GOLDEN POND, Ky. (AP) - The U.S. Forest Service is preparing for a series of public hearings next month over logging and management plans at Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area.
The meetings come on the heels of the federal agency halting new timber sales projects after several months of public outcry.
Forestry officials told the Murray Ledger & Times (https://bit.ly/1PbWlb8) that logging and burning, which also has raised concerns, are tools the agency is using to improve the health of the woodland areas.
Land Between the Lakes spokeswoman Jan Bush blames much of the opposition on bad communication between federal officials and local residents. She said officials at Lake Between the Lakes are looking forward to improving communication with surrounding residents.
Local leaders have been lobbying the forest service to focus on preserving the area’s old growth hardwood forests and to stop logging and burning hundreds of acres to create oak grasslands.
Bush said the recent logging and prescribed burning at Demumbers and Pisgah bays is simply part of a clean-up project to remove loblolly pines that were damaged in a 2009 ice storm. But people opposed to the logging have expressed concerns that the operation is part of a landscaping plan that was proposed in 2014 but never approved. That proposal called for returning much of the recreation area to barrens, oak grasslands savannas and open-canopy woods.
Timber Program Manager Dennis Wilson said he and his team are trying to improve the forest and compared their work to that of construction workers who are building a new Eggners Ferry Bridge over Kentucky Lake.
“They’re working on the new bridge here,” he said. “They want to drive across this new bridge as soon as possible because it’s safer and it provides better access not only now, but for the future,” he said. “What we have is very similar up on the north end of Land Between the Lakes. We have management activities being proposed and implemented that include wildlife habitat improvement projects and forest health projects. They’re designed not only now but for our future. What you see up there . it’s construction.”
He said restoring the forest to a healthy ecosystem could take years of work.
“There’s a ton of science that goes into this that is not easily understood, but I’m OK with that because it gives me a reason to get up every morning and try to help people understand,” he said.
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Information from: Murray Ledger & Times, https://www.murrayledger.com
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