Federal foresters draw flak for strategy against parasite

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — A Forest Service decision to cut down more than 1,300 trees that were more than 150 years old because of fears of an invasive parasitic plant is being criticized as breaking trust with backers of a thinning project.

The Arizona Daily Sun reported that groups considered stakeholders of the Four Forests Restoration Initiative released a letter calling the Forest Service’s decision to cut “old growth” trees inconsistent with a broad consensus to keep the older trees.

The overall restoration initiative is intended to create a more open forest landscape to prevent wildfires from burning into nearby communities and protect natural resources and recreation sites.

Apache-sitgreaves National Forest supervisor Steve Best said the agency is allowed to cut older trees if the forest health is at stake but must be certain it’s cutting no more than necessary.

“My intent is that it would be very, very rare that we cut a big old tree, and it seems like we cut more than we were planning on doing,” Best said.

The cutting was in a project area mainly in the Apache-sitgreaves National Forest, on the east side of the state.

The stakeholders expect the Forest Service to revisit its planned treatments to modify the trees it had marked for cutting, and Best said that the agency has heard the stakeholders’ complaint.

“We’re working on recalibrating and making sure that we’re careful about cutting an old tree or not,” Best said.

The parasitic plant is small and leafless and drains the water from its host trees, which can affect tree growth and mortality, according to the Forest Service. The dwarf mistletoe affects ponderosa pines and trees like Douglas firs more severely than other trees, the agency has said.

Joe Trudeau, Southwest advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, is a member of the stakeholder group and traveled to the West Escudilla Project to verify the claim of old-tree cutting.

The stakeholders say Trudeau’s data showed that only a small amount of trees had levels of infection that warranted removal.