By Brandt Mannchen
In February 2022, the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club (Sierra Club) commented on the draft environmental assessment (DEA) for the Beaver Creek Wildlife Improvement and Ecosystem Enhancement Project (BCWIEEP) in Davy Crockett National Forest (DCNF).
The Sierra Club, along with the Texas Conservation Alliance (TCA), has worked and collaborated with the U.S. Forest Service (FS) on this proposal since the summer of 2020. The BCWIEEP covers 10,842 acres and is supposed to restore and manage the Shortleaf Pine-Post Oak-Hickory Ecosystem.
Some of the comments that the Sierra Club provided to the FS about the BCWIEEP include:
1. The Forest Plan manages all Upland Forests Ecosystems and not just the Shortleaf Pine-Post Oak Ecosystem. Post Oak is not always the dominant oak in this ecosystem because many other oaks grow with Shortleaf Pine. The DCNF must address all landscape forest diversity in the BCWIEEP and not just one type of forest.
2. Streamside buffer zones must include all ephemeral, intermittent, and perennial streams and be sufficiently wide for water quality protection.
3. The FS hasn’t addressed all concerns/issues that the Sierra Club and public brought up 18 months ago. Some of these concerns include whether a more rigorous environmental impact statement analysis is needed; appropriately wide buffer zones for streams; the need for variable densities of trees over the landscape; protection of upland hardwood trees; and the location and impacts of roads, fire lanes, and gates in the project area.
4. The need to protect old growth trees and areas to perpetuate forest diversity on the landscape.
5. The excessive use of clearcutting and other even-aged logging in the BCWIEEP instead of variable density thinning.
6. The lack of site-specific environmental analysis for the 10,842-acre project area.
7. Failure to control feral hogs which damage forest vegetation, soil, wildlife, and water resources.
8. Failure to provide snags/downed trees that benefit wildlife diversity, soil protection, water quality improvement, and climate change protection via carbon storage.
9. Failure to address climate change
10. The need to identify, protect, and monitor wet sites, jurisdictional wetlands, bogs, and seepage zones.
The Sierra Club will continue to work and collaborate with the FS to ensure the best, sound, science is used to manage and protect DCNF. Stay tuned for more updates in the future.