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George Washington National Forest (VA)
George Washington National Forest (VA): Background
Virginians are increasingly placing greater value on our public lands for outdoor activities and nature tourism, wilderness experiences, and environmental protection of natural resources as we seek to leave a legacy of forest stewardship for our children’s children.
The Southern Environmental Law Center is working with a coalition of conservation groups to make this a priority for the George Washington National Forest in western Virginia. The coalition has set forth the following principles for a common-sense approach to protecting the GW, advocating that the revised management plan do the following:
- Emphasize backcountry recreation such as hiking, camping, bird-watching, horseback riding, mountain biking, hunting and fishing.
- Ensure that all watersheds, sources of clean water and native brook trout streams are fully protected.
- Fully protect all “inventoried” roadless areas as petitioned by the Governor of Virginia. Identify and fully protect all other remaining roadless tracts.
- Fully protect all areas identified in “Virginia’s Mountain Treasures: The Unprotected Wildlands of the George Washington National Forest.” These areas provide the last, best places for outstanding recreation in the backcountry, as well as intact habitat for migratory songbirds, black bear and other wildlife.
- Respond to the threat of climate change by restoring and protecting wildlife migration corridors.
- Fully protect all existing old-growth forests and maintain sizeable uncut buffers and natural linkages around these areas.
- Fully protect all areas recommended by the Virginia Division of Natural Heritage for designation as Special Biological Areas. Also thoroughly survey West Virginia portion of the GW for special sites.
- Fully protect all rare, threatened and endangered species listed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Virginia Division of Natural Heritage.
- Fully protect and buffer rare and sensitive habitat conditions such as springs, seeps, rocky slopes and outcrops, steep slopes, erosion-prone soils and rare forest types.
- Take vigorous action to protect native species on the GW, particularly hemlocks which are at serious risk from the woolly adelgid, an invasive pest, and to reintroduce the blight-resistant American chestnut when fully developed.
- Address the encroachment of non-native invasive species. Restore remote interior forests to help stop the influx of invasive species by closing unneeded roads that cannot be properly maintained and that act as corridors for many of these invasive species.
- Halt below-cost logging that loses millions of American taxpayers’ dollars.
- Identify and recommend all areas that qualify for Wilderness Study Area and Wild & Scenic River designation.
- Only when necessary, use logging to open cleared, shrubby areas used by certain wildlife, and locate any such areas, called “early successional habitat,” close to existing roads and existing open areas on private or public lands to lessen the impacts of forest fragmentation across the landscape. If early successional forest must be maintained for some species, selected sites should be limited to those that have been recently logged.
- Avoid using “prescribed” burns in moist areas and other areas where they are not appropriate, and allow lightning ignitions to burn in a contained manner.
- Fully recognize the vital role lightning ignitions and other natural disturbances play in promoting biological diversity and new growth and maintaining forest health.
Forests For the Future coalition
USFS web page on the George Washington