This week, the U.S. Forest Service proposed what is now the largest public land logging scheme of the century (and possibly history) in Colorado, “Pike’s Peak Vegetation Management,”194,567 acres of industrial logging—13,500 acres within four protected Roadless Areas—and  244,210 acres of toxic herbicide spraying in the Pike and San Isabel National Forests in El Paso, Teller, and Douglas Counties.

The federal land management agency appears to have been emboldened by a multi-year media blackout across all of Colorado on what, up to this point, were successively the three largest logging projects in state history, to propose a fourth, even larger and more destructive one with the public kept almost completely in the dark.  

“The Forest Service is proposing a huge project that will likely have detrimental impacts on important resources, including four Roadless Areas and three wildlife species listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act,” says Denver-based forest management consultant Rocky Smith, building on his more than forty years’ experience. “They provide only general information on which to respond to the proposal and give us only fourteen days to do so. This is not the way to manage the public’s forests.”

Currently, these “Big Four” logging schemes total almost half a million acres (474,872) of National Forests along the entire length of Colorado’s Front Range Rocky Mountains in seven counties, including 61,439 acres across seventeen Roadless Areas. All logging projects include clearcutting, as well as logging in endangered species habitat and old-growth forests.

The imminent “Lower North South Vegetation Management” in the Pike National Forest 30 miles southwest of Denver in Jefferson, Douglas, Park, and El Paso Counties involves 116,600 acres of public lands logging, including 18,573 acres across seven Roadless Areas.

The recently begun “Black Diamond” in the Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests in Larimer County, involves 120,455 acres of public lands logging, including 21,503 acres across four Roadless Areas.

The ongoing “St. Vrain” in the Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests in Boulder and Larimer Counties, involves 43,250 acres of public lands logging, including 7,863 acres across two Roadless Areas.

Pike’s Peak and Lower North South are being rushed through under a controversial, scientifically-debunked federal “emergency authorization” that has been expanded to 112 million acres—59 percent of National Forests—weeks after Trump’s executive order for expanding timber production on public lands. This logging coincides with the Forest Service’s rollback of the historic “Roadless Rule” across 60 million acres and U.S. Senator Hickenlooper’s introduction of the Orwellian “Fix Our Forests” logging bill into the Senate.

The Forest Service is giving the public less than two weeks to comment on the Pike’s Peak project during the holiday season, expecting as in the past, that zero Colorado media outlets will report on the logging and, therefore, almost no Coloradans will get the chance to engage in participatory democracy on the biggest threat the state has ever seen on public lands.  

Contrary to a industry/government disinformation campaign, the agency’s main talking points for such supposed “fuel reduction” logging—“community protection” and “reduction” of high-severity wildfire—are debunked by the consensus body of peer-reviewed science, as well as the Forest Service’s own studies, with the conflict privately admitted to even by Colorado Forest Restoration Institute, which promotes and carries out “fuel reduction” logging. To the contrary, studies show logging more likely to threaten homes and lives by spreading fires to communities after drying out and heating up forests and opening them to wind.