District Ranger Joe Koloski announced Monday the draft decision to implement Alternative 4 for the Butler Hollow project. The Environmental Assessment prepared by Koloski found no significant impact to the proposed action.
After 45 days for objections on the EA and the draft decision the fate of Butler Hollow will be in the hands of the Mark Twain Forest Supervisor Bill Nightingale, who was appointed in February 2013 and has more than 30 years with the US Forest Service.
The Forest Service proposes the following on 3,607 acres of Butler Hollow:
- Commercial hardwood restoration thinning on 422 acres and commercial pine and hardwood restoration thinning on 117 acres.
- Non-commercial understory vegetation control on 574 acres.
- Prescribed fires on 3,607 acres for decades, but no herbicides.
- Cedar removal on 840 acres of glades and 493 acres of woodlands, but no commercial harvesting of cedar.
- Approximately 1.6 miles of roads will be reconstructed. About 3.6 miles of existing roads will be decommissioned after use as temporary roads, and about 0.2 miles of newly constructed temporary road would be decommissioned after use. Also, 2.2 miles of existing roads will be decommissioned in riparian areas.
Documents and legal land descriptions are at www.tinyurl.com/BH-MarkTwain
Objections to the Environmental Assessment and Draft Decision can be emailed to objections-eastern-region@fs.fed.us Subject: Mark Twain Butler Hollow, Project Number 43537.
Include specific reasons for objecting to Alternative 4, suggested remedies to resolve objections, and your name, address and telephone.
Snail mail objections to: USDA Forest Service, Suite 700 PAL/LSC Staff, 626 E. Wisconsin Avenue, Milwaukee, WI 53202, or fax to: (414) 944-3963.