Photo courtesy The Chaparral Lands Conservancy
By David Hogan, executive director of The Chaparral Lands Conservancy
SAN DIEGO – Conservation groups have sent a letter to officials at the Cleveland National Forest opposing the proposed Laguna Mountains Forest Restoration Project.
The groups condemn the Forest Service’s so-called “restoration” plan to log trees, bulldoze and burn natural chaparral shrublands, and spray herbicide across more than 13,000 acres of scenic mountains near San Diego.
This project is pure Orwellian doublespeak.
It’s not forest “restoration” if you use bulldozers, masticators, chainsaws, herbicides, and fire to beat the environment into conditions that never existed in the first place. National Forest land belongs to everyone and shouldn’t be sacrificed to private companies that stand to massively profit from destroying delicate mountain environments.
The project is a part of broader plans by the Trump administration to roll-back environmental protections for National Forests across the Country, especially with its proposed repeal of the “Roadless Rule” that protects nearly 60 million acres of natural public land from industrialization.
The Forest Service’s core premises and justifications for the Laguna Mountains project are fundamentally false, that thousands of acres of forest vegetation are at risk in a future wildfire event and that recent wildfires burned at uncharacteristically high severity across the project area. In fact, the vast majority of the Project area is naturally chaparral and meadows, not tree forests.
And decades of science prove that high severity fire is normal in chaparral and that chaparral will recover so long as it is left alone and doesn’t burn too frequently.
The Laguna Mountain Recreation Area is located in the mountains of San Diego County fifty miles from downtown San Diego and eighty miles from Brawley and El Centro. The mountains are a top destination for outdoor recreation like hiking, camping, snow play, mountain biking, horseback riding, and hunting.
The Laguna Mountains range from 5,000 to 6,000 feet in elevation so experience mountain weather like winter snow and summer thunderstorms and are one of only a handful of locations in San Diego County with limited areas of natural pine and oak tree forests.
The Laguna Mountains are cherished by our organizations and thousands of residents of San Diego and Imperial counties as a remote and scenic landscape of natural wonders and opportunities for outdoor recreation and reflection. We’re not going to let the Trump Administration literally crush and poison our backyard wilderness into just another southern California industrial hellscape.
David Hogan has worked as a professional environmental advocate for over thirty years. Prior to founding The Chaparral Lands Conservancy in January 2009, Hogan worked for the Center for Biological Diversity for sixteen years to preserve forests, deserts, and chaparral wildlife, plants and wild lands in California, Arizona, and New Mexico. At the Center, Hogan specialized in advocacy to protect imperiled shrublands on southern California National Forests, to protect dwindling vernal pool wetlands, and in improving regional habitat conservation plans such as the San Diego Multiple Species Conservation Plan. Before joining the Center, Hogan filed listing petitions for over two dozen species, including the original petition to list the California gnatcatcher, a species whose subsequent listing set in motion several southern California regional habitat conservation plans. Hogan also helped design a vernal pool restoration project and conducted scientific surveys for the endangered San Diego fairy shrimp. Hogan was a founding member of the boards for the Southern California Steelhead Coalition and the Coalition for Sonoran Desert Protection, and also served on the board of the San Diego League of Conservation Voters. Hogan is currently an active leader of the San Diego Chapter of the Sierra Club.
The mission of The Chaparral Lands Conservancy is to protect shrubland ecosystems as an integral and beautiful feature of California’s natural landscape through land preservation and stewardship. www.chaparralconservancy.org
The views in this editorial reflect the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of East County Magazine. To submit an editorial for consideration, contact editor@eastcountymagazine.org