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ALERT - December 4, 2006: Protect Our Woods joins allies to submit a response to the Draft Supplement to the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for the German Ridge Restoration Project in Hoosier National Forest26. Deer Impacts NeglectedThe German Ridge project, as integrated into the HNF Plan, proposes logging and burning that will likely increase deer populations. This is through creating more early successional habitat instead of working to reestablish large areas of undisturbed continuous forest. In addition, establishing Oak Hickory will increase deer browse when the oaks are in the seedling stage.Perhaps no other impact overall on the forest is as severe, widespread, and intense as the impact of overabundance of deer. In spite of this, the Hoosier manipulated scientific findings (see Section 18.FACA) in order to avoid having to deal with the subject of the impact of creating larger populations of deer thru creating more browse, which is overall, what the plan would do. This is one more important piece of evidence that the Hoosier’s planning process is biased toward logging and other management activities, and even when it is demonstrated that preserving and protecting and restoring forests would have a significant overall positive effect, it fails to consider it, in fact, killing the consideration of it through their secretive, illegal process. In the initial submission to the flawed Hoosier-Shawnee Ecological Assessment, the researchers in the “Terrestrial animal species in the Hoosier-Shawnee ecological assessment area” paper tried to address this problem. They wrote: "In some ways, and in some places, white-tailed deer represent a wildlife management failure...overabundant deer populations can have a variety of impacts on natural and human dominated landscapes. Deer populations near or above biological carrying capacity may cause severe damage to vegetation...it can also affect natural areas...Thus, without careful management deer populations can approach levels where they alter vegetative communities. This in turn, can impact other wildlife populations...although population control is an important facet of deer management, one important reason why deer are so successful is because of the highly fragmented condition of the landscape. Indeed, figure 4 (which doesn't seem to be in the document) clearly illustrates the lack of large continuous tracts of forest in the area. By managing resources to reduce habitat fragmentation and improve conditions for forest interior species, the quality of habitats for white-tailed deer will decline which turn could limit deer numbers and their impacts on natural areas." This has so many implications to the plan. The fact that the Hoosier took out of the plan and EIS all reference to the concept that because of increasing urbanization, that hunting may become a less effective population control, which is clearly happening, and that by reducing fragmentation and increasing contiguous forest, that you would be implementing long term, effective population control of deer that would help alleviate the very severe impacts that deer overabundance is having on the forest, the Hoosier is again showing that it is biased against presenting factual information that puts their plans to continue to log, burn, and other management activities in anything but the most positive light. The EIS also is inaccurate in stating that there isn’t any studies which show that prescribed burning makes browse following the fire more desirable. A Westvaco study in West Virginia found that oak sprouts following prescribed fire were preferred by deer, and that this had a significant impact on failed oak regeneration following the burn. (See Section 8: Logging and Burning As Tools for Oak Hickory Restoration) This idea that pines fragment the forests just as pastures would is wrong. The pine plantations actually help to create large contiguous blocks of forest and reduce fragmentation. The Hoosier National Forest Environmental Impact Statement is not in compliance with NEPA with these findings, and the plan has inadequate standards and guidelines to protect the pine plantations, especially where they are located in large forest interior habitats. Click here for Part 27. Riparian Protections Are InadequateProtect Our Woods
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