By PAULA TRACY, InDepthNH.org
CONCORD – A lawsuit brought against the White Mountain National Forest Service opposing its plan to log and develop recreation opportunities and protect from runoff Lakes Tarleton and Katherine and a tract near Gorham known as the Peabody West project is not being supported by eight New Hampshire conservation organizations and one individual.
Standing Trees, based in Vermont, https://www.standingtrees.org/ whose mission is to see old growth forests return to New England, filed a suit against the federal project on May 16.
Led by the Society for the Protection of NH Forests https://www.forestsociety.org/, the New Hampshire group filed an amicus brief in federal district court, here Nov. 14 in support of the White Mountain National Forest, saying the plan is well thought out and balances goals set out in its 2005 Forest Plan. And it argues that the projects represent only 1 percent of the forest which they argue Standing Trees wants to carve out as a sort of wilderness area.
The amicus group, which includes the New Hampshire Timberland Owners Association, the Appalachian Mountain Club, the NH Wildlife Federation, the Ruffed Grouse and American Woodcock Society, the Audubon Society of New Hampshire, the Nature Conservancy, the Granite State Division of the Society of American Foresters and Charlie Niebling, says in its pleadings that the project furthers the goals of the 2025 Forest Plan which many of them worked on, advancing goals of recreation and timber management.
The Tarleton Integrated Resource Plan in the White Mountain Forest Pemi Ranger District was approved by Josh Sjostrom, district ranger about a year ago.
It also approved a logging plan for a tract near Gorham, called the Peabody West Integrated Resources Project, which is also being appealed by Standing Trees and is part of the amicus brief.
The Tarleton plan, which has been twice revised and received over 600 comments since inception in 2019 looks to log on 755 acres, generating 5 million measured board feet of wood, reconstruct about 1.5 miles of road, rebuild a boat launch and recontour parking at Lake Katherine and provide fencing and barriers to make it more resilient to storm and storm runoff.
A copy of the revised plan is here:https://www.fs.usda.gov/project/?project=56394
The revised plan calls for a 100-foot no-cut buffer on Lake Tarleton and a 100-foot no-cut of White Pine around Lake Katherine to protect bald eagles and importantly, a 500-foot buffer around the Appalachian Trail which cuts through the tract. The trail is considered a national treasure, 2,190 miles in length from Georgia to Maine.
After numerous public hearings on the plan the group Standing Trees filed federal litigation alleging the U.S. Forest Service unlawfully failed to consider climate, biodiversity, and clean water in both projects.
The suit seeks to protect the biodiverse forests around Lake Tarleton and in the northern Presidential Range. The tract is near Mount Moosilauke which was covered in snow Tuesday, offering a dramatic contrast to the trees and the quiet lakes below.
According to the Standing Trees press release, at filing in May, “Vermont Law and Graduate School’s Environmental Advocacy Clinic filed suit today in the United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire on behalf of forest protection group Standing Trees.
“Asking the court to set aside the projects, the lawsuit cites legal violations, including the Forest Service’s failures to substantiate need, evaluate alternatives, fully disclose the environmental impacts, specify the impacts of the projects on mature and old-growth forests, avoid impacts on endangered species like the Northern Long-eared Bat, avoid impacts to the Great Gulf Inventoried Roadless Area, and finally to protect the water quality of exceptional water bodies including Lake Tarleton, which is among the largest, cleanest, and least developed lakes in the White Mountain National Forest.
“The Forest Service has displayed zero interest in collaborating with the public to improve either one of these reckless logging projects,” Zack Porter, executive director of Standing Trees, said in the release.
The organization states it works to protect federal and state public lands across New England.
“The Forest Service has had ample opportunity to involve and learn from local communities, respond to new presidential direction, and adapt its plans to changing conditions. The public deserves better and we have no choice but to take the agency to court,” it wrote.
But the amicus group wrote the Forest Service has provided more than adequate public input and has made changes in response and that the fundamentals of the plan are sound and in keeping with the 2005 Forest Plan, which many of them worked on.
