SNFPA Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement
January 2004
Record of Decision
I. The Decision
This decision adopts an integrated strategy for vegetation management that is aggressive enough to reduce the risk of wildfire to communities in the urban-wildland interface while modifying fire behavior over the broader landscape. With the careful placement of thinning projects, we can make significant progress in reducing the threat of catastrophic fires to wildlife and watersheds.
My decision vitally improves the land and resource management plans (LRMPs) for the Sierra Nevada national forests based on Alternative S2, as described in the Final SEIS. This Record of Decision (ROD) replaces the January 2001 ROD for the Sierra Nevada Forest Plan Amendment (SNFPA 2001 ROD) in its entirety. All of the management direction for this decision is included in this document (Appendix A). The SEIS represents an analysis and planning document and does not provide management direction.
I am making this decision in the aftermath of the tragic southern California fire season where 26 people died, over 3,600 homes were destroyed, and peoples' lives were turned upside down. In addition, precious wildlife habitat was destroyed. These catastrophic events, which I personally witnessed for 11 days, could also occur in the Sierra Nevada. I will not let that happen on my watch. These events may happen again anyway, because our forests are unnaturally overstocked. But there are reasonable changes that can be made to the SNFPA to help prevent them. I am determined to make those improvements.
In my judgment, the changes are not large, but they are extremely important. This decision retains the overall goals of the SNFPA 2001 ROD and its land allocations. It retains the overall strategy for addressing the fire situation in the Sierra in combination with key components of the conservation strategy for old forest dependent species. The integrated strategy includes methods of thinning of trees and brush removal, known as "fuels treatments," that is, reducing the amount of burnable material. Fuels treatments will occur more effectively on roughly the same number of acres and cover only 25-30% of the land base. However, I am changing the way management occurs in those treated areas and directing field personnel to develop projects that make sense from an ecological and financial perspective. I expect that they will make the right decisions in the design and implementation of projects consistent with the direction and intent of this decision.
Much more remains to be done to bring our forests back to more normal conditions. There is a huge job at hand to reduce a massive build up of biomass covering nearly 8 million acres of forestland in this region. Working steadily, we will need at least 20 years to begin to reverse this situation. Even still, each year the proposed thinning will remove less than .3% of the standing inventory and only 1/5 of the net annual growth. So, while the proposed treatments will make our communities and forests safer, the forests will continue to become denser. Over time, it is my belief that there will be better public understanding of the need to thin our forests and retain their open big tree character. I am troubled that this need is not more widely understood by our publics today.
This decision is based on careful consideration of the scientific reviews and public comments on the Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) prepared pursuant to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). I have reviewed the Final SEIS, including the land allocation maps and the standards and guidelines for each alternative. I have also reviewed the comments of the Science Consistency Review prepared by the Pacific Southwest Research Station (October 2003) and included in the Final SEIS, Appendix E. I am satisfied that the available science has been used appropriately in the analysis of the environmental effects of the alternatives in the Final SEIS.
Although this decision is grounded in the best available scientific information, it is impossible to have perfect knowledge about how management actions will play out in complex ecosystems. I want to make steady progress in closing that gap. The Region will work in close partnership with the Pacific Southwest Research Station to address some of the management uncertainties we've been wrestling with for years. My decision embraces the concept of active adaptive management and I fully intend to expand upon opportunities to gather information and understanding as this decision is implemented.
This decision replaces the standards and guidelines of the SNFPA 2001 ROD to ensure that fuels treatments will effectively modify wildland fire behavior. In addition, the basic strategy is broadened to include other management objectives such as reducing stand density for forest health, restoring and maintaining ecosystem structure and composition, and restoring ecosystems after severe wildfires and other large catastrophic disturbance events.
This decision also addresses the need to retain industry infrastructure by allowing more wood by-products to be generated from fuels treatments and dead and dying trees to be harvested during salvage operations. It acknowledges that the Forest Service has a role to play in providing a wood supply for local manufacturers and sustaining a part of the employment base in rural communities. In some cases, these wood by-products will also help to offset the cost of fuels treatments.
This decision adopts standards and guidelines for willow flycatcher habitat, Yosemite toad habitat, great gray owl protected activity centers, and grazing utilization standards that better reflect the wide array of site conditions encountered in the field and the management opportunities they may provide.
This decision clarifies management intent for off-highway vehicles, limits the requirement for limited operating periods to vegetation management activities only, and clarifies how several of the riparian standards and guidelines apply to recreation activities, uses, and projects. These changes will give local managers the opportunity to develop mitigation measures for small and varied recreation projects on a project- and site-specific basis.
The management direction for sensitive species habitat is designed with the primary objective to conserve rare and likely important components of the landscape such as stands of mid- and late-seral forests with large trees, structural diversity and complexity, and moderate to high canopy cover. Thinning from below and uneven-age management are the principal silvicultural prescriptions to achieve immediate objectives. Thinning trees and removing underbrush in strategic locations, whether by mechanical means or wildfire, will be the primary processes that create forest openings to encourage regeneration of shade-intolerant species and maintain gene pools of these species.
The decision is described in detail under Alternative S2, chapter 2, in the Final SEIS. In summary, it:
- Adopts an approach for modifying wildland fire behavior across broad landscapes through the strategic placement of area treatments, including direction to avoid California spotted owl protected activity centers (PACs) and northern goshawk PACs wherever possible,
- Requires a landscape level assessment of opportunities and constraints to be completed as a first step in designing the pattern of fuels treatments needed to implement the fire and fuels strategy,
- Provides mechanisms for more efficiently using appropriated funds,
- Provides opportunities to reduce stand density and improve tree vigor and overall forest health,
- Provides for ecosystem restoration following catastrophic disturbance events,
- Allows for salvage of dead and dying trees for both economic value and fuels reduction purposes,
- Incorporates new fuels and vegetation management standards and guidelines,
- Re-establishes the Herger-Feinstein Quincy Library Group (HFQLG) Forest Recovery Act Pilot Project consistent with the HFQLG Forest Recovery Act, and
- Adopts an active and focused adaptive management and monitoring strategy.