Executive Director, Northern Coast Range Biodiversity Project and Assistant Conservation Director, California Wilderness Coalition
The Mendocino National Forest, the first of the many Forest Preserves established in the United States early in this century, has certainly not been treated like a "preserve" at the hands of the U.S. Forest Service. Originally a trackless 890,000-acre (or 1,391 square mile) wildland composed of oak groves, grasslands, ancient forests, brush fields, and wild rivers, the Mendocino today has been despoiled by over 3,000 miles of roads, countless clearcuts, and over-grazing. Indeed, conservationists estimate that a mere 216,500 acres of the Mendocino remain in a reasonably wild and pristine state, and the vast majority of these de facto wilderness lands (called "roadless areas" by the Forest Service) are completely unprotected.
The recently released draft land and resource management plan for the Mendocino moderates only slightly the agencies' idolatrous devotion to road building, clearcutting, grazing, and off-road vehicle use. Though the plan admits that the Mendocino's timber sale program is no longer necessary to support nearby communities (if it ever was), and that grazing and off-road vehicle (ORV) use have to be more stringently controlled, it nevertheless details plans to construct more roads, create more ORV trails, log more ancient forest, and generally continue--albeit at a slower pace--the destruction of the past.
Timber Sales, Grazing, And ORV Use To Continue
The Mendocino draft plan calls for the construction of 181 miles of new logging roads over the next fifty years and the cutting of 22 million board feet (MMBF) of forest annually. This will result in not only the logging of 2,790 acres (or 4.5 square miles) of forest every year, but also in the continued development of a road system that is thought to already exceed 3,000 miles in length (not even the Forest Service knows the present extent of its road network). Oddly enough, these plans sound moderate compared to the 1980's when the annual cut averaged between 80 and over 100 MMBF per year, and when it was not unusual for many thousands of acres to be lost in a single summer of frenzied logging and road construction.
The fate of the remaining 147,000 acres of old growth forest on the Mendocino as outlined in the draft plan is further complicated by the release of President Clinton's recovery strategy for the northern spotted owl, a document whose provisions were inexplicably left out of the Mendocino draft plan. While President Clinton's sadly compromised and loophole-ridden recovery strategy would mitigate damage to streams, limit road building to a small degree, and give a moderate amount of protection to over 30,000 acres of old growth forest, its only dramatically positive effect will be to reduce the Mendocino's annual cut from 22 MMBF to an estimated 12 MMBF. Since none of the supposed reserves established by Clinton's reforms would be entirely Old Growth And Other Wildlands
Given The Shaft In Draft Mendocino Plan closed to timber cutting, this means that the effect of the logging, road building, and other destructive activities outlined in the Mendocino draft plan will simply be moderated rather than prevented. As one Forest Service official recently put it, "Clinton's people told us to move right ahead with our projects."
Though the Mendocino's timber sale program is still in flux, the draft plan is quite clear in its approach to cattle grazing on the forest. Though the agency plans to begin enforcing stricter standards to prevent over-grazing, these mitigation measures tend to favor fences to protect fragile areas rather than the exclusion of cattle. In other words, only in the most extreme cases of ecological abuse will the Forest Service consider revoking a rancher's permit, and even then the usual method of enforcement is simple citation.
To make matters worse, the draft plan also calls for an increase in ORV trail mileage despite the fire risk and threat to plants and animals that this decidedly violent use of public land entails. Most disappointing is the fact that the draft plan only mandates an inventory--rather than the immediate closure-- of "non-system" trails, those routes that ORV enthusiasts either built for themselves, or expropriated, without the permission of the Forest Service. Currently, over seventy five percent of the Mendocino is open to ORV use.
