Local Issues

Forests

Wild Places

Wildlife

Water

Open Space

Other Resources

  Yet any fair analysis will reveal that the livestock industry, timber industry, and large utility companies supplying water and hydro-electric power generation have all combined to dominate the management of national forest lands over most of their existence.

  CSERC faces all of those challenges as the Center deals year after year with projects and policies that affect the environment within the Stanislaus National Forest.  Here are some of the current pressing issues that affect the environment:

    The national forest system is often managed in different ways due to the political direction coming from the current political party in control of the White House and Congress.  Under the two terms of the Bush Administration, the timber industry, livestock industry, and other “use” groups have been favored with policies and decisions aimed to produce more logging, mining, grazing, and motorized recreation use.

    During the same time, political decisions coming from Washington, DC have resulted in the weakening of policies that preserve wild roadless areas, protect rare wildlife species, or protect watershed values.  In many cases, the Forest Service, the President, and Congress have endorsed resource production as a higher priority in the national forests than protecting wild places, at-risk wildlife, or scenic beauty.

    Here in the local Stanislaus National Forest, logging levels have risen in recent years under the current Administration. Back in the early years of this decade, Stanislaus Forest officials struggled to effectively get fuels projects off the drawing board and implemented on the ground.  Despite the support provided from CSERC and local volunteer conservation groups for thinning logging projects around communities, the agency sold less timber than what environmentalists would accept.  Once the Bush Administration became entrenched politically, pressure from Washington, DC and from the local timber industry led to higher logging levels.  In 2005, local timber targets were boosted after pro-logging politicians lobbied the Washington, DC office of the Forest Service to press for higher saw-log levels.

   Ironically, soon after the Stanislaus Forest began boosting timber production, the single dominant local timber company (Sierra Pacific Industries) chose to close down its small sawlog mill at Chinese Camp and to convert it to primarily manufacturing cedar products.  Thus, now that the Forest Service is offering millions of board feet of sawlogs at low prices, there is no longer any local small log mill that can handle large quantities of pine and fir sawlogs.  Now those logs must be transported long distances to remote mills IF the timber industry even bothers to bid on timber sales with lots of small sawlogs.  In recent years, some timber sales on the Stanislaus Forest went without any bids at all from the timber industry.  Eventually, however, the Forest Service has gone back and revised the timber sale packages so that the timber industry is eventually willing to buy the trees at low prices.

Herbicide Treatments

  Herbicides are chemicals that kill unwanted plants.  The Forest Service often uses aerial and ground sprays of herbicide formulations to kill bushes, grasses, wildflowers, and other plants that may compete with conifer tree plantations.  Often these chemicals are applied across many square miles of public forest in scattered sites on steep slopes.   

  CSERC continues to be one of a number or organizations that strongly opposes the widespread herbicide spraying done by SPI on its private timberlands. The bottom line is that herbicides work. In most cases they kill all the plants exposed to the treatment. That denies steep hillsides, eliminates food for wildlife, and puts water quality at risk.

Livestock Grazing

  For many decades, cows have been brought into the mountains to graze local national forest lands during the summer and early fall seasons.  In some areas the grazing has not caused major problems, but in other instances, livestock has over-grazed meadows, caused stream banks to suffer sloughing and chiseling from hooves, and stripped some areas of riparian plants.  Like many issues, however, this is not a black-and-white situation because there are benefits to local ranching families who use public forest lands to supplement their foothill ranches' forage -- thereby keeping more foothill ranch lands in agriculture, instead of new subdivisions.

  Rather than try to ban livestock grazing, CSERC has spent the past 18 years working for overall improved grazing management on the Stanislaus National Forest.  Our staff measures grasses to monitor whether meadows are in compliance with Forest regulations.  We photograph damaged stream banks to identify the most degraded areas.  We also work to understand the needs of local ranchers to look for potential win-win solutions to grazing issues.  Sadly, current Forest Service policies continue to allow intensive cattle grazing on national forest lands without adequate safeguards for plants, wildlife, and water resources. 

 A lack of agency monitoring and an equally weak amount of enforcement of grazing rules results in many areas of the Stanislaus Forest suffering from various levels of livestock damage.  Throughout the summer and fall CSERC staff will continue to do extensive fieldwork and meadow measurements to identify where grazing is harming meadows or stream areas.  We will also continue to work for reasonable policies as well as true compliance with regulations by livestock interests.

Water Resources at Risk

    It is not just cattle grazing or herbicide treatments that cause problems for water resources.  Every new road and every new timber sale in the local mountains result in some level of sediment washing into streams and rivers.  Road construction is the single greatest impact to watersheds, but bulldozing, the skidding of logs, grazing, herbicides, and overuse of recreation all add to the cumulative problem.

    There is great controversy over how much of these activities to allow in riparian areas that are important for wildlife species.  CSERC works to gain wider protective buffers for streams affected by national forest projects.  We are consistently opposed to any further new road construction on public lands - especially on steep slopes where the potential for erosion is high.  CSERC also works to protect downstream water quality for all the people who depend upon water that flows off national forest lands.  As with many issues that are affected by political decisions, water resources suffer from a combination of impacts.  Foremost is the current failure by the California State Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF) to halt clearcutting on private timberlands. That impact is exacerbated by the failure of the U.S. Forest Service to stop intensive livestock grazing and herbicide treatments on national forest lands.