Report on Water Yeild from Forest Management Letter

Home Browse Search

IT . P% sediments that cover redds can prevent the emergence of any fry that do survive. Heavy sediment deposits also reduce fish rearing habitat. If spaces within gravel riffles are filled with sediment, fry have little refuge for survival during winter. Filling of pools by sediment eliminates habitat required by juvenile and adult fish. Log,g,,ine can reduce or eliminate aQuatic habitat. Vegetation and other materials on banks inhibit erosion, stabilize banks, and provide streamside cover for aquatic species (Gregory et al. 1991). As banks are destabilized by changes in streamflow energy and elimination of riparian vegetation, soil detaches from the bank and moves into the stream. High flow discharges can entrain bank material and carry it into the stream. Undercut banks and cover used by aquatic species in streamside areas are eliminated as vegetation is reduced and bank erosion increases. (3) Other Forest Service objectives cannot be met if the Forest Service pursues logging for water in the North Platte basin. Troendle 2000 recognizes this fact, if obliquely. See, Troendle 2000, pp. 20-21. Given the Chief s current emphasis on watershed protection, logging for water would seem completely anathema to the Forest Service goals. (A copy of the Chiefs June 1999 speech on watershed protection, "The United States Forest Service: The World's Largest Water Company" is attached.) Adverse visual impacts from clear cutting in particular, and from patch cutting to a lesser extent, are significant, degrading forest aesthetics. Wide spread logging also diminishes recreational opportunities-including hiking, camping, birdwatching and fishing-in the logged area. Clearcutting is inconsistent with the protection of closed forest species of wildlife and, for all of the reasons listed above in (2), with fisheries protection, as well. Aesthetics, recreation and wildlifelfisheries protection are all important Forest Service missions, including on the Forests at the North Platte River's headwaters. For all of the reasons set out above, Trout Unlimited opposes the Bureau's and others' continued efforts to treat 'iogging for water as a legitimate strategy for reducing target flow shortages in the Big Bend reach of the Platte River. Trout Unlimited believes that, based on the information referenced-if not directly stated-in Troendle's report, it is important that the Bureau not include timber management in the upper North Platte drainage as a legitimate alternative for consideration in its Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the recovery of endangered species in the Big Bend Reach of the Platte River. This alternative, when viewed in light of all readily available information, cannot work to help these species because the water "produced" will not in fact, make it offthe Forest, let alone down to the Big Bend. Add to this fundamental ineffectiveness the facts that the strategy is not one that the Forest Service can pursue given its statutory mandates, the Bureau must also find it infeasible. Therefore, it is not appropriate to consider it in the EIS' alternatives analysis. Sincerely, ? Melinda Kassen