• The US Forest Service is proposing the Silver Branch Vegetation Management Project in the Ottawa National Forest in the western Upper Peninsula
• The project would involve logging, gravel mine expansion and forest restoration efforts
• Some groups are opposed because they worry about environmental impacts and a decrease in off-road vehicle trails

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The US Forest Service is proposing a massive project in a national forest in Michigan that would log land roughly the size of Detroit, expand gravel mining and build roads.

The Silver Branch Vegetation Management Project would span about 40 miles from north to south on the eastern edge of the Ottawa National Forest in the western Upper Peninsula. The area along the border with Wisconsinincludes habitat for the endangered northern long-eared bat, one of several reasons environmental groups have raised alarms about the project.

The multi-faceted proposal also includes a wild rice seeding project, improvements to campgrounds and lake access and attempts to bolster habitat for the protected Kirtland’s warbler. The whole thing is projected to last around 30 years, with periodic reviews. 

Unlike national parks, national forests serve multiple purposes. They’re set aside for recreation, wildlife habitat and to provide timber. Ottawa National Forest officials say the Silver Branch project is not primarily about logging, it’s about getting the right tree mix for forest maintenance and health. 

However, the project has drawn concerns from a wide range of groups, from environmentalists to off-roaders.

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“It involves 25,000 acres of national forest clear-cutting and yet the determination has been that there would be no significant impacts from such activities. That’s just not plausible,” said Kelly Thayer, a senior policy advocate at the Environmental Law & Policy Center, a Midwest-based legal advocacy group. 

That group and a loose coalition of organizations and businesses expressed concerns about the project in a letter and a 73-page document sent to the US Forest Service. They’re worried that logging would spread invasive species, increase water runoff and impact habitat for protected animals found in the area like gray wolves and northern long-eared bats. They also don’t like that trees more than 100 years old would be taken out.

“The mature forest is most important for sequestering carbon and helping to stabilize our climate,” Thayer said. “Replanting with young trees in their place will not replicate the kind of benefits that the public receives now.”

The groups want to see the project boundary changed to better preserve current and proposed protected wilderness areas. They also want to see an environmental impact statement produced. 

The federal government already put together an environmental assessment and determined there would be “no significant impact” from the project. If the Forest Service pursued an environmental impact statement, it would need to answer tough questions about environmental concerns and potentially propose alternatives.

The Forest Service previously offered a 30-day comment period for the project beginning Dec. 23. It’s planning to open a window for objections in March, though an exact date is not posted. It’s currently anticipating making a decision on the project that same month. 

If the project is approved, it is expected to begin in June.

The project as it stands involves a mix of logging: about 1,500 acres of clear-cutting and around 24,000 acres of a kind of clear-cutting that leaves certain trees. These sections are dispersed throughout the project area (see proposed north, middle and south maps). There would also be around 57,000 acres of other kinds of more-targeted logging. Add up the areas slated to have tree removal and they equal about 130 square miles.

The district ranger in the Bessemer, Iron River and Watersmeet Ranger Districts of the Ottawa National Forest, Trevor Hahka, told Bridge Michigan in an email it’s unclear how much money the project would generate from logging.
“Revenue from timber sales depends on market conditions,” he said.

Who would do the logging has not been decided but would be offered to private contractors through a competitive bidding process. Selected logging companies would then pay fees to the federal government for the timber they harvest and the companies would keep any profits. The money from the fees would go into federal accounts and not stay solely within the Ottawa National Forest. Contracts for gravel mining would also be competitively bid but the gravel wouldnot be sold but used for Forest Service roads.

Hahka said the proposed logging is “not the primary goal” and restoring ecological balance to the woods is. He said there are too many hardwoods, aspen trees that are getting older than desired and conifers that are declining.
“Active management in overstocked or aging stands prevents decline and promotes long-term forest health,” he said. 

The Forest Service, Hahka said, recognizes many of the concerns outlined by the coalition and have included measures to address them. He noted there are protective buffers around known northern long-eared bat roosts, they’re following best practices to reduce water runoff issues and limit the spread of invasive species, and that the project, through thinning and prescribed burns, would increase forest resilience to pests, disease and wildfire, issues amplified by climate change.

Thayer, with the Environmental Law & Policy Center, said that sometimes invasive species spread happens unintentionally during the logging process, when plants and seeds get stuck in equipment tread. He also pointed to findings in the Forest Service’s own environmental assessment that seemed to suggest some fire risk from logging: 

“There is a potential for the accrual of hazardous surface fuels after a timber harvest due to limbs, tops, and dead material within a stand after harvesting,” the environmental assessment reads. “This potentially heightens wildfire risk in stands that contain spruce and fir that have been affected by the spruce budworm and in areas with a heavy conifer component.”

In response to the groups’ asks, Hahka said no activities are proposed in designated wilderness areas, but the Forest Service does not anticipate putting together a full environmental impact statement.

David Carter, a forestry professor at Michigan State University, said the Silver Branch proposal “didn’t really raise any red flags.” He said it looked like a run-of-the-mill Forest Service project that involved some timber harvests, road maintenance and a lot of habitat restoration work.

He said Forest Service officials often become “punching bags” for people who have their hearts in the right place but who are misguided.

“It’s just so stinking hard to do the work, period, but let alone have the additional hurdle of people thinking you’re trying to do harm to the landscape when usually it’s the exact opposite,” he said.

Carter said that, when residents oppose projects like this, it’s mostly a “not in my back yard”-type situation.

“People’s demand for wood products has not gone down. It only goes up,” he said. “And so if we don’t harvest it here, we’re just going to harvest it from somewhere else.”

He said increasingly that ends up being places like Brazil, South Africa or southeast Asia, where “the regulatory infrastructure is not what it is here” in the United States.

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