October 25, 2019
KRCG
Colville National Forest Plan is a Public Disgrace
Claims 17-year Veteran of Forest Collaboration
“The visual impacts are going to be very, very significant and increasing each year from now for the next 20 years as hundreds of thousands of acres are logged,” said Timothy Coleman, executive director of Republic-based Kettle Range Conservation Group. “The visual landscape-scale degradation is already in full swing and visible now on Sherman and Boulder Pass, but it’s just the beginning.”
“I and hundreds of local stakeholders participated in countless Forest Service-led plan revision collaborative meetings since 2004 and never once did anybody ask for more clearcut logging,” said Coleman. “The Forest Service told us ‘forest restoration’ would be the goal of the new Forest Plan. Apparently, the new definition of ‘restoration’ includes clearcutting, which is called a “regeneration harvest,” Coleman said.
The Forest Service hosted dozens of collaborative workshops including what it called “The Forest Summit” from March 2006 to January 2007 in which over 80 people participated. Public comments were then used to create two Plan Revision drafts in 2011 and 2016. Both drafts recommended far less logging and far more wilderness acres be preserved than the Final Plan.
“From the beginning, the Forest Service promised those of us who participated in the Plan’s development that our comments would be used to craft a plan we could feel good about,” said Coleman. “But the current Forest Supervisor Rodney Smolden did an about-face, increasing annual acres logged by 75 percent while reducing by 40% the amount of lands managed to protect wilderness qualities, or about a quarter of the 240,000 acres of wild forests.”
“Forest health problems that exist today were historically created by Forest Service logging and fire-exclusion management,” Coleman said, “and now the agency is applying the same old clearcutting ancient forests and bulldozing wilderness as the path to restoring forest health.”
Coleman is cofounder of the Northeast Washington Forestry Coalition (NEWFC) considered to be the most successful forest collaborative in the country. Over its 17 years of collaboration, NEWFC has brought wealth and fame to the Colville National Forest. Today, the Colville has the highest timber volume production in the entire National Forest System due in large part to NEWFC’s collaboration.
“Seventeen years of my life have been given to what was to be a new way of taking care of our public lands, focused on thinning ponderosa pine and dry forest ecosystems and restoring forests damaged by past mismanagement. We all believed the Forest Service had changed its plantation forestry ways,” said Coleman.
NEWFC’s successes turned the Colville Forest from conflict-ridden to high functioning, ending the so-called “The Timber Wars. Its “Blueprint” agreements between the Timber Industry and environmental community went so far as to support a third of the Colville in active forest management, a third in old growth forest restoration and a third in protected status, including wilderness and conservation area management.
“The reality is the process to reach agreement took five years and another ten years to implement. But it seems good deeds are mere gestures. It’s beyond logic that Supervisor Smolden stabbed collaboration and in the back — and even timed release of the final plan to coincide with Halloween. The trick is on us,” Coleman said
National Forests are storehouses of carbon. Climate change has been linked to unprecedented wildfire-related catastrophes destroying entire communities, mass extinctions of wildlife, warming oceans and loss of coral reefs. Two recent carbon emission corroborative research papers found that timber management was a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions https://sustainable-economy.org/osu-research-confirms-big-timber-leading-source-greenhouse-gas-emissions-oregon/.
“Time and again the public has told state and federal forest managers it does not want public lands managed like tree farms,” Coleman said. “I believe we truly are living in the state of amnesia.”
June 17, 2020
KRCG, et al
Wildlife Advocates Sue Forest Service Over Rising Wolf Body Count in Washington
It is the responsibility of Forest Service leadership to protect, restore, and maintain wildlife habitat in our National Forests, but it has abdicated its authority. “Whether you love wildlife, like to hunt and fish, or enjoy beautiful trails free of manure, putting a cattle corporation’s profits ahead of all other interests is a blatantly outrageous waste of our Public Land,” said Timothy Coleman, director of Kettle Range Conservation Group.
September 10, 2020
KRCG, et al
Conservationists File Complaint with Colville National Forest Over Outdated Grazing Practices in Newly Adopted Land Management Plan
“I’ve lived and worked in the Kettle River Range for over three decades and can attest to the immense damage done by cattle overgrazing each and every year,” said Timothy Coleman, Director of Kettle Range Conservation Group. “Grasses and shrubs are grazed down to bare dirt, streams are fouled, trails are mashed and wetlands are turned into mud holes. It is an abomination that this is allowed to continue on our public lands, and not in keeping with the Forest Service’s public trust responsibility.”
May 13, 2021
KRCG
Lawsuit Filed to Protect Ancient Forest & Wildlife
Sanpoil Timber Sale Challenged
“Forest health problems that exist today were created by Forest Service logging and fire-exclusion management,” Coleman said. “We, haven’t litigated a timber sale in 20 years because the agency listened to our concerns. Unfortunately, all that seems to have changed. With the Sanpoil Project, the agency is applying the same old heavy-handed timber plantation strategy—clearcutting ancient forests and bulldozing wilderness, and claiming that this is now the path to restoring forest health.”
“Time and again the public has told the Forest Service it does not want public lands managed like corporate tree farms,” Coleman said. “We forget this history at our peril.”
Monday, July 19, 2021
KRCG, et al
Grazing permits on Colville National Forest threaten imperiled bull trout
“One has to ask why cows grazing on the Colville National Forest essentially killing threatened bull trout get a pass from the agency in charge of managing fish and wildlife habitat? This case is one example of blind incompetence of the agency in charge of protecting the public benefit bending to the demands of livestock owners,” said Timothy Coleman, Director of Kettle Range Conservation Group. “Grasses and shrubs are grazed down to bare dirt, waterways reek of cow manure, hiking trails and wetlands are trashed. It’s an abrogation of their Public Trust responsibility.”
