Draft SNFPA Management Review and Recommendations

Community Impacts

Key Findings

1. The SNFPA eliminates the objective of providing commercial forest products from national forests. We could find no documentation of the rationale for this decision.
2. Including timber and biomass production as an objective does not necessarily create adverse environmental effects.
3. Including the provision of commercial forest products as a secondary, or possibly tertiary, objective would significantly enhance the forest's ability to achieve ecosystem restoration goals.
4. In the past, commercial forest products from national forests have contributed to an industrial forest products infrastructure.
5. This infrastructure provides an important tool to achieve ecosystem restoration objectives on NF land in the Sierra.
6. The extensive program of ecological restoration envisioned under Mod 8 and the National Fire Plan cannot be accomplished with only appropriated funds, it also requires local and regional public /private cooperative economic opportunities.
7. Many cases exist where removing some medium sized trees beyond those strictly required to meet minimum fuels objectives would offset costs.

USDA Forest Service · Pacific Southwest Region