A federal judge ruled in favor of a U.S. Forest Service (USFS) chaparral removal project on Pine Mountain following a lawsuit brought forth by several environmental organizations and government agencies with concerns about environmental law violations.
“The court concludes that the USFS relied on best available science … and concludes that plaintiffs have failed to demonstrate that the USFS’s reliance on and interpretation of the best available science is arbitrary or capricious,” the ruling stated.
Known as the Reyes Peak Forest Health Project, the project would remove chaparral and trees across 755 acres that extend along Pine Mountain between state Highway 33 and Reyes Peak in Ventura County, bordering Cuyama in Santa Barbara County.
The Los Padres ForestWatch, Environmental Defense Center, Center for Biological Diversity, and Patagonia along with Ventura County and the city of Ojai sued the Forest Service, citing violations of the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, according to court documents. Opponents to the project claimed that the project would harm the forest, wildlife, and Native American cultural sites.
“We are in a wildfire crisis and must take immediate action to protect our forests in Southern California,” Los Padres National Forest Supervisor Chris Stubbs said in a statement. “We are trying to save the remaining trees on Reyes Peak from the devastating effects of a stand-replacing wildfire.”
The project is in a federally designated insect and disease treatment area, meaning that the forest has been facing declining health conditions and threatens the livelihood of trees in the area, said Andrew Madsen, a spokesperson for Los Padres National Forest.
“There’s a lot of new trees starting up, young saplings if you will, and they are in the shadows of these giants,” Madsen said. “We’re proposing to get rid of these small trees because they don’t stand a chance. We’re trying to create a park-like atmosphere with spacing and clearing out the underbrush in the area.”
Clearing out the small trees and chaparral, Madsen said, helps the older trees continue to survive in the face of wildfires because they are no longer competing for resources. According to a Forest Service press release, the project also reduces hazardous surface, ladder, and crown fuels and includes prescribed fire, piling, and burning. Trees between 24-inch and 64-inch diameters would be left alone “unless they pose a safety risk.”
“These areas haven’t seen fires for a long time because firefighters have been successful at keeping the fires small, but now we have all this decadent buildup out there. It’s an unhealthy piece of landscape right now,” Madsen said.
Jeff Kuyper, the Los Padres ForestWatch executive director, told the Sun that there’s no infestation or disease in Pine Mountain that’s unusual and there will always be some background of beetles and parasites.
“There wasn’t anything completely out of the ordinary with Pine Mountain’s ecosystem. It’s a perfectly healthy forest. What the Forest Service is proposing would make the forest less healthy and more prone to infestation, disease, and wildfire,” Kuyper said. “When you remove trees—especially larger trees—from an ecosystem, it opens up the forest floor, lets in more sunlight, dries it more quickly, and under these conditions you are going to get trees that are more stressed and susceptible to wildfire.”
Kuyper said that ForestWatch has been following this project since the Forest Service first announced it to the public in 2020. It garnered a lot of public attention, and the project received more than 16,000 public comments.
“It’s a top priority for our organization to make sure that the forest and chaparral on Pine Mountain are protected, so we were disappointed in the court’s ruling,” he said.
ForestWatch and others involved in the lawsuit have 60 days to file an appeal to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. As of July 25, ForestWatch is still evaluating next steps.
Madsen with the U.S. Forest Service added that the project cannot begin until the 60 days is complete, but the agency is still facing significant storm damage—which could set the Pine Mountain project back while the Forest Service tries to get more of the forest open to the public.
This article appears in Jul 27 – Aug 6, 2023.