The chief of the U.S. Forest Service has upheld the revised land management plans for five southern national forests, including the Cherokee National Forest in East Tennessee.
A number of conservation groups filed legal challenges to the plans in 2004 on the grounds that the Forest Service ignored input from the conservation community and failed to protect natural resources such as wildlife habitat and water quality.
The new plans set guidelines for all management activities on approximately 2.7 million acres of national forest lands in the South over the next 10 to 15 years.
In addition to the Cherokee National Forest, the plans apply to the Jefferson National Forest in Virginia, the Chattahoochee/Oconee National Forest in Georgia, the Sumter National Forest in South Carolina, and the National Forests of Alabama.
Sarah Francisco, staff attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center, said the revised management plans fail to address key environmental issues on a landscape scale throughout the Southern Appalachian region.
"We will continue to file legal challenges to stop the worst projects on these public lands which citizens increasingly value for recreation and environmental values than for timber," Francisco said.
The Cherokee National Forest's old land management plan allowed for up to 34 million board feet of timber to be harvested off the forest each year. The revised plan reduces that to a maximum of 22 million board feet of timber annually. All told, timber harvesting is allowed on 44 percent of the 640,000-acre Cherokee National Forest.
The current target level for logging on the Cherokee National Forest is about 8 million board feet per year, according to forest officials.
The Cherokee National Forest has about 87,000 acres of inventoried roadless areas. Forest officials say the vast majority of these areas will remain protected under the 2004 final management plan.
Environmental groups say the new plans allow roughly twice the level of logging throughout the five national forests as the previous plans, and fail to require sufficient buffer zones around pristine mountain streams.
On the Cherokee National Forest, the Southern Environmental Center and other conservation groups are opposed to the 350-acre Rough Ridge timber sale near Laurel Fork, a trout stream in Carter County, in northeastern Tennessee.
The groups say the area, which is surrounded by the Pond Mountain Wilderness Area, the Appalachian Trail, and the Slide Hollow Roadless Area, should be protected for recreation and wildlife habitat.
The Cherokee National Forest is home to 43 species of mammals, 55 species of reptiles and amphibians, and approximately 140 species of fish.
Under the 1976 National Forest Management Act, the U.S. Forest Service is charged with providing habitat for all native wildlife and all desirable non-native wildlife.
Planners with the Cherokee National Forest say the revised plan places more emphasis on forest health, recreation, and wildlife that did the previous plan, issued in 1986.Knoxville News Sentinel
