BLM In Charge of Biological Jewels Of The West - 15% Of Logging Roads Erased In Headwaters--The Death Road Is No More!
July 1, 2004
One year after the Headwaters Forest Reserve was transferred to public hands via the Headwaters Deal, it became part of the newly created National Landscape Conservation System (NLCS), encompassing wilderness-quality lands under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management. More recently, as advocates for the Headwaters Reserve, we became part of a wonderful grassroots coalition of people connected to those lands. BACH's Karen Pickett met many of those people, from seven different states, when she traveled to Washington DC to participate in the NLCS Outreach Week, lobbying Congress for full funding for the management and restoration of these lands
The NLCS encompasses 26 million acres of spectacular western National Monuments, Conservation and Wilderness Areas and protected rivers such as the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (NM) in Utah, the Upper Missouri River Breaks NM in Montana, Vermillion Cliffs NM in Arizona, and now the Headwaters Forest Reserve. The nearby King Range Conservation Area is also part of the NLCS. Many of these areas have new or in-progress management plans and are in need of restoration or additions to protect biological integrity. Therein lies the rub. While the 2005 federal budget provides for other systems like the National Park System at about $18 per acre and the National Wildlife Refuge System at $3-$4 an acre, the lesser-known NLCS cousin is allocated only $1.50 an acre!
Created in 1999, the 7472 acre Headwaters Forest Reserve is comprised of a highly functioning, biologically diverse, intact old-growth grove surrounded by cut-over land, since the previous owner was Pacific Lumber. Particularly because the Reserve itself is still surrounded by industrial forestland, it provides refuge to many rare species, including the marbled murrelet and spotted owl, and contains one of the best coho salmon spawning streams left on California's northern coast, the South Fork of the Elk River. Headwaters Grove remains a jewel in a rare forest still under great threat.
The carefully crafted Management Plan calls for extensive restoration of the cut-over land that surrounds and serves as a buffer to the 3,000 acre ancient forest grove, allowing that surrounding forest to regain old growth forest characteristics and ultimately become wildlife habitat. The Management Plan also prescribes decommissioning of the network of logging roads and skid trails that threaten to deliver tremendous amounts of sediment to streams that, at this point, still support healthy runs of salmon and steelhead. The South Fork Elk River not only still supports a significant coho salmon run, but is seen by fisheries biologists as one of the most important coho spawning streams in the region and a potential source of fish to recolonize degraded streams. Salmon Creek, originating in the Headwaters, while degraded, is potentially recoverable.
The Headwaters Reserve is a refuge unmatched in the region for the endangered marbled murrelet. A noted biologist estimated that approximately 25% of the marbled murrelet reproductive activity in the southern Humboldt region may occur in the Headwaters Reserve. With its habitat shrinking elsewhere, the recovery of old growth characteristics in the forest surrounding the old growth core in Headwaters provides perhaps the best promise for stabilization of the bird's population in Northern California.
Forty miles of roads and skid trails laced the approximately 4500 acre buffer around the intact ancient grove. As of March 2004, six miles of road have been decommissioned. This represents 15% of the work but this restoration, begun shortly after the acquisition, included the most critical areas in terms of potential damaging sediment delivery to salmon streams. Each mile of road decommissioned represents about 5 miles of stream improvement. There is tremendous potential for this buffer area to recover and become not only rare majestic old growth forest but critically needed wildlife habitat. As watershed restoration (mostly road decommissioning) proceeded prior to release of the final plan, Headwaters forest activists were jubilant to learn in October 2003 that BLM contractors had finished erasing the large road PL had carved into the heart of the virgin forest, known for years as the "death road." The death road is no more.
The forest restoration involves the thinning of the cut-over land now covered
by very dense young trees sprouting back and is needed to support succession to old growth characteristics.
More projects are contingent on the release of the Final Management Plan (released as we go to press), including the re-routing and construction of trails and improvement of interpretive displays.
To learn more, call the BACH office, visit our website or go to BLM's site:
www.ca.blm.gov/arcata
