Letter: Laurence Crabtree, can you answer these questions?

Laurence:

This fall, while under your supervision, approximately 16% of the Eldorado National Forest burned due to the King Fire. You are entrusted to protect and maintain the health of this critical forest/watershed. Given the extreme drought and high fire risk conditions we experienced this summer, what fire restrictions, ranger alerts, precautionary measures, were in place the week of Sept 07, 2014? Arson yes, but could we have been more alert?

I am pleased that your Burned Area Emergency Response effort is underway and your team is working to minimize the sediment flow, erosion due to loss of vegetation. However no mention is made of your logging plans for the burn area. Please describe..

Also on your website you outline a very minimal “Long-Term Recovery and Restoration Plan”. In the two sentence plan is stated “This phase may include restoring burned habitat, reforestation, other planting or seeding, monitoring burn effects, replacing burned fences….”. Seriously? May include restoring burned habitat, reforestation, other planting or seeding”?? Given the magnitude of the disaster, quite frankly this plan sounds inadequate. This should be an epic forest restoration project with detailed planning and long-term major funding.

Please examine the enclosed recent satellite images of the Eldorado National Forest, the first is near Georgetown and the second is near Union Valley Reservoir. According to my informal image analysis, approximately 30% of the forest has been clear-cut. As we all know, forest clear cuts result in areas that are, essentially, aesthetically and biologically dead, and severely degrade the land’s ability to act as an intact/stable watershed. So even while the Eldorado National Forest is not burning, the watershed appears to be substantively degraded by management practices that you supervise.

At this point, the level of confidence that I have in the Eldorado National Forest to perform adequate forest restoration, on both burned and clear cut areas, is less than 3%. Watershed restoration/protection is now a super-critical issue for California. Please provide us with a plan commensurate with the problem.

Regards
Michael Nardi