Response to USFS Jazz Timber Sale Decision
Channel: Jim Lockhart
Date: 2012-10-04

The US Forest Service issued a Decision Notice and Environmental Assessment for the Jazz Timber Sale on September 7th, 2012. 

 Bark groundtruthers have spent more than 600 hours to survey all proposed Jazz units. 

While nearly 3,000 individuals provided public comment in opposition to the Jazz Timber Sale, the Forest Service has decided not only to proceed with Jazz, but the only change they made was to increase the amount of heavy thinning to "create elk habitat." While couched as a "thinning sale", the project would create 20 new logging landings, each of which is a small clearcut area, and have almost 50 skyline yarding corridors - 15 foot clearcut strips through "no-cut" buffer in Riparian Reserves. 

The final sale puts more forest on the chopping block, admits to additional road impacts, and has no plans to monitor logging impacts on the ground. 
The Jazz Timber Sale is being billed as restoration, yet would allocate time and money to re-build 11 miles of old roads that have been either actively decommissioned or are naturally reincorporating into the landscape, and would construct 0.4 miles of new road. Additionally, the large size and vast span of Jazz makes it very difficult for the public, let alone the Forest Service, to accurately gauge the environmental effects.