Federal Register, Volume 74, Number 46, March 11, 2009, Pages 10455-10672 Page: 10,531
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Federal Register/Vol. 74, No. 46/Wednesday, March 11, 2009 / Notices
from a wildland fire burning under the
90th percentile weather conditions
could easily make the transition from
surface fire into the crowns of the trees,
causing high mortality within
plantations and continued fire spread
into the surrounding forest stands.
The National Fire Plan and the
Cohesive Strategy, developed after the
severe wildfire season in 2000, provides
direction to the Forest Service to reduce
the amount of fuel in fire-prone forests
to protect people and sustain resources.
Additionally, the Record of Decision
(ROD) for the Sierra Nevada Forest Plan
Amendment (SNFPA) sets priorities for
management activities that would
restore natural ecosystem processes
while minimizing the threat fire poses
to lives, structures, and resources
through site specific prescriptions
designed to modify fire intensity and
spread in treated areas.
(2) The second fundamental purpose
of this project is to also improve stand
vigor and resistance to disease and
insect mortality.
There is a need to improve the health
of trees within the project area by
removing unhealthy trees and reducing
stand density. Over-dense stands are
experiencing inter-tree competition for
resources and are at risk for high levels
of mortality in the near future. Some
stands within the project area are
already experiencing high levels of
mortality due to disease and insect
activity. Although some of the stands in
the project have been thinned and
salvage logged in the past, the
predominantly white fir stands are
expected to continue to decrease in
health and vigor over time due to
insects, annosus root rot, and other
disease pathogens. These stands will
continue moving farther from their
desired future condition as high levels
of mortality decrease canopy cover,
stocking, and growth at a stand level.
The project area is currently at risk
due to insect and disease related
mortality. Increased densities of trees,
higher levels of disease and insect
attack, and an accumulation of ground
and ladder fuels within stands indicate
unhealthy conditions. Denser stands,
such as those that have developed in the
project area, demand more water and
other limited resources. As a result,
over-dense stands are less resistant to
insect and disease-related attack,
especially during periods of extended
drought, which then increases the
potential for extreme fire behavior in the
area. Large areas of the landscape are
dominated by shade-tolerant, drought-
and/or fire-intolerant species (white fir,
incense-cedar, and Douglas-fir). Thestructure of the current forested
landscape represents an unstable,
unsustainable, and therefore
undesirable departure from the historic
landscape for this area.
The SNFPA directs that prescriptions
for treatment areas address identified
needs to increase stand resistance to
mortality from insect and disease by
thinning densely stocked stands to
reduce competition and improve tree
vigor. Forest health specialists have
reviewed treatment areas and have
confirmed that insect and disease
pathogen activities within stands have
increased the risk of mortality due to
high stand density and current species
composition.
(3) A purpose of this project is also to
maintain and/or establish a composition
of tree species and size classes that are
closer to the historic conditions for the
area and correspondingly sustainable
into the future.
There is a need to apply the necessary
silvicultural and fuels reduction
treatments to accelerate the
development of key habitat and old
forest characteristics, increase stand
heterogeneity, restore pine, and to
promote hardwoods. The project area is
characteristic of much of the mixed-
conifer zone of the Sierra Nevada with
few or no stands remaining that can be
described as natural. To various degrees
the forest has been changed from one
dominated by large, old, widely spaced
trees to one with dense, fairly even-aged
stands with most of the larger trees
between 80 and 100 years old. This is
an unstable, unsustainable forest that is
susceptible to drought-induced
mortality, bark beetle infestation, and
severe wildfire.
Many of the stands within the Big
Grizzly project area have been type
converted from pine to white fir through
natural mortality and the selective
logging of pine. Rather than attempt to
restore the stands to a specific point in
history, there is a need to restore a forest
structure that is more resilient to
drought, insect and disease pathogens,
and wildfire. As discussed above, as a
result of the current species
composition and risk from fire, insect
and disease pathogens, these stands are
not sustainable. Proposed treatments
would promote shade intolerant pines
and hardwoods while decreasing the
amount of shade tolerant white fir and
incense cedar, thereby moving stands
closer to a more sustainable species
composition.
Reduced competition would enable
trees to grow larger more quickly,
thereby providing greater numbers of
large trees and snags for the future.
Treatment would also reduce the risk offire related mortality to large trees that
are currently within the units,
maintaining the valuable structure they
provide within the stand.
There is a need to control spacing and
species composition in the plantations
to accelerate the development of old
forest characteristics. While the
plantations do not currently have the
structure that would allow them to
function as old forest habitat, since they
consist primarily of young ponderosa
pine, they provide important reservoirs
of pine within the landscape. Thinning
in plantations and natural stands would
facilitate tree growth allowing stands to
more rapidly develop large trees, and
increase the probability that these
stands would survive into the future.
These stands could then be managed to
ensure the development of additional
components of structure for old forest
dependent species.
(4) A purpose of the project is to treat
hazard fuels in a cost-effective manner
to maximize program effectiveness.
There is a need for this project to be
cost effective so that the maximum
benefit can be achieved through the
work performed. The SNFPA provides
direction to design area treatments that
are economically efficient where
consistent with desired conditions,
using wood by-products from over-
dense stands to offset the cost of fuels
treatments. The removal of commercial
sized trees would partially offset the
substantial costs associated with the
expensive investment components of
this project, including the treatment of
surface fuels, cutting and removal of the
non-commercial ladder fuels,
mastication and herbicide treatments.
Proposed Action
To move stands toward the Desired
Future Condition for the various land
allocations as described in the Record of
Decision for the Final Supplemental
Environmental Impact Statement for the
Sierra Nevada Forest Plan Amendment
dated 1/21/2004, the Proposed Action
includes a combination of fuels
reduction and forest health
improvement actions. Silvicultural
treatments for each stand were chosen
for their ability to meet the stated
purpose and need. The focus of each
treatment is based on the desired quality
of each treatment area after management
rather than the quantity or quality of the
products removed from each area. In
fact, some treatment would not remove
forest products.
* Approximately 3,200 acres are
proposed to be treated using understory
thinning involving the cutting and
removal of both commercial and non-
commercial size trees. Follow-upmastication or tractor piling and pile
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United States. Office of the Federal Register. Federal Register, Volume 74, Number 46, March 11, 2009, Pages 10455-10672, periodical, March 11, 2009; Washington D.C.. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc132908/m1/85/: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.