Billboards criticize High Knob logging
Tuesday, August 23, 2005

By STEPHEN IGO
Times-News
Kingsport, TN

WISE - Otis Ward's 31-plus years living in the high country of Wise County stopped being enjoyable for him in 1998 or '99 when a logging operation around his home came in and took out the trees.

Ward's home is off Robinson Knob Road within the High Knob area that sprawls across Wise and Scott counties, and within the boundaries of the George Washington/Jefferson National Forest's Clinch Ranger District. A lot of privately held lands are within national forest boundaries.

"They just about ruined our forest back here where we are," Ward said Monday.

He lives about a half mile beyond the Bark Camp Lake turnoff above Tacoma.

"They made an awful big timber cut in '98 or '99. We used to see deer and hear turkeys gobble and owls hoot all the time, but you don't get none of that now. It's pitiful how they tore the forest up, up here. And if we don't put a stop to it, there won't be nothing left for (future generations)."

It's one of the reasons Ward is a member of The Clinch Coalition, a regional environmental organization that opposes the U.S. Forest Service's plans to have more timber operations in the High Knob area, specifically what the JNF's Clinch Ranger District dubs the Bark Camp timber sale.

On Monday, the group displayed its discontent with two billboards in Wise County - one near Big Stone Gap and the other near Coeburn. Clinch Coalition spokeswoman Kirsty Zahnke said in a press release the billboard campaign is designed to "expose the negative impacts that the intensive and continual logging on High Knob has on future opportunities for our children and our communities."

Ward said the group is "trying to save our watersheds back here. The (USFS) is trying to cut our timber, and the main thing we're trying to do is save our watershed. We hope this wakes people up. A lot of people don't even know what's going on in our forests that they're cutting our timber or anything like that."

Zahnke said logging operations threaten an "astounding array of species. In addition to being one of the most scenic and treasured places in Southwest Virginia, the area is a paradise for the outdoor enthusiast."

JoBeth Brown, spokeswoman for the GW/JNF, said the Bark Camp timber sale - actually a collection of spots targeted for logging that are scattered about the general area around Bark Camp Lake - has gone through about a decade of challenges from environmentalists. Originally proposed to total about 1,400 acres to be logged, the JNF trimmed that by about half and agreed to shave another 82 acres off as well, for about 600 acres now being sold to loggers.

The Clinch Coalition lost a court challenge more than a year ago, and sales of the plots are under way, Brown said. Loggers have three years to cut trees after awarded a sale.

"There have been a lot of changes (to the original proposal) over the years to meet everybody's needs, and it's a very valuable sale to promote forest health," she said.

Creating habitat for different wildlife species is another aspect of the Bark Camp sale, Brown said.

"We feel real good about these sales and what we want to achieve with them to promote forest health," she said.

Clinch Coalition spokesman Steve Brooks said while his group doesn't agree that logging operations are healthy for forests, the group's billboards attempt to make the point that timber sales aren't healthy for taxpayers. He said taxpayer-subsidized logging in the national forests cost $8 million between 1992-97 and about $1 billion nationwide between 1995-97.

"They stopped keeping records because it shows how bad it is," Brooks said.

More info: The Clinch Coalition August 23, 2005 Press Release (includes photos of billboards)