A proposed action fact sheet released last week lays out how the latest draft of the Wrangell Island timber sale differs from that in 2013. The most notable difference will be in how the timber is harvested, with a greater proportion to be partial-cut and removed by helicopter.
The United States Forest Service has released an amended proposal for its Wrangell Island timber sale.
Published to the Federal Register on Oct. 27, the proposed action was modified to more
accurately reflect timber volume data collected since the sale was first put out in 2013. A corrected notice of intent and additional materials were released earlier this month.
Under the action proposal a number of
different timber stands would be harvested across the island, from the Mill Basin area in the north down to Fools Inlet in the south.
The updated proposal is slightly smaller in scope than the 2013 version, with an estimated 73 million board feet to be taken from around 5,309 acres of forest. Previously the sale called for 78 million board feet to be harvested from 4,350 acres.
Ranger Bob Dalrymple of the Wrangell District explained the change is due to better information. The 2013 proposed action was based on aerial surveying, and subsequent measuring has excluded pockets of muskeg and the low-value, non-merchantable areas.
"For all those reasons the proposed area got smaller," he said.
Visual protection measures were also considered, and the updated proposed action would make greater use of partial-cut harvest than the 2013 version. Of the total harvest, 3,528 acres would be partially-cut, up to 33-percent removal. The remaining 1,781 acres would be clear-cut. Methods of extraction would make greater use of helicopters than previously envisioned as a result, nearly double that of cable and ground-based methods.
"It's a lighter touch on the land in those cases," Dalrymple said.
The multi-year project would require 17 miles of new forest road construction, six miles of reconstruction and 13 miles of temporary road construction, as well as applicable forest restoration activities. Under the current proposed action, most of these roads would remain open to public access following the harvest. The 2013 proposal would have had most roads closed afterward. Existing road systems and log transfer facilities would be used as needed to transport the timber
The Wrangell sale has been in development since December 2010, and was last open to public comment in 2013. Dalrymple anticipates a draft environmental impact statement should be ready for review by early spring, triggering another set of public meetings. The comments collected from that round will factor into a final EIS draft, scheduled for June.
Scoping documents are available at http://www.fs.usda.gov/goto/R10/Tongass/WrangellEIS. Residents have until Friday to review and submit comments on the proposed sale.
Send written comments to: Tongass National Forest, c/o Andrea Slusser, P.O. Box 51, Wrangell, AK 99929, Attn: Wrangell Island Project EIS. Comments may be hand-delivered to the Wrangell Ranger District office, or sent via email to:wrangell_island_project_ei@fs.fed.us. In all correspondence, please include your name, address, and organization name if you are commenting as a representative of an organization.
The team working on the Wrangell Island draft EIS will continue developing alternatives in response to both previously-received and new scoping comments. Alternatives requiring project-specific Tongass Land and Resource Management Plan (Forest Plan) amendments are no longer being considered.
Reader Comments(0)