US Forest Service moves logging farther from rare bird nests at Lake Tahoe but critics unhappy

RENO, Nev. — Forest Service officials have agreed to move post-fire logging operations at Lake Tahoe farther away from nests with rare, black-backed woodpecker chicks at the request of conservationists who've been fighting the overall project for years.

But leaders of the John Muir Project — who have documented one nest in the path of the logging and suspect there are more — say the no-cut buffers the agency is implementing are far too small to protect one of the rarest birds in the Sierra Nevada.

"No credible black-backed woodpecker scientist would say it is enough — not even close," said Chad Hanson, a wildlife ecologist and executive director of the group who has filed a petition seeking protection of the bird under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.

"It will kill them just as surely as logging right up to the nest tree," he said.

Lawyers for the Forest Service told the group last week its proposed 60-acre buffers around each nest would undermine the 1,400-acre project's goals of restoring the forest and reducing future catastrophic risks where the Angora fire destroyed 250 homes in South Lake Tahoe in 2007.

But Deputy Forest Supervisor Jeff Marsolais said Friday the agency and the private logging contractor agreed to move the fuels reduction operations at least 10 acres away from the nesting area until the chicks leave the nest. One acre is a little less than the size of a football field.

"The relocation shows our ongoing commitment to balance ecosystem values and our intent to maintain efficient operations in completing our Angora restoration efforts," Marsolais said in a statement the agency provided to The Associated Press late Friday.

In addition to no logging within 10 to 12 acres of the identified nest tree, an additional 25 acres of habitat will be preserved within one-quarter mile of the tree, until the chicks "fledge," USFS spokeswoman Cheva Heck said.

The area includes some of the last of the 156 acres of forest that remains uncut in the overall 1,400-acre project first proposed in early 2009 and under way for more than a year.

A federal judge in Sacramento earlier rejected a request for an injunction to block the logging filed by the John Muir Project and its parent Earth Island Institute.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals currently is considering their appeal claiming the Forest Service's environmental assessment ignores the agency's own science suggesting the project will harm the bird without effectively reducing long-term fire threats.

Continued: http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/f07e60e5e9d849079c289af9018b3f50/NV--Rare-Woodpeckers-Logging-Nests

Lake Tahoe's Black-Backed Woodpecker Population In Danger: Feds Asked To Delay Logging

RENO, Nev. -- Rare woodpecker chicks in burned forest stands at Lake Tahoe won't survive if the U.S. Forest Service proceeds with a contentious post-fire logging project, according to conservationists pressing the agency to postpone cutting around the trees until after the nesting season in August.

The John Muir Project is asking for the delay while awaiting a ruling on an appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit aimed at blocking what's left of the salvage logging operation where the Angora Fire five years ago burned more than 3,000 acres and 250 homes on the edge of South Lake Tahoe, Calif.

Chad Hanson, the group's executive director, documented black-backed woodpecker chicks this week in at least one nest in the cavity of a standing dead tree at the project site and suspects there are more.

Forest Service officials said Thursday they were reviewing the matter. Lawyers for the agency indicated to the critics earlier this week the plans could not be changed.

Hanson's group and others recently petitioned the Interior Department for Endangered Species Act protection for the black-backed woodpecker in the Sierra Nevada, eastern Cascades of Oregon and Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming.

The petition is the first seeking protection of a species tied to post-fire habitat. It says the woodpecker has survived for millions of years by eating beetle larvae in burned trees – 13,000 larvae annually – but is threatened by dramatic reductions in habitat resulting from fire suppression and post-fire logging.

At least 300 acres of partially burned and standing dead trees remain uncut in the Angora project area that calls for logging up to 1,500 acres – a total area of more than 2 square miles on national forest land on the west edge of town.

Hanson said the logging had moved within a few hundred yards of the actual nest tree where he identified a mother black-backed woodpecker feeding chicks on Memorial Day, accompanied by a photographer for The Associated Press.

Agency officials told the group normal procedures dictate any documented nest tree itself be spared but no additional protection currently is planned at the project in the works since early 2009.

Hanson, a wildlife ecologist at the University of California, Davis who has been challenging logging projects in the Sierra for more than a decade with mixed success, said a bare minimum buffer of at least 60 acres is needed.

With less, he said even if the chicks' parents don't abandon the nest they won't have a big enough foraging territory to keep the young fed. He said the chicks won't be able to fly for weeks and logging already is up against the 60-acre core.

"There are some other unlogged areas they could fly to as long as the nest core area was protected, but if that's gone, the chicks would just starve to death," said Rachel Fazio, a lawyer for the group who argued their case last May 14 before a three-judge panel at the federal appellate court in San Francisco.

Fazio said it is ironic that the Forest Service and the Tahoe Institute for Natural Science are co-hosting the third annual Lake Tahoe Bird Festival on Saturday at the Taylor Creek Visitor Center just a few miles from the woodpeckers' nest.

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/01/lake-tahoes-black-backed-woodpecker_n_1562763.html