Tonya Maxwell

tmaxwell@citizen-times.com

In a corner of Pisgah National Forest, Kevin Guinn readied his chainsaw to cut wood from a field tangled with logs and heavy branches.

The debris left behind by loggers was too small to be profitable but good enough for Guinn to fuel his wood-burning furnace, even if he didn't care for the sight of the land.

"I strongly disagree with this," he said. "It's so close to widely used recreation. You've got a camper down the road. There's a stream down the hill. You've got the ecology of that."

Another woman walking her dogs nearby compared the field in North Mills River Recreation Area to a scene out of World War I, and said she's readied a letter to send to the U.S. Forest Service. Rape of the land, she called it.

It's an assessment the U.S. Forest Service has been dealing with as it explains a draft plan to guide resource management in the Pisgah and Nantahala national forests for at least the next decade.

That draft identifies nearly 700,000 acres as being suitable for logging. But that number is certain to shrink — significantly — and clearing timber can improve the health of a forest, the agency said.

In a series of recent meetings, foresters presented the draft to the public, opening it up for comment that so far has generated concerns from both sides of the issue.

The Southern Environmental Law Center argues the amount of land in the Forest Service plan amounts to an area bigger than Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

But the state Wildlife Resources Commission congratulated the Forest Service on its 700,000-acre choice, one it said promotes wildlife habitat rejuvenation, not industrial logging.

Acreage in management areas, including those where logging is an option in the draft, will be whittled down as factors like soil conditions and rocky areas are taken into consideration.

Of the one million acres in Pisgah and Nantahala forests, the lands potentially available to logging likely will drop to around 300,000 acres, a number more in line with the existing management plan.

But that number also fails to capture a complex calculus of restoration goals, budget constraints and public opinion that shapes which mountain slopes may see trees cut.

In the past decade, logging in the two WNC federal forests has averaged about 950 acres, a drop from averages through the 1980s that topped 4,000 acres, according to data provided by the Forest Service.

Logging decreases were largely a product of the 1994 forest plan amendment, a revision that directed the Forest Service away from clear cutting in Pisgah and Nantahala and toward sustainable timber activities.

The amendment also required foresters to offer the public a seat at the table in its decision-making processes.

About that time, many Madison County residents were gathering themselves into a coalition to battle a plan by the Appalachian District ranger for the Forest Service, one that would have logged from what many call their jewel, Bluff Mountain.

The group whipped up bumper stickers with a catchy logo, "Don't Cut Bluff," and after sometimes contentious negotiations, walked away with a compromise, allowing the timber industry to cut 86 acres from the mountain.

About a year ago, a new district ranger came to town, and if ever a plan would be put forth to log Bluff, it would come from his desk.

Word has since spread that in the draft forest plan, Bluff Mountain is one of the areas designated as suitable for logging.

That new ranger? He's become mighty popular in Madison County these days.

Calling the Bluff

In Hot Springs, bread's been buttered with tourism dollars about as long as North Carolina's been a state.

Early entrepreneurs built an economy around those mineral waters, hailing naturally heated baths as healing. The Madison County town still boasts of its hot springs, but it also has a welcome mat that tumbles with Pisgah National Forest whitewater and is crossed by the most famous footpath on the eastern seaboard, the Appalachian Trail.

Thru-hikers headed north first traverse Bluff Mountain before dropping into Hot Springs.

Members of the old Bluff coalition, who well know the forest logging process, are dropping into the Mars Hill office of Ranger Matt McCombs.

In the next draft of the forest plan, they tell him in friendly conversations less divisive than the negotiations of two decades earlier, that they want to see their mountain designated as an area where heavy logging equipment can't trod.

He offers no promises about what the next draft might hold for Bluff, but said the values and passions he's heard, including at a recent question-and-answer session in Hot Springs regarding Bluff, have not gone unheard.

"We will be taking a hard look at this area and the community input to determine if the current management area prescriptions are the right ones," he said. "I don't think it's an option anymore to punch in new (logging) roads if it doesn't make economic sense and certainly if it doesn't make social-political sense."

But he's already made one decision about the mountain outside of public view.

The Forest Service takes a round-robin approach in assessing areas, revisiting maintenance needs throughout the region on a rotating schedule. An information gathering period is followed by several steps that might result in the district ranger proposing a timber sale.

When McCombs arrived, the Bluff Mountain area was on tap for evaluation.

After learning Bluff's history and with forest plan changes coming, he opted to look to other areas.

He said he'll probably propose restoration through timber work in an area called Twelve Mile, to make it more habitable for elk.

