EXCHANGE: Activists fight Shawnee forest timber sales
CARBONDALE, Ill. (AP) - For the first time in nearly three decades, the Shawnee National Forest has proposed a commercial timber harvest of mostly native oaks and hickories on 485 acres in rural Jackson County, on the south side of Kinkaid Lake.
And environmental activists whose high-profile fight against logging in the 1990s led to a 17-year moratorium on cutting are once again raising alarms.
The plan, which is awaiting final signoff by the U.S. Forest Service's Eastern Region regional office in Milwaukee, is known as the Waterfall Stewardship Pilot Project. While the logging piece of the project is the most offensive to area environmental activists who object to its implementation, the Forest Service says that timber sales are not the primary objective of the plan.
The goal, according to the federal government, is more holistic: ecological restoration.
"Restoration is needed to improve forest health and sustainability of the oak-hickory ecosystems, improve wildlife habitat, and reduce/control non-native species," the Forest Service wrote in a draft environmental assessment outlining the scope of the project.
Lisa Helmig, acting forest supervisor with the Shawnee National Forest, said the plan is rooted in the best available science about how to maintain the keystone oak ecosystem that is native to the Shawnee foothills.
"The oak ecosystem has been in place here in the central hardwood region for 5,000 years," she said. But Helmig said the ecosystem is at risk due to a lack of natural or man-made disturbances, such as fire, storms and, yes, even logging. Without these disturbances, non-native, shade-tolerant sugar maple and beech trees sprout up and fill in the forest's mid-story, she said.
That changes the dynamics of the understory because oak ecosystems generally allow for more light to shine through. And that light, she said, allows for the growth of native flowers, herbs and shrubs. The Forest Service anticipates this would attract a variety of pollinators, including insects and animals. It should also result in a shift in bird species using the area, such as the red-headed woodpecker and yellow breasted chat, both of which thrive in a younger forest habitat.
"You really can't ignore that the successional change is happening, and if there isn't some active management to start reversing it, we're going to see some consequences," Helmig told The Southern Illinoisan during an interview in her office earlier this month. The unchecked proliferation of sugar maples and beeches creates a different ecosystem, she said. "It's a completely different suite of species, and there's ecosystem consequences to that in terms of biodiversity and productivity in the forest," she said.
That's why the leadership of the Shawnee National Forest believes this Waterfall Stewardship Pilot Project is so critical, she said. According to "talking points" that Helmig provided The Southern, a preliminary survey of the property found that there had been a lack of management on the acreage the proposal covers, and that the health and sustainability of the forest need to be addressed.
"The keystone species are aging and overstocked. This predisposes the keystone species to insect and disease," the memo said.
The Forest Service's objectives with this Jackson County project are broad. Forest Service leaders argue that the actions they've identified in their plan will improve soil and watershed health, maintain oak-hickory ecosystem resilience, and improve the health, vigor and growth of existing trees and native vegetation. They also say it will reduce non-native pine trees, promote native hardwood species, improve forest structure for wildlife habitat and maintain and restore biological diversity.
According to the environmental assessment, increasing sunshine to the forest floor "provides young forest habitat that is essentially missing from the southern Illinois landscape."
The Forest Service plans to do so by allowing for a commercial timber harvest on 485 acres of the project's 560-acre span. Most of what is proposed for shelterwood logging is hardwood forest, but the project also includes some pine. The commercial logger would only be able to harvest the trees marked with paint for cutting, Helmig said. These trees would be selected based on a plan prescribed by a silviculturist, which is a certified tree and forest management expert.
The pilot project further calls for the use of herbicides to selectively manage non-native invasive species for stand improvement on the pilot project site, and for pollinator seeding of native species across 46 acres.
To forgo these steps, according to Helmig, "will have consequences on animals, plants, birds, insects and pollinators - the biological web."
But objectors to the plan argue that past restoration and timber management projects undertaken by the Shawnee National Forest haven't resulted in consistent success in restoring oak ecosystems.
The idea that logging as proposed by the Shawnee National Forest is done for forest health is a "myth," John Wallace, of Simpson, wrote in an objection letter on behalf of Shawnee Forest Defense!, a group of area concerned citizens who have come together in opposition of Shawnee logging projects.