In its amicus pleadings, the group writes that the forest service “gave careful, thoughtful consideration in approving the project, emphasized the role of public participation and the benefits the project would bring to the WMNF by furthering the goals and objectives of the plan,” which include recreation and extraction of fibre wood products.
The brief said the agency which directs the multiple use, 800,000-acre White Mountain National Forest looked at other alternatives and applied appropriate due diligence.
The Tarleton project and the implications of this decision have national implications as they involve the Appalachian Trail in both cases.
This 2,190-mile trail from Georgia to Maine bisects both projects and there is national importance to buffer and protect them.
In the case of Tarleton, a picturesque parcel of land near the Vermont border, was once eyed for development before a bust in the real estate market in the 1980s.
For most of the past century, the 5,500 acres and five ponds of the old Lake Tarleton Club were used for summer relaxation which also involved the Jewish community which was rare for a club at its time.
Established by E.B. Pike in 1909, the clubhouse had 200-bedrooms and two, nine-hole Donald Ross designed golf courses. It was later purchased by the Jacobs family, which had an “unrestricted” clientele, meaning that Jewish people were allowed. At the time, other clubs excluded them, according to the publication New Hampshire-Then And Now.
The land was purchased for industrial logging by Boise-Cascade Properties for $2 million in the 1970s.
When it came up for sale again in the late 1990s, just as International Paper was selling what is now the Connecticut Lakes Headwaters Working Forest and the state’s north country mill industry was collapsing, former U.S. Senator Judd Gregg, R-NH stepped in. He spent his childhood summers at a boys camp on Tarleton and led the charge to get the federal government to acquire 2,000 acres for the WMNF.
He had an attractive hook for the deal with the feds because the 2,190 mile Appalachian Trail cuts right through the tract, something the federal government would prefer to own than have in private hands which can change.
Some of the very New Hampshire groups filing the amicus brief, including the Forest Society worked with Gregg and Robb Thomson, former commissioner of what is now the state Department of Natural and Cultural Resources to acquire and protect much of the tract for uses such as recreation, logging and habitat management.
The Lake Tarleton tract has no golf now or club house but now includes an undeveloped State Park which includes a sandy beach with a view to the south, and 1.3 miles away closer to Warren, a state Fish and Game boat ramp, also with cartop boat access at Lake Katherine.
The deal more than 20 years ago also led to a federal-state land swap which allowed New Hampshire to re-develop and use for skiing Mittersill in Franconia which is incorporated into Cannon Mountain.
Speaking with InDepthNH.org Tuesday about the filing, Jack Savage, president of the Forest Society, said: “On an 800,000 acre national forest where hundreds of thousands of acres are set aside for roadless and wilderness areas, this is a lawsuit over less than 1 percent of the total acreage.
“The problem with that is that the White Mountain National Forest exists because of a broad public support for a ‘land of many uses.'”
This is the motto for the forest, which is different from a national park in that the land was acquired with a mission to provide wood to mills and produce products along with providing recreation and habitat management.
“This is a special interest (Standing Trees) wanting the forest to be just one thing. As such, I would argue that this threatens public support for the very idea of the forest, one of the great success stories of the past one hundred plus years,” Savage said.
Reached Tuesday evening to respond to the amicus brief, Porter, executive director of Standing Trees, said it is a sad reflection on the priorities of the conservation groups and Niebling that they prioritize their stance over the law, noting he believes that the Forest Service is violating the National Environmental Policy Act, its own Forest Plan and its process with the decision.
The court will decide, Porter said.
Porter said there was no attempt to work with local property owners directly impacted in the decisions and that at the outset when Tarleton was acquired the plan was to protect and enhance the area with “wilderness qualities.”
He said the Forest Service refused to give Standing Trees information it requested on the ages of the stands both in the Tarleton and Peabody plans before the suit and that only now are they finding that there is old growth in the Peabody plan.
Lawsuit filings here: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68535375/standing-trees-inc-v-us-forest-service/.
