On March 13, 2025, the Houston Regional Group and the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club (Sierra Club) visited and walked Compartment 52, Stand 16, in Sam Houston National Forest (SHNF).
In 2009, for the Gum Branch Red-cockaded Woodpecker (RCW) Habitat Restoration Project, in Compartment 52, parts of Stands 6 and 16 were designated “restored old growth”.
This was due to the U.S. Forest Service (FS) Forest Plan, Forest-wide Standards and Guidelines (S&Gs), and direction in Management Area 4 (MA-4, Streamside Management Zones). Both stands were classified by the FS as Forest Type 62, Sweetgum-Nuttall Oak-Willow, which is a bottomland/riparian woodland forest type that is found in MA-4. This was the only time in 29 years that the Sierra Club has seen the FS designate old growth via a project level analysis. According to the Forest Plan “restored old growth” is defined as:
“Areas which have been designated to eventually become old growth. Active management practices may be applied to enhance or restore some old growth attributes. These areas may eventually be harvested.”
In a February 19, 2025 Decision Memo (DM) for the Compartments 52, 54, and 68 Mulching Project, SHNF, the FS stated that, “The results of the old growth assessments showed that one stand (Compartment 52, Stand 16) met all the criteria to be considered for old growth forest designation, however this stand is located in MA-2, making it ineligible for designation.”
The Sierra Club has contested this statement as incorrect because MA-4 is a separate management area from MA-2. The Sierra Club visited Stand 16 to review its old growth potential and submitted notes and recommendations about old growth for this Compartment.
Compartment 52 has recently been prescribed burned. This was verified by the blackened and burned trunks of trees and other vegetation on uplands, slopes, and in the Gum Branch Floodplain (GBF). Many Dwarf Palmettos and Switchcane, which are bottomland plant species, were burned (along with other bottomland plant species) by helicopter created prescribed fire.
Burned vegetation was found in places on the banks of Gum Branch. Fire was assisted in the GBF via large and moderate sized Loblolly Pines that grow there and drop fine fuel via needles, cones, and small branches. The Sierra Club has expressed its concern to the FS about starting prescribed fires in stream floodplains in SHNF. This causes areas to burn, which ordinarily wouldn’t burn due to vegetation and soil buffering of fire flames, and retards the restoration of these areas to bottomland hardwood forests.
The GBF was walked by the Sierra Club from FM 1375, north to near the end of Stand 16. Stand 16 has many floodplain features like natural wetland depressions, depressions with attached channels, abandoned stream channels, swales, the main channel of Gum Branch, sandy stream bottoms, and a crawfish chimney.
The Sierra Club saw a beaver gnawed tree, old pine stumps that were near the Gum Branch channel (from logging many years ago), trees still leafing out, and a very wet floodplain due to recent rain. A Loblolly Pine, that was about 17 inches diameter breast height, was estimated to be 33 years old. Many Loblolly Pine trees of this size were seen in the GBF. This indicates that logging may have occurred about 30 years ago in the GBF.
Significant feral hog rooting/wallowing was seen in the GBF. This was some of the worst rooting/wallowing that the Sierra Club has seen in SHNF. It would be prudent for the FS to prepare/implement a feral hog control program so that floodplain ecosystem processes/species can operate/grow naturally within GBF.
The largest trees seen in the GBF were Loblolly Pines and Water Oaks. There is at least one Green Ash depressional wetland in Stand 16. The Sierra Club verified that Stand 16 has a large floodplain with lower slopes/terraces next to Gum Branch which is primarily bottomland hardwood via the vigorous growth of Sweetgum, American Sycamore, Water Oak, American Hornbeam, American Holly, Black Gum, and other hardwood trees. The Sierra Club verified that Forest Type 62 was an appropriate forest type to use for the GBF.
The Sierra Club recommended to the FS that all of Stand 16 (16 acres) or all of Stand 16 in the GBF should continue to be designated by the FS as “restored old growth”. The FS analysis conducted for Compartments 52, 54, and 68 Mulching Project process should reflect this. The Sierra Club also recommended that Stand 6 should be reanalyzed for “restored old growth” designation by the FS.