    Thanks
    Website
    White Nose Syndrome
    Ymca

    RSS Feed

  • Home
  • News and Events
    • Newsletters
    • Forest Blog
    • Music Festival 2022 >
      • Music Festival Pics
    • Past Events >
      • Stonecoal hike
      • Hemlock volunteer days
      • Red Hickory and Herbal Medicine Hike
      • Red Hickory Hike April '22
      • Music Festival 2021
      • Bat Meter Deployment Field Trip 2021
      • Virtual Membership Meeting 2021
      • The Three R's with Davis Mounger
      • White fringeless orchid mural
  • Forest Watch
    • FOIA
    • Jellico >
      • ORG COMMENTS
    • South Redbird Project
    • Blackwater (Cave Run Lake)
    • Red River Gorge
    • Pine Creek Forest Restoration Project
    • Greenwood
    • Pisgah Bay Project
    • Climax & Little Egypt >
      • Crooked Creek Photos 2011
      • Crooked Creek Photos 2010
    • Upper Rock Creek Logging >
      • Rock Creek Hike, November 2009
  • Issues
  • Donate
    • ANNUAL REPORT 2022
  • CONTACT
    • Volunteer
    • SUBSCRIBE
  • Links
  • About
    • Council & Staff