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Prairie-Hills Chapter of the Audubon Society works on a wide variety of projects (click the Mission tab above for more information). A list of current activities can be found to the right. |
Sand Creek Project. View a map of the botanical values of Sand Creek (map 1, map 2), a map of the wildlife value, a map of rare plants, and a map of the special designations of the site. The Biodiversity Conservation Alliance submitted an Amended Petition to the Wyoming EQC for Designation of the Area as Very Rare or Uncommon (Docket No. 09-1102). Rattlesnake Timber Project. Rattlesnake Timber Project Alerts. Here is a Sample Comment Letter for the project. For more information read the following. RATTLESNAKE TIMBER SALE ALERT - (11/23 deadline) -
PROTECT SAND CREEK!
The Bearlodge Ranger District (Black Hills National Forest) has released the Draft EIS for the Rattlesnake Forest Management Project, which proposes a very large timber sale that encircles the Sand Creek Roadless Area, (which is in Black Hills of Wyoming to the west of Spearfish, SD and south of Beulah, Wyoming). It may result in controlled burns and some mechanized fuel treatment within the Roadless Area and it will impact, with roads and logging, a relatively wild area of the Black Hills National Forest, which surrounds the roadless area. This is a very special area of the forest, -- The Roadless area is surrounded with relatively wild looking landscape and provides exceptional opportunity for a back country hiking experience, in a very, very beautifully, wild looking place. It has rare plant communities and rare plants, an exceptional stream, a rare fish, trout fisheries ,cliffs, wetlands, large pine yellow-bark trees, montane grasslands, lots of deciduous forest and deciduous under-story. It is very lush in places. The proposed timber sale could have been written by a timber company executive and basically promotes the timber sale as a way to supply timber, prevent crown fires and prevent spread of mountain pine beetles, although there is currently no beetle outbreak in the project area. It gives short shrift to biodiversity, scenery and back-country recreation values. We ask folks to write in to Forest Service in protest of this sale. On their web site Friends of Norbeck has a -- point and click "pre-fab'-- letter you can send painlessly, without writing anything except your name and address (scroll down for the web link). PHAS web site has a sample letter from scoping period a year ago. Both web sites provide more data and information on the area, if you want to write an original letter.
Some points to raise, could be to express you concerns/values and ask them to: protect the roadless area, protect the back-country hiking/camping experience of the area, protect the pristine/natural appearing landscape, protect the scenery - especially as seen while in back-country, reduce the road density and create more, large areas without roads, protect the heritage sites, protect rare plant communities and rare plants, protect "at risk" wildlife & their habitat, prevent fragmentation of forest, protect old growth and late successional forest, protect large yellow barks, protect snags, protect of riparian & other wet areas and water quality. If you have hiked in the area and love it, please write about that.
The best alternative the Forest Service provides is alternative D, but that still has too much timber cutting in the south east part of the project area (near Balm of Gilead area)
To view the project DEIS: http://www.fs.fed.us/r2/blackhills/projects/nepa/public_docs/rattlesnake_project/index.shtml Comment Period Ends: 11/23/2009, Send comments by post (postmarked Nov 23rd) to: USDA Forest Service, PO Box 680, 101 S. 21st Street, Sundance, WY 82729-0680, (Telephone: 307-283-1361, Fax: 307-283-3727) or send comments by e-mail before midnight to: comments-rocky-mountain-black-hills-bearlodge@fs.fed.us or to ekrueger@fs.fed.us or skozel@fs.fed.us If you miss the deadline, we still suggest you send in comments, just spend less time on them. Forest management choices can be influenced by politics/public opinion, so it does not hurt to send in late comments. Here is the address for the Rattlesnake Project website to download a copy of the document http://www.fs.fed.us/r2/blackhills/projects/nepa/public_docs/rattlesnake_project/index.shtml generic Black Hills web site for other documents of interest EASY COMMENTING Friends of Norbeck has an alert on Rattlesnake timber sale, with a pre-fab, on-line sample letter to send in (click and send.) They also present more reference data . This is the link to Friends of Norbeck alert http://friends-of-norbeck.ning.com/profiles/blogs/sand-creek-timber-sale
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A registered chapter of the National Audubon Society
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