They point to the state of sites that were previously commercially logged to make their case.
His group maintains that the project, if undertaken, will reduce oak and hickory trees that may not be replaced, and introduce a flush of undesirable vegetative growth and non-native invasive plant species. This will require more expensive management activities, such as prescribed fire, which the group says emits unnecessary carbon into the air, and related herbicide applications.
"To pretend that by logging, undesirable and unhealthy trees are magically plucked from the forest, restoring resilience to the forest, with minimal consequences, is frankly more than misleading," said the letter, signed by seven people. In their complaints, they expressed concern about how the Forest Service's proposed activities would affect their ability to enjoy the public land.
"We use the area to simply enjoy its scenic beauty, for nature appreciation and for hiking, birding, wildlife watching, botanizing, fishing, boating, kayaking, mushroom gathering and photography," their letter said. "This area provides us with a quiet escape from our fast-paced daily life and a sanctuary for finding spiritual fulfillment."
The letter also cited studies showing that mature growth forests are able to more effectively sequester carbon than younger, early successional forests made up of smaller trees. They also take issue with the Forest Service issuing a finding that the project would have no significant environmental impact, which means it can bypass a more exhaustive environmental impact statement triggered under the National Environmental Policy Act.
Though a small project, to argue that it's inconsequential "flies in the face of the badly needed and swift actions called for in the IPCC Report that all people must undertake, if we are going to succeed at averting a climate disaster," they wrote, referencing the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
It was the activism of Wallace and others that ultimately put a 17-year halt to logging in the Shawnee National Forest.
In the summer of 1990, Wallace was among dozens of activists who descended on rural Jackson County near the Fairview Christian Church, which bordered a planned logging site.
They were there to protest the U.S. Forest Service's decision to allow the East Perry Lumber Co., of Frohna, Missouri, to begin logging operations. At the time, a spokesman for the Forest Service told the Chicago Tribune that cutting would promote regeneration of young oak and hickories, and that timber sales helped the local economy and governmental coffers, and followed longstanding management practices.
The 141-acre logging site represented only a small fraction of the Shawnee's 260,000 acres that stretch from the Mississippi to the Ohio across Southern Illinois. But the activists felt like it represented a broader fight about the cumulative effects of poor management practices.
Over the course of 79 days, a battle raged on this normally serene sliver of Southern Illinois. Two activists buried themselves up to their necks at the entrance to an access road. Others built platforms near the tops of trees and promised to occupy them to prevent them from being cut.
One activist locked his neck to a logging skidder with a bicycle lock.
That man was Wallace. It was 29 years ago this month, and Wallace's 31st birthday, when law enforcement removed the bike lock by blowtorch. Logging commenced the next day, but then was brought to a halt as an attorney working on their behalf won a temporary stay. A year later, the stay was rescinded and the property was logged. But it would be among the last hardwood timber harvests in the Shawnee for years. In 1996, the result of a lawsuit brought by environmentalists, Judge Phil Gilbert granted an injunction that prohibited logging and oil and gas drilling. It remained in effect until 2013. That year, Gilbert agreed that the Forest Service had satisfactorily addressed concerns in its 2006 management plan.
Since then, the Shawnee National Forest has sold 29,431 CCF (one cunit equals 100 cubic feet of solid wood). Sales increased significantly in 2018 and 2019 compared to the prior six years. Still, Helmig said the amount sold this year represented only 1% of the total sold across the Eastern district, which contains 14 national forests.
Wallace says that time has proven the protesters were right. In late August, he and Sam Stearns, of Friends of Bell Smith Springs, led a reporter from The Southern Illinoisan through that Fairview site. The road was eroded. The hike was made difficult from a web of downed trees, vines and shrubbery that were twisted into a mess during the 2009 derecho.
But reaching the former cutting site about a half mile from the road, Wallace grew frustrated. He'd been here before, but it irritates him every time he sees it. The trees that have grown up to replace the harvested oaks and hickories are mostly 28-year-old stands of "undesirable" beeches and maples.
"When you think about how many oaks were here, it's heart-wrenching," Wallace said.
"Had they not cut the oaks, we'd have oaks here," Stearns added.
This is the root of their concern: What the Shawnee National Forest's leadership claims is happening isn't, they say.
