Published: May 06, 2008 11:44 am            

USFS policies come under fire

Dear Editor:

This letter is regarding the “Upper Rock Creek Vegetation Management Project,” dated April 2008, and “Landscape Assessment Process for Jellico Area,” dated April 21, 2008, prepared by the Stearns Ranger District, Daniel Boone National Forest, Whitley City, KY 42653.

This project is of major importance to all McCrearians and is now in its beginning implementation stages. It will lead to management decisions for wildlife, fisheries, endangered species, rare communities, fuels-fire, air equality, water quality, recreation, minerals, roads, all vegetation, soil and water; in general, will determine the quality of the environment in which we live. Not included is the effect these practices have on people, local residents and visiting tourists, who come to visit and could become an extinct species, as they have already, many times, been endangered for a long time.

As a people, we are simply disregarded. The area is, in part, a state designated wild river, a proposed National Wild and Scenic River, our favorite trout fishing stream, picnic area, horse camp and a national recreational trail However, most important is the fact that Homo sapiens (man), a specifically McCrearians, are not mentioned and should top any list of sensitive or endangered species for the area.

Historically, we are on a long slide from increased catastrophic cancer inducted by disregard for health protection for the people who live here. Remember, that the last pine plantation crop planted by the USFS was killed by the ice storm-pine beetle infestations in the last decade. Herbicides used in these earlier attempts will be taken from the soils as sediment and from the air as smoke and haze throughout the area. We simply cannot allow these practices to continue.

Write them, call them or go on record in some way to promote survival for all McCrearians.

If you have doubts as to the impact, ask the USFS to send a copy of their study of Rock Creek, specifically, Appendix 7: “Human Health and Ecological Risk Assessments for Triclopyr Acid” and determine for yourself the “risk to the general public.”

We must simply tell them (the USFS) to take their herbicides and prescribed fire tactics back to other places from whence they came: Washington, Atlanta or California.

We ask that they stop meddling with Mother Nature’s growth cycles that God has ordained, that allows all life to exist from your watershed clear-cutting to a weed-stage, to shrub-stage, to pines sheltering the hardwoods, that will, with time, go to plots of pines in the midst of a majestic hardwood forest, as it was before Stearns and the USFS did their harvesting and reclamation practices; when all living creatures, especially, man, bests and wildlife of all species co-existed in the mantle of vegetation that once covered all of the southern part of the Daniel Boone National Forest.



Sincerely yours,



Robert E. Stephens

Whitley City, KY 42653

        

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