"Because of the potential levels of conflict, we need to focus on the plan revision and opportunities that make sense right now, in areas where was can gather broad support before moving forward," he said.

Protect the unique areas

The Forest Service, in its mandate, is charged with conserving and protecting the million acres in the Pisgah and Nantahala forests while balancing a host of interests, ranging from recreation and scientific study to water management and logging.

Talk to enough foresters and eventually you'll hear some variation on a peculiar type of pessimism: "If everyone's unhappy, we must be doing a good job."

It's a mantra that speaks to the difficulty of juggling so many interests. But it also sabotages any hope for an endgame where everyone wins, said Josh Kelly, public lands biologist for the Western North Carolina Alliance.

Kelly often treks into the national forests, and is particularly interested in seeing that areas home to threatened flora and fauna aren't open for timbering.

Given his druthers, he would shuffle about 200,000 acres identified as suitable for logging in the draft plan into other categories, including Bluff Mountain, Big Ivy, Daniel Ridge and Tellico Bald.

"Why not take all the unique habitats off the table?" he asked. "If they did that, if they protect the Natural Heritage Areas, the existing old growth forests and add backcountry areas, they will still have 500,000 acres (available to logging)."

Kelly is not opposed to all timbering, though new logging roads can create paths for invasive plants and can destroy habitats. But used smartly, he said, it can be a tool to restore and strengthen forests.

Much of Trace Ridge, which he calls a former white pine plantation, is one example, he said.

Located in the North Mills River Recreation Area, the area near the Trace Ridge trailhead is one of several parcels totaling 153 acres that the Forest Service sold in 2013 as part of the Brushy Ridge sale. Trace Ridge reopened a few months ago, but work in other sections may continue through next year.

The sale is one of 43 ongoing timber contracts now on the desk of Dale Remington, timber sales manager for the Forest Service. His oversight also includes two eastern forests.

Much of the Trace Ridge area had once been an open field where fast-growing white pine flourished, he said, outcompeting oak trees in a race to the sun. The logging gives oaks, desirable for their acorns, a chance to grow, he said, and many animals favor the young plants that will sprout in young forest conditions.

Remington, when he began 35 years ago as a timber man, worked for a Forest Service that tended to log in big, blocky clear cuts, pleasing neither aesthetically nor ecologically.

But the Forest Service began to shift about 15 years ago, he said. Clear cuts fell from favor, and logging was used as a means to restore habitats.

One goal of logging in the Blue Ridge, Remington added, is to create a variety of tree ages in the mountains. He works with a staff biologist and hydrologist to meet goals of desired conditions.

"Almost all this area was logged in the 1800s, except in the higher elevations, sections that were harder to get to. Because of that, the age of these forests are all about 80 to 100 years old," he said, adding that a typical tree life expectancy is around 150 years. "The white oak can live to be 300 years old, but an event is coming in about 40 or 50 years where large parts of this forest will die off."

Remington's sales are constrained by the budget set by Congress, which allows him to do marking and other prep work. This year, he was funded $39,000.

He sells about $2 million in lumber annually, with much of that money going back to site restoration, though 25 percent is returned to a fund for counties with national forests, to be used for schools or roads.

Logging companies pay for road maintenance and reconstruction as part of their contracts.

At Brushy Ridge, for example, the value to the Forest Service was $153,600, Remington said. The agency received $41,000 from the sale, while the rest was used for road maintenance or reconstruction.

Near the trailhead there are barren slopes, hills of stumps and the detritus of a leveled forest. With only a handful of trees hanging in the skyline, it looks at once oddly open above and dense on the ground, inhospitable where branches jumble and tangle together on a floor of mud.

Willie Surratt of Swannanoa has been returning to the area for more than three decades worth of deer seasons, grounds that a few years back rewarded his patience with an 11-point buck.

On this damp afternoon though, on the eve of gun season, he is not thinking of where he will hunt with the rising of the sun.

"I used to camp right there, and it's all a mess. The fire ring's even gone. Why they tore it up like they did, I just don't know," Surratt said. "It's just a crappy way to do it. It does help the animals, it just takes a few years for everything to start growing back. They just didn't have to cut as much as they cut."

WANT TO COMMENT?

The final plan is expected to be completed in 2016. Public comments on the forest plan should be submitted by Jan. 5:

Through an interactive mapping tool at https://my.usgs.gov/ppgis/studio/launch/24175

By email to NCplanrevision@fs.fed.us

By standard mail to National Forests in North Carolina, 160 Zillicoa St., Suite A, Asheville, NC 28801