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Wilderness Alert - Stop logging in potential wilderness!

The Forest Service is putting together a plan to log in the wild and beautiful Monache Meadows potential addition to the South Sierra Wilderness. The logging project would eliminate the area's eligibility for wilderness designation and thus leave it vulnerable to future degradation. Your help is needed to stop this wasteful and irresponsible project!

The project calls for logging conifer trees on 35 acres around Jackass Meadow, about 28 miles north of Kernville in a portion of the Fish Creek watershed. The meadow contains a grove of both conifers and aspen. In an effort to make this project seem environmentally friendly, the Forest Service is calling the project the Jackass Aspen Wildlife Habitat Improvement Project. In fact, this logging project is simply an attempt to commercially cut trees without having to follow the law. The Forest Service is claiming this not a logging project and that therefore they are not required to document the environmental impacts.

The project would have detrimental effects on this potential wilderness area. The area around Jackass Creek has already been thinned too much. (Thinning is a type of logging in which some of the trees in an area are selected and then cut.) This plan would thin more of the area, including inside the potential additions to the South Sierra Wilderness, and reduce the tree canopy so much that the risk of catastrophic fire would increase. Also, the Forest Service has not disclosed to the public where in Jackass Meadow the thinning would actually occur, or how close to Jackass Creek, Fish Creek, or the Jackass National Recreation Trail trees would be cut.

Act now!
Please send a letter to the Sequoia National Forest today asking them to cancel their plans to log in this potential addition to the South Sierra Wilderness. Here are some points to highlight in your letter:

1. Jackass Creek is within a potential addition to the South Sierra Wilderness. The remaining untouched portion of this watershed is still wild and deserving of the permanent protection wilderness designation could provide. The logging project would eliminate the area’s eligibility for wilderness designation and thus leave it vulnerable to future degradation.
2. This "thinning project"” is nothing more than an attempt to commercially log trees without having to do environmental documentation. Since this is indeed a logging project, a full Environmental Impact Statement should be done.
3. This project would have negative impacts on not only the existing wildlife and habitat, but also on the fire conditions of this high Sierra meadow area. Thinning even more trees from the Jackass Creek watershed would reduce the tree cover, allowing the underlying plants to become drier and more likely to burn.

Please send your letter to:
Judy Schutza, District Ranger
Cannell Meadow Ranger District, Attention: Kathy Roche
Sequoia National Forest
P.O. Box 9
Kernville, CA 93238

For questions or comments contact Tina Andolina at 530-758-0380 or tina@calwild.org.