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Salt Lake Ranger District is releasing a Draft EA this week for a watershed restoration project in Big Cottonwood Canyon, adjacent to Salt Lake City. If you’re not familiar, it’s a very heavily trafficked recreation area in a box canyon with a complicated WUI. This is an important project and a long time coming, seems to have broad support from conservation and recreation communities, but we’ll see how the 14 day comment period goes. It’s being pursued with emergency authorization, no objection period.
The group Save Our Canyons has this on their website, including what maybe called their own purpose and need, with some specific local history.
The Wasatch Mountains have a long history of intense mining, grazing, and logging, which severely deforested canyon areas by 1900. To mitigate the impacts to water quality and restore forest health, the Salt Lake Forest Reserve was established in 1904, allowing thousands of acres of forest to regrow. This incredible conservation effort forged a partnership between Salt Lake City and the U.S. Forest Service, leading to the establishment of a nursery where millions of saplings were grown and replanted between 1905 and 1920. This reforestation initiative effectively restored the watersheds and is the reason we have the beautiful, forested canyons we enjoy today.
However, since that reforestation, policies began heavily prioritizing fire suppression. Millions of dollars were sent towards well-equipped crews who were able to handle the biggest blazes. Despite well-intentioned efforts to protect human lives and property, the Wasatch Mountains have been largely devoid of natural wildfire over the past century of efforts to suppress every wildfire that starts. By focusing on reactive suppression rather than proactive mitigation, unnaturally dense stands of mature conifers now fill many canyons of the Wasatch Mountains, standing connected with decades of dead ladder fuel that can easily turn a low-intensity ground fire into a severe crown fire. Climax species such as subalpine fir and white fir have come to dominate these stands, choking out biodiversity due to tightly spaced canopies.
This issue is exacerbated by climate change and prolonged drought, which have led to longer, drier fire seasons. Beaver populations have been decimated, leading to fewer and narrower riparian fuel breaks, while fire-resilient aspen stands struggle to outcompete encroaching conifer populations. To cap it all off, the Forest Service has recorded widespread tree mortality caused by invasive pests, aka “beetle kill,” leaving wide swaths of dead standing trees. This is the perfect storm for a catastrophic wildfire right here in our backyard, which could decimate tens of thousands of acres of prime wildlife habitat, world-class outdoor recreation, and the water resources that millions of Utahns rely on. The status-quo cannot go on if we want to steward and enjoy healthy forests.
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Here’s what I noticed.. there is a two week comment period on the draft EA that started..
But this scoping notice seems fairly complete (map, table of treatments) and it was published June 6. There are two open houses on the 15th and the 16th.
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So commercial logging is off the table.. that should remove some (all?) controversy. What do you think?
Barely mentioned in this is the relatively recent and intense human interaction in this area. There are many $multi-million homes and there are several world class ski areas (and the most expensive ones in the world). The road traffic to- and-from these recent impacts is extremely heavy and slow (both summer and winter) and many schemes have been advanced to minimize the massive traffic, but none of them have been implemented/effective. No one wanting any solitude would find it in this area. Access to these impacts has made this area one of the most heavily visited National Forest areas.
While these impacts on this area are not necessarily part of this emergency EA, they are certainly part of the big picture of what is going on here.
I find it ironic that apparently logging is not an option…
I don’t even know if there are mills within a distance that would pay.. thanks for the local info!
I was struck by the use of an “emergency action determination” based on a “historically low snowpack.” Thinking of the Flathead lawsuit, it looks like ESA-listed species are not going to trigger consultation. If your public thinks shortening the timeframes for their participation is a good thing, I think you are in a pretty good place.
Just curious, what do you think is the right timeframe, scoping to draft EA, and for comments on draft EA?
How about “it depends?” On things like what kinds of effects, scientific questions, level of public interest (and whose). Why would that question not be part of scoping?