Cedar Valley Project
The Cedar Valley Project on the Sierra National Forest was proposed in 2006 and released as a Draft Environmental Assessment (EA). The project would commercially thin 1,425 acres of forest. After review the contents of the EA it was clear that this was a poorly constructed and planned project. The Draft EA failed to include the information and analysis that would allow the public to truly determine the impacts of the thinning project. This failure to provide the required background information and to disclose the potential impacts of the project upon numerous environmental indicators, habitat, and wildlife species made it impossible to adequately analyze what impact the project would have on the general ecological health of the area but also on the sensitive and threatened species residing in and around the planned project zone.
Some key deficiencies identified are:
- A failure to disclose the current habitat conditions in the project area
- A failure to address the potential impacts of the project on at-risk species such as the Pacific fisher and the California spotted owl.
- A failure to adequately assess the project’s impacts on management indicator species or even plan to monitor the presence of these species before the project is implemented.
- A failure to address the potential cumulative impacts of the project as it relates to other projects planned in the area.
- And a failure to develop and analyze an adequate range of alternatives to the proposed action.
For these and many other reasons laid out in our comment letter we believe that the Cedar Valley EA fails to comply with the National Forest Management Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and other federal laws. The only course of action is for the Forest Service to revise the contents of the EA, conduct the necessary and required analysis and circulate a new EA for the public to comment on.