NEW LAND MANAGEMENT PLAN AMENDMENT PROPOSED FOR THE FOUR SO CAL FORESTS, PART 2: MORE ON WHAT IT MEANS FOR THE TRABUCO DISTRICT
Our backyard Santa Ana Mountains are managed by the Trabuco District of the Cleveland National Forest. See the previous newsletter for links to the extensive online maps and background on this new Amendment of the current (2006) Land Management Plan. The proposed Amendment is to determine what Land Use Zone classifications the Forests‘ Inventoried Roadless Areas (IRAs) will have, which in turn determines how they will be managed and what activities will be allowed in them.
The three Land-Use Alternatives discussed last time have corresponding Monitoring Alternatives, which define what the Forest Service will look at, over 5-year report periods, to monitor progress toward fulfilling the Plan’s management goals. A comparison of the Monitoring Alternatives that cover native vegetation and habitats shows that Alternatives A and B continue the monitoring that’s been done since 2005 at least, except that B adds a couple of items. Alternative C covers the same basic monitoring items--fuel/vegetation management at the WUI, maintaining the natural fire regime and vegetation/habitat health, reducing invasives, balancing resource-conservation needs with public/recreation needs--but with an emphasis on working with natural processes that is much more in line with current ecological research and resource-management thinking than Alternatives A or B.
