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Elk, fire raise ire over national forest practice Sunday, Oct 28, 2007 By Doug Thompson Arkansas News Bureau DEER - The U.S. Forest Service is reshaping the Ozark National Forest by logging and then burning tens of thousands of acres a year. The new face will be less overgrown and more meadowlike, which will mean healthier trees and habitat for large animals such as elk, the forest service says. Opponents dispute the claim, arguing that runoff will damage soils and streams. They also contend the species of elk reintroduced to the Arkansas forest are not native and are a nuisance for farmers, ranchers and native species. "The amphibians will be the first thing to disappear" if the Forest Service continues with plans to create a more open forest with grasslands, said Kent Bonar, a naturalist and author who has traveled through Arkansas and Missouri. The leaves that hold in moisture and the shade that keeps moisture from evaporating will be burned away, he said. Bonar is a member of the Newton County Wildlife Association, a conservation group that questions the Forest Service's management practices. The Forest Service plans calls for longing and burning up to 70,000 acres this fiscal year in the Ozark Forest. Similar practices are also in use in the Ouachita National Forest in Southwest Arkansas. The practice is an accepted part of modern forestry with a large body of science behind it, said Tracy Farley, spokeswoman for the Ozark National Forest. It reduces the build-up of fuel for fires and is "very beneficial to deer, turkey, quail, migratory birds and non-game species" including the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker, she said. "History accounts clearly describe settlers driving wagons through the forest, which couldn't be done with the type of forest we have today," Farley said. The thick leaves and underbrush in the Ozarks piled up during decades of modern fire prevention and weren't present when wildfires were not contained, Farley said. Before modern times, wildfires periodically cleared out the accumulation, she said, a conclusion the association disputes. Intense fires occurred during settlement of the region. Many were set by settlers to clear the forest, association members said. "Just stopping here at a random point in the forest, there's a red oak, a sweet gum, maple, red maple, red hickory, white hickory, and that's just the overstory (canopy) of tallest trees," Tom McKinney, of West Fork, said, walking along a trail in the Richland Creek area of Newton County. McKinney is a spokesman for the Ozark Headwaters Group of the Arkansas Sierra Club and longtime opponent of Forest Service management practices from clear-cutting to prescribed burning. "In the understory (lower level), we have dogwood and redbud. Under the Forest Service plan, the understory will be cleared out and the overstory will be thinned to a few, younger 'desirable' types of trees," McKinney said. The removal of the layer of fallen leaves on the forest floor, the deep shade of an overstory and most of an understory will leave a forest floor that drains and dries quickly, Bonar said. "Salamanders, newts, frogs, anything amphibian will go in a short period," he said, adding that the region's thin topsoil also will be exposed to erosion, with what he said would be dire consequences for water purity and plants. Use of logging and fire to clear out underbrush has a number of reasons behind it, Farley said. The practice creates elk and other game habitat, and also controls forest-threatening pests and returns the forest to a natural state, she said. Mike Cartwright, head of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission's elk program, agreed that properly managed fire has benefits for plants and animals. A dense canopy with smaller trees beneath robs plants of sunlight, leaving "nothing for animals to eat except for the animals that live in trees," he said. People living near the Ozark Forest, meanwhile, seem left out of the calculations, Searcy County Judge John Hinchey said. In September, the Searcy County Quorum Court declared that any elk causing private property damage is a public nuisance and could be shot. The decision came after years of ranchers and residents complaining of losing pastures, fences and gardens to the animals, Hinchey said. The animals are protected by the Game and Fish Commission, which issues a limited number of tags for annual fall hunts. No one has fired a shot under the ordinance yet because the first person who kills an elk, Game and Fish will take him to the Supreme Court, Hinchey said. "Before we passed this ordinance, (the commission) couldn't have cared less," he said. "They are working with us now." A similar ordinance was presented to the Newton County Quorum Court this month. Cartwright said it took more than 20 years for the elk herd to grow to an estimated 450 to 500 animals. An increase in legal hunting goes into effect this year. Elk tags from the commission will go to 37, up from as few as 20 and as many as 30 in previous years, he said. More management to draw elk to publicly owned land with water and forage will curtail private landowners' problems, he said. Those changes were in progress before Searcy County passed its ordinance, he said. The commission is buying land for the elk herd, which started with 112 animals brought in from Colorado and Nebraska in the early 1980s. The Forest Service's controlled burning and logging throughout the Ozark National Forest will create a more open forest with more grass, which benefits game and non-game species, Cartwright said. Hinchey had a different view: "They're killing off all the big, pretty trees. All this is being done so a big doctor or a big lawyer can shoot an elk. They're going to keep burning and killing off the old forest so they can have a giant elk herd just for that." The wildlife association sides with Hinchey. "Should the U.S. Forest Service even be managing our public lands to accommodate the ever-expanding foraging needs of a non-native species?" the group said in a recent statement regarding the elk. "We think not." The association said it had not received answers to numerous questions, including how large a herd the Forest Service is planning, what is the area's capacity for elk in the area, how much forest will be burned, bulldozed and converted to savannah and pasture for elk habitat, and how will agencies compensate landowners for damages caused by elk. The Newton and Searcy county quorum courts have both adopted a resolution proposed by the association asking that the National Park Service, which manages the Buffalo National River, the Forest Service and Game and Fish come up with a management plan that includes monitoring the effect of the elk on native species. Elk are native to the Ozarks, according to Cartwright. They were killed off in the region in the 1840s as settlers and hunters moved west. Elk are big animals that don't reproduce quickly, and could not recover from the first surge of western hunters as deer did, he said. Bonar, association co-chairman Barry Weaver and other association members interviewed said the eastern elk is extinct and that the Rocky Mountain species introduced in the 1980s is not the same. It is a species adapted to open ranges and not closed forest in proximity to rural landowners, they said, adding that burning and clearing would not be necessary of the species was native to the area. Also, the non-native elk had clearly achieved a foothold and thrived to the point of becoming a nuisance, which also means burning and clearing is not necessary, they said. "I just don't think they do a better job of managing the forest than God," Bonar said of the Forest Service. |
