Recently it was discovered that the Forest Service has been using heavy equipment to widen and "improve" trails into the Smith Creek area of the Cedar Creek district of the Mark Twain. Smith Creek is the only roadless and primitive area of appreciable size on the Cedar Creek district, and is an area that has been identified for special protections for decades. The current "improvements" substantially increase the likelihood and ease of illegal vehicular traffic in the area, and have already caused sedimentation into the creek. Smith Creek is one of several areas for which protected status is currently being challenged and negotiated through an appeal of the new Forest Plan (read about it here).
This past June, a coalition of organizations, including a landowner living adjacent to Smith Creek, traveled to the Forest Service's regional office in Milwaukee and met with Regional Supervisor Randy Moore to discuss the roadless areas under appeal. At that meeting, Moore promoted the idea of "collaboration" and left the group with the impression that the types of "improvements" now happening in Smith Creek would not happen while negotiations were proceeding. The damage of the heavy equipment was only discovered accidentally when a landowner was walking through the woods. Carol Trokey of the USFS indicated to the landowner that further “improvements” of this nature were planned.
The significance of this incursion goes beyond the damage done at Smith Creek. The Forest Service is currently deciding how to proceed on plans to salvage log 177 acres and burn 3660 acres of Lower Rock Creek, arguably Missouri's most significant unprotected roadless area. The plan includes using bulldozers to create miles of firelines in isolated, wild country. Early attempts at communication with the Forest Service in order to collaborate and develop a plan that could achieve some of the Forest Service’s stated
(albeit unnecessary) goals while protecting the wild character of Lower Rock Creek were ignroed or rebuffed. A story on this is published in the new issue of Confluence and should be available here on the web in the near future.
Of the 1.5 million acres of the Mark Twain National Forest, only about 5% is protected as federally designated Wilderness. Most of the 1.5 million acres is open to various degress of logging, road building, mining, and other degrading activities. So many roads criss-cross the Mark Twain that areas of even 1000 acres without a road cutting through them are exceedingly rare. A small number of unprotected areas, amounting to about 5% of the Forest, and including Smith Creek and Lower Rock Creek, continue to provide what is perhaps the most diminished and endangered resource on the Mark Twain - a wild landscape. Why the Forest Service, with over a million acres in Missouri to aggressively manipulate (and make no mistake, they do), why do they continue to insist on going into some of our most critical wild areas with bulldozers, chainsaws, and new roads?
Missouri Forest Alliance and the groups and individuals we’re working with intend to continue the negotiation process with the Forest Service. However, with the ongoing lack of consideration and cooperation exhibited by the Forest Service, it’s unsure how far such a process can go. In the end, it’s the public that needs to speak up. That’s where you come in.
WHAT YOU CAN DO:
Please call the Forest Service and ask them to lay off all of the areas under appeal by Missouri Forest Alliance and others. Let them know how much you appreciate our most wild places and that they should be left alone. And urge that they work openly and honestly with the parties advocating for these rare, special areas. The list of areas of concern includes Lower Rock Creek, Smith Creek, Spring Creek, Big Creek, Anderson Mountain, Swan Creek, Van East Mountain, Big Springs Addition, Devil's Backbone addition (G21W-5), North Fork, Irish Wilderness addition/ Panther Hollow, Current River/ONSR addition (G23-1), Eleven Point River addition (R23-2), and Hurricane Creek (R23-1).
Call Forest Supervisor Ronnie Raum at (573) 364-462, send a letter to: Ronnie Raum, 401 Fairgrounds Rd, Rolla, MO 65401, or send email rraum@fs.fed.us. If you do, please let us know.
And we need more eyes on the Forest. There are a lot of beautiful places to see, and you can have a real impact while doing it. Remember, we only learned about the work at Smith Creek by accident. If you'd like to learn more about some of our most critical wild and roadless lands in the Mark Twain, and help protect them, contact Jim Scheff at shagbark12@sbcglobal.net or (314) 991-4190.
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