Responding to the Oregonian story on the Jazz Timber Sale

Thank you for considering writing a letter to the editor of the Oregonian in response to the recent story on the Jazz Timber Sale: Mount Hood logging disputes shift as clear cuts decline and thinning projects rise. To help you in submitting a letter, here are a few points about the Jazz Timber Sale and instructions for submitting a letter to the Oregonian.

Information about the Jazz Timber Sale, taken from Forest Service documents and gathered by Bark groundtruthers, that might help inform your letter:
- The Jazz Timber Sale would log 2,000 acres spread over 30 square miles, covering the entire Collawash Watershed.

- The Collawash River, where the Jazz Timber Sale was planned, is home to the last viable run of winter coho salmon.

- The Collawash Watershed is the most geologically unstable watershed in all of Mt. Hood National Forest. In 2011 Bark found 7 landslides and road failures within the Jazz Timber Sale project area.

- The Jazz Timber Sale would require 12 miles of previously decommissioned roads to be re-opened. Of those 12 miles, 7 miles were "actively" decommissioned with tax-payer dollars invested in removing and closing the road. The other 5 miles were "passively" decommissioned, closed for decades and recovered naturally into the forest.

- The Forest Service listed the cost of re-opening these decommissioned roads at $310,000. That means the public is footing the bill for undoing restoration in the Collawash Watershed.

- The roads that would be re-opened for the Jazz Timber Sale would be decommissioned to a lesser degree of recovery after logging. One example is a 0.9 mile length of road that was actively decommissioned in 2010, being "ripped" for the entire length and bermed at the opening of the road. This same road segment would be re-opened for Jazz but only the first 1/8 mile would be "ripped" after logging.

- The Forest Service's final decision for the Jazz Timber Sale included no clear plan for implementing or monitoring Best Management Practices (BMPs) which are designed to mitigate water quality damage from timber operations.

- The Forest Service's Environmental Analysis of the Jazz Timber Sale indicates logging will occur on steep slopes (40% slopes and steeper) in 939 acres of the sale.

- Bark groundtruthed every unit of the Jazz Timber Sale, dedicating more than 600 volunteer hours to the effort. During groundtruthing we found waterways that were not included on Forest Service maps of the timber sale and roads listed as "existing alignments" that no longer exist on the landscape.

- You can find more information at the Jazz Timber Sale project page on our website: http://www.bark-out.org/topic.php?id=jazz


To submit a letter to the Oregonian:
- Email your comment to [email protected]
- Make sure your letter is no more than 150 words.
- Include your full address and daytime phone number, for verification only. Your letter will not be considered without this information.
- Please note that letters may be edited for length and clarity by Oregonian staff.
-You can read the original Oregonian article at this link: http://bark-out.org/article.php?id=894