Preview: Forest Plan Comments

KEA’s comments on the draft Idaho Panhandle National Forest Plan are due on Monday. The fairly lengthy comments are still being finalized, but the first paragraph will go something like this:

As a general matter, we are glad that the Forest Service has finally developed a new draft forest plan, but we are disappointed. We believe that it is not sufficiently protective of watersheds, wildlife or wilderness uses. It suffers from weak standards and allows an unacceptable breadth of unbounded discretion to forest managers. And it fails to accommodate the changing nature of forest resources in an era of climate change and new economic  realities.  We do not believe the Forest Service has found a proper balance of the multiple uses it purports to manage, and instead of sustainable and resilient forests, we will see a continuation of the ongoing slow decline.  The draft fails to preserve forests for future generations, fails to restore damage from past generations, and fails to find the right balance for a generation that will need to live with this plan.