In addition to the Farview site, in their letter they write that we also returned to the North End Ecological Restoration project logged in Pope County in the late 1990s. "Little to no oak and hickory have been visibly restored." They cited other examples, as well.
Asked about their concerns, Helmig said that her "gut reaction" is that the Forest Service likely didn't follow through with what should be a multiphase treatment. Helmig said she once heard a respected silviculturist say that successful oak regeneration requires the three "Ps": "You need to plan, you need to promote it, and you need patience." The Waterfall Stewardship Pilot Project involves multiple steps, she said. If they were to apply only the first round of prescriptions and then walk away, it wouldn't work, she acknowledged. Helmig said she's confident that the Forest Service is committed to seeing through project through.
"We have a wonderful silviculturist on staff now," Helmig said. "He's been here five years and is absolutely fantastic."
And these theories have been proven to work, she said. She noted that foresters studied various management options on testing plots at Trail of Tears State Park, and found that the burning and thinning regimen was the most effective at promoting the growth of oak and hickory saplings.
Helmig said she hadn't yet joined the Forest Service in the 1990s, and couldn't speak to why more wasn't done at the time at Fairview and some of the other sites that were logged at the time. At the time, she was earning her bachelor's and then master's degree in forest management at Southern Illinois University.
"I remember being on campus and seeing some protests, and I remember stopping by a table and asking them what their issues were, and it not really making sense to me," Helmig said. She said a lot of students in the Forestry Department felt that way at the time, because they were studying the effects of poor management.
This is an issue that Helmig said she's studied for years. She opened up the interview with the newspaper by sharing a personal story about how she became involved in forest management. As a sophomore, she had a class with an ecology professor whom she found to be particularly inspiring, Dr. James Fralish.
After a lecture on forest succession, and the different stages of succession, he turned to the class and asked: Would someone like to do a research project on this? "After class, I went to his office and I said, 'I want to do it," Helmig recalled. She was only a sophomore and he told her she had time to think about it. But she insisted on joining the project. As an undergraduate, she worked with Fralish and other graduate students on the study, and then continued the work after transitioning directly into graduate school.
In 1997, she published a thesis on the topic - "Predicting the threshold time of conversion from Quercus-Carya to Acer-Fagus forest in the Illinois Ozark Hills." Her thesis project was cited in the 2006 Shawnee National Forest Land and Resource Management Plan that guides management of the Shawnee National Forest.
"He saw it coming, and he realized there would be consequences to that," she said of her late professor. Helmig is convicted in the belief that this type of active management proposed in the pilot project is necessary to protect the forest.
But she said that she also welcomes feedback from people with different opinions or ideas to make it better. That's why she was somewhat frustrated by the objection resolution meeting she hosted with those opposed to the project. The meeting was cordial, but accomplished little, she said. "They didn't bring anything other than alternative one, and we've already analyzed that," Helmig said. Alternative one was to take no action at all.
The objectors were also frustrated by the meeting. The Forest Service is not required to give notice of its objection resolution meetings, but they are open to the public. The objectors notified The Southern of the planned meeting, and a reporter showed up. But before discussions commenced, Helmig asked the reporter to leave the room, or said she would cancel the meeting. In doing so, she cited the regulation which states that meetings are "open to attendance by the public, and the reviewing officer will determine whether those other than objectors may participate." After the meeting, the objectors wrote a letter to the Shawnee Forest management expressing their displeasure that a reporter was asked to leave.
"It's another example of how untransparent they are," Wallace said. "It exposes how committed they are to the logging industry."
Though she asked The Southern to exit, Helmig sat down with the paper for over an hour to explain the project a few weeks later. At the time, she maintained that it was within her purview to determine who was in the room.
"There's not a decision on the document yet. So what could have happened in that meeting is the objectors could have offered resolution points to change this draft decision, and change our proposed action," she said. "If there's discussions like that, and negotiations like that, that's not open to everybody."
Babete Anderson, the U.S. Forest Service's national press officer, based in Washington, told The Southern in an email that the meeting should have been open to the public.
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Source: The (Carbondale) Southern Illinoisan, https://bit.ly/2m3R9SX
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Information from: Southern Illinoisan, http://www.southernillinoisan.com