In the late 1970s the Forest Service was required to identify all National Forest lands remaining in a primitive and undeveloped condition. After a series of lawsuits, the Forest Service finally released maps and descriptions of their remaining wildlands as part of the Second Roadless Area Review and Evaluation (RARE II) process. On the Mendocino, the Forest Service identified over 141,000 acres of these RARE II areas, though they inexplicably excluded an additional 74,500 acres of roadless lands from this total. The lands identified as pristine and undeveloped under RARE II are called "inventoried" roadless areas, while the wildlands ignored by the Forest Service are called "un-inventoried" roadless areas. Protecting both the inventoried and un-inventoried roadless lands on the Mendocino as wilderness under the stringent provisions of the Wilderness Act of 1964 is one of the highest priorities for Coast Range public land activists.
The fate of the Mendocino's roadless lands under the draft plan is not very bright. Though proposing to preserve a paltry 51,415 acres of Deer Mountain, Elk Creek, Big Butte-Shinbone, Thatcher Creek, Thomes Creek, Briscoe Creek, and Saint John Mountain roadless areas exclusively for backcountry recreation, forest planners carefully excluded from protection the remaining 38,250 acres of inventoried and un-inventoried roadless lands within these areas. Indeed, none of the seemingly fortunate wildlands noted above are entirely protected under the plan, especially since forested areas and other sensitive habitats have been excluded from backcountry designation. To make matters worse, 115,239 acres of the Mendocino's roadless lands are released outright for "multiple-use," a move that will allow over 10,000 acres to be lost to logging alone. These threatened lands are in the Black Butte River, Reister Canyon, Grindstone Creek, and Skelaton Glade roadless areas, as well as critical roadless additions to the Snow Mountain and Yolly Bolly-Middle Eel wilderness areas.
However, as with the draft plan's timber provisions, President Clinton's northern spotted owl recovery strategy will help to mitigate the Forest Service's tragic plans for the Mendocino and its roadless areas somewhat. For example, President Clinton's plan would designate 42,055 acres of roadless lands as "late-successional" (old growth) reserves, and prohibit road construction, but not helicopter or roadside logging, on the 35,470 acres of inventoried roadless lands existing within the Middle Fork Eel River, and Thatcher Creek "key watersheds" (watersheds specifically targeted by Clinton's plan for special protection). In addition, President Clinton's plan requires that an exhaustive "watershed analysis" be conducted on roadless areas before logging, road building, or other high-impact management actions may occur, a provision that may make logging in extremely isolated and inaccessible roadless areas harder to justify. Unfortunately, Clinton's plan fails to make any roadless area, either on the Mendocino or elsewhere, completely inviolate, a fact that will leave these wildlands vulnerable until a more enlightened policy is adopted.
The draft plan's wild-and-scenic proposals are also quite disappointing to conservationists. The three water courses proposed for wild-and-scenic status, the upper Middle Fork Eel, Balm of Gilead Creek, and the Middle Fork of Stony Creek, are already preserved within the Yolla Bolly-Middle Eel of Snow Mountain wilderness areas. Though desirable as an added layer of protection, wild-and-scenic designation for these watercourses would fail to protect any of the Mendocino's currently unprotected lands. However, the draft plan does propose that the Black Butte River and its tributary Clear Creek, [Ed. note: People know this as Clear Creek, although the DEIS calls it Cold Creek] two watercourses famed for their anadromous fisheries, as well as the geologically fascinating and ecologically diverse Thomes Creek, be studied for their wild-and-scenic potential. Conservationists are determined to push for the designation of other important waterways on the Mendocino as wild-and-scenic, including Grindstone Creek, Elk Creek, North Fork Stony Creek, North Fork Cache Creek, as well as the Eel River above Pillsbury Reservoir and its tributary Cold Creek. [Ed. note: the DEIS lists 3 different Cold Creeks within the Mendocino National Forest.]
Increasingly, wilderness advocates are realizing that the proper management of "designated" (congressionally protected) wilderness areas is critical to maintaining the health of these ecosystems. This is especially true on the Mendocino, where cattle grazing and recreation use currently threaten many parts of the Snow Mountain and Yolla Bolly-Middle Eel wilderness areas. The Mendocino draft plan, unfortunately, adopts a defensive rather than preventive approach to protecting wilderness from over-grazing and heavy foot and horse use. Thus, instead of removing cattle from the forest's two designated wilderness areas, for example, the plan instead suggests that grazing be "adjusted," a proposal that could lead to the installation of fences, salt licks, and other developments. When wilderness protection requires wilderness domestication, conservationists should be wary.
