Charleston Gazette - Plan would allow more logging in Mon; Federal proposal includes four new wilderness areas
- Ken Ward Jr.

Timbering allowed in the Monongahela National Forest could more than double under a proposed management plan announced Monday by the U.S. Forest Service.

More of the 910,000-acre forest would be protected as wilderness, under the Bush administration proposal.

But forest planners proposed wilderness designation for only four of the 11 areas they gave detailed study for that protection, according to the draft plan.

The Forest Service unveiled those recommendations Monday as part of a long-awaited rewrite of the plan they use to manage the Monongahela.

Over the next three months, the agency is inviting the public to review and comment on the proposal and an accompanying environmental study.

David Ede, a forest planner at Monongahela headquarters in Elkins, said that the proposal has something for everyone to like — and dislike.

“We’re going to be recommending some timber harvesting, and the environmentalists are probably not going to like that,” Ede said Monday afternoon. “We’re going to be recommending some wilderness protections and the timber industry is probably not going to like that.”

The Monongahela, established in 1911, covers nearly 1 million acres in 10 counties. It is the fourth-largest national forest in the northeastern United States, and is within one day’s drive of one-third of the nation’s population.

Forest Service officials began to rewrite the management plan in June 2002, and released the draft plan only a few months behind schedule.

The current forest plan was published in January 1986, and was amended several times, most recently in 1992.

Environmental groups, under the umbrella of the West Virginia Wilderness Coalition, have pushed for the Forest Service to greatly increase the area protected from logging, road-building and motorized travel through a wilderness designation.

Previous studies issued by the agency showed that 16 remote areas that totaled 137,140 acres were determined to meet federal wilderness guidelines. The Forest Service studied 11 of those in detail.

The draft document issued Monday listed on four of those — Cheat Mountain, Cranberry Expansion, Dry Fork and Roaring Plains West — totaling 27,700 acres as newly proposed wilderness areas.

If these areas receive final approval, they would amount to a 35 percent increase in the Monongahela’s wilderness areas, the Forest Service said.

Regarding logging, the draft plan would maintain the current list of 336,000 acres — about a third of the Monongahela — as “suitable for timber harvest.”

But, the Forest Service proposed to increase the maximum annual timber sales to 63 million board feet per year.

Last year, the agency’s allowable sale quantity, or ASQ, was listed as 16.7 million board feet. Over the last 20 years, the figure has averaged about 30 million board feet, according to the draft plan.

Ede pointed out that actual timber cutting has been far below the maximum allowable amount.

Last year, for example, only 2.1 million board feet were sold from the Monongahela. Over the last 10 years, the Monongahela has averaged just less than 10 million board feet of timber sold per year, the draft plan states.

“We hope to get a little bit more volume of timber, but that is because the trees have grown,” Ede said. “We’ve got a more mature forest out there.”

Dave Saville, administrator of the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, said that his group is “extremely disappointed that the Forest Service is rolling back protection of the Mon and is proposing opening up more of the National Forest to logging, road building and exploitation.”

Copies of the draft forest plan are available online at www.fs.fed.us/r9/mnf/plan_revision/Information/information.htm#anchor3.

The public comment period for the draft plan runs from Aug. 12 to Nov. 14.