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.

Forest Service proposes more logging in severely landside-prone areas

3/10/2022

0 Comments

 
Picture
Forest in a proposed logging unit in the Hector Mountain project area.
​The U.S. Forest Service has proposed logging up to 250 acres in areas with extreme landslide risks in the Redbird Ranger District of the Daniel Boone National Forest. Despite these known risks, the Forest Service has proposed the Hector Mountain Salvage project under a Categorical Exclusion (or “CE”), which means that the project will be fast-tracked and exempted from analysis in an Environmental Assessment. The Forest Service proposed the project on February 1, 2022 in response to ice storms that damaged trees in January 2021. The agency failed to include the project in the quarterly Schedule of Proposed Actions (SOPA). The entire announcement was limited to 6 pages and a 30 day comment period. 
Picture
Forest in a proposed logging unit in the Hector Mountain project area.
​Logging units in the Hector Mountain Salvage project are just a few miles from the ongoing landslides in the Group One logging project that Kentucky Heartwood has been documenting and reporting on for more than two years. Our examination of LIDAR-derived topographic data and on-the-ground surveys in the Hector Mountain area have found more than a dozen landslides, mostly in stands that were harvested in the 1990s. The Forest Service has mostly downplayed the risks of landslides posed by logging in the Redbird District, and the scoping document fails to make any mention of landslide risks. However, information obtained by Kentucky Heartwood through Freedom of Information Act requests has revealed that the Forest Service has been well-aware of the specific landslide hazards in the Redbird District for a long time.
Picture
Landslide in an area logged by the Forest Service in 1994.
​An email from a former Daniel Boone National Forest Soil Scientist to the current Forest Soil Scientist, dated November 2020, states:

“I recall inventorying over 20 slides in clear cuts on the Red Bird and all but 3 or so were associated with a coal seam. Most of these occurred around 5 years after harvest. The Fire Clay seams I recall were involved with most. I did write something up on that but I don’t have a clue if it’s still around.”
One of the specific hazards relates to the hydrology of coal seams, like the Fire Clay. The Fire Clay runs through all of the proposed logging units in the Hector Mountain Salvage project. In Redbird, these highly permeable coal layers are often underlain by relatively impermeable clays. This causes moisture to accumulate disproportionately at these specific strata.  Where soils are highly erodible and slopes very steep, like across most of the Redbird District, this buildup of soil moisture can trigger landslides or other mass wasting events. Intact forest root systems help hold forest soils and slopes together, limiting the extent of any landslides and ability for sediment to reach stream channels. However, in the years following timber harvest, tree root systems die back, reducing their ability to hold soils together. And the construction of full-bench skid roads – which is common on the Redbird District – further exacerbates the issue by affecting hydrology and slope stability, especially where skid roads cross coal seams. All of this is known to the Forest Service, but has been repeatedly ignored in the Group One, South Red Bird, and now Hector Mountain projects. 
Picture
Landslide in an area logged by the Forest Service in 1994 choked with invasive species.
Notably, the Forest Service has proposed road reconstruction on Forest Service road 1730 “to stabilize the road… and to facilitate passage of large trucks and heavy equipment.” Currently the road is safely passable by passenger vehicles. However, road reconstruction will be needed to support logging trucks and heavy equipment. What the Forest Service fails to disclose is that the instability of the road and slope is the result of a landslide that occurred when that area was logged in 1994. The landslide runs several hundred feet downslope, and the upper portion (where the road is located) is continuing to slump.
​
Several other landslides were found by Kentucky Heartwood in this same area of, including a major landslide that recently collapsed and resulted in large amounts of sediment and debris in the stream channel. This continuing instability is occurring nearly three decades after the stand was logged. 
Picture
Map produced by Kentucky Heartwood showing locations of landslides in areas logged in the 1990s and a slope model for a proposed Hector Mountain logging unit. "Year of origin" data from Forest Service data and coal seams presenting known landslide hazards are also shown.
In addition to landslide concerns, the Forest Service has failed to provide any information on how trees will be assessed for damage and chosen for harvest, or otherwise how heavily they plan to cut the area. Most of the trees that we’ve been able to examine in the field exhibit moderate damage that is well within the trees’ ability to recover. Studies of growth rings in old-growth trees in Kentucky and elsewhere demonstrate that it is normal for very old trees to go through periods for more rapid growth followed by periods – sometimes lasting decades – of very slow growth as they recover from episodes of canopy damage. It’s unusual to examine tree ring patterns in old-growth trees and not see this pattern.
But the Forest Service’s description of the forests’ condition suggests that any damage to trees is catastrophic. In the scoping document, the Forest Service states that damage from the ice storms “has predisposed the stands to forest pathogens, insect-related diseases, reduced annual growth, reduced quality of the wood itself, and ultimately early mortality.” What is clear is that the Forest Service is primarily concerned with “reduced quality of the wood” and any reduction in annual growth. 
Picture
Ice storm "damaged" forest canopy in a proposed salvage logging unit.
Our forests evolved with natural disturbance events, like ice storms, and even depend on them. Most logging in the Daniel Boone National Forest is predicated on the Forest Service’s assertion that there is insufficient natural disturbance to support disturbance-dependent species, like ruffed grouse and white oak. But the impacts of the 2021 ice storm to the trees and forests in the Hector Mountain project area are precisely those that support disturbance-dependent species. And the best available science backs that up.
​
You can read Kentucky Heartwood’s comments to the Forest Service below. In that letter we provide more information about old-growth and natural disturbance, landslide issues, and errors in how the Forest Service is using their Categorical Exclusion authorities. The Kentucky Resources Council joined Kentucky Heartwood in submitting these comments.

Please consider supporting Kentucky Heartwood's work to respond and challenge projects like this by joining or making an extra donation. Our ability to review these projects and do the necessary on-the-ground work to see what's really happening in the forest is only possible through donations from our members and other supporters. You can donate to Kentucky Heartwood here.   
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    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