From Hendersonville Times-News:
Conservation groups are raising the alarm after the U.S. Forest Service unveiled a draft proposal to designate nearly 700,000 acres of the Pisgah-Nantahala National Forest as suitable for logging in its new management plan for the next 15-plus years.
Environmental leaders say the proposed “suitable timber base” puts logging ahead of restoration and recreation, while undermining the collaborative process now underway by including contentious areas such as Bluff Mountain, Big Ivy and South Mills River in zones that could be cut.
U.S. Forest Service officials and groups advocating for more logging to benefit game species say the conservationists are overstating the threat. The plan is still a draft subject to change, they argue, and any cutting on the 1.1 million-acre forest would be limited by science, budgets and community input.
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