Proper wilderness management also requires that trails exist outside, as well as inside, designated wilderness areas in order to more evenly disperse hiking and horseback riding throughout the forest. With more primitive recreation opportunities outside of designated wilderness areas--which often become "hiking ghettos" if all non-motorized recreation use is directed to them alone--conservationists hope that the number of visitors to wilderness areas can be moderated. The Forest Service's failure to commit to such trail building, coupled with the fact that several clearcuts and other projects are planned in areas adjacent of the Mendocino's wilderness lands, means that conservationists will have to be vigilant in making sure that the Snow Mountain and Yolla Bolly-Middle Eel wilderness areas (let alone the undesignated, or de facto wilderness lands) are protected in the coming decades.
The failure of the Mendocino draft plan to recognize the inherent value of the forest's roadless lands, wild rivers, ancient forests, and designated wilderness areas is disappointing, but not surprising. And yet, despite the best (or worst) efforts of the Forest Service, there is still a great deal of wilderness left on the Mendocino, lands that, if protected soon, may one day serve as the seed-bed for ecological recovery in the northern Coast Range. A blueprint for that recovery if offered in the Citizen's Forest Plan for Mendocino National Forest, a visionary document calling for the complete phasing-out of cattle grazing, innovative restrictions on ORV use, a reduction in logging to 2 MMBF per year, the protection of all of the Mendocino's roadless lands, as well as the designation of over four fifths of the forest as a "wilderness recovery area." The adoption of this plan would help to make the Mendocino the wilderness it was supposed to be when Teddy Roosevelt proclaimed it America's first National Forest Preserve in 1907. This protection is long overdue.
You can help make this vision a reality by writing to the Forest Supervisor (Mendocino National Forest, 420 East Laurel Street, Willows, CA 95988), by January 6, 1994. Request that:
1. All inventoried and un-inventoried roadless lands on the Mendocino be kept inviolate from resource exploitation;
2. The supervisor ask Congress to designate the upper Middle Fork Eel River, Balm of Gilead Creek, Middle Fork Stony Creek, Black Butte River, and its tributary Clear Creek [Ed. note: remember the DEIS refers to Cold Creek], Thomes Creek, North Fork Cache Creek, the Eel River above Pillsbury Reservoir and its tributary Cold Creek, North Fork Stony Creek, Grindstone Creek, and Elk Creek as wild and scenic rivers;
3. No logging or road building be allowed near designated wilderness areas to prevent their becoming biological islands in a sea of destruction;
4. Horse and foot trails be built throughout the Mendocino in order to more evenly distribute recreationists and thus help to protect designated wilderness areas from overuse;
5. Grazing be phased-out over time across the forest, and cattle be removed from the Snow Mountain and Yolla Bolly-Middle Eel wilderness areas as soon as possible;
6. The Mendocino's timber sale program, acknowledged in the draft plan to be of little economic worth, be abandoned completely so that the funds otherwise used for this destructive subsidy can be devoted to ecological recovery;
7. ORV use be phased-out on the forest and prohibited immediately in those areas where ecological harm is presently occurring;
8. The Citizen's Forest Plan be adopted as the preferred alternative for the Mendocino's forthcoming land and resource management plan, and that its provisions be implemented immediately except where they conflict with the more comprehensive demands listed in points 1-7 above.
If you would like to offer further assistance in the fight to preserve the Mendocino's wildlands, please call Don Morris at the Willits Environmental Center (707) 459-4110, or Ryan Henson at the Northern Coast Range Biodiversity Project (916) 758-4785.
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 2004
Permission granted to excerpt or use this article if source is cited