June 22, 2015 Laurence Crabtree Eldorado National Forest Supervisor C/o Jennifer Ebert Eldorado National Forest 100 Forni Road Placerville, California 95667 Sent via email to:
[email protected] Re: Comment on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the Proposed King Fire Restoration Project Dear Supervisor Crabtree, These comments are submitted on behalf of Sierra Forest Legacy, the Sierra Club, and the Center for Sierra Nevada Conservation. We have reviewed the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the King Fire Restoration Project and associated documents. In addition, we have attended the public Forest Service King Fire Open House in Placerville and attended four site visits with various staff from the Forest Service, scientists and stakeholders since the fire event. Sierra Forest Legacy is very familiar with this landscape and we have been engaged in fire restoration efforts with the Forest Service since 1992 post-Cleveland Fire Recovery. In 1993 we successfully negotiated increased burned tree retention standards for the Cleveland Fire Recovery area which, to our knowledge, was the first time larger fire-killed trees were left standing for future ecological benefits in the Sierra Nevada. The concept of “life- boating” large ecological structures (large stand snags, large logs) into the recovering forest was a new concept at the time. The Eldorado National Forest should be proud of current and former staff who led the way in supporting what is now a fundamental ecological concept, twenty-three years ago. The purpose of our DEIS comments is to help inform and influence your final decision to choose a post-fire restoration strategy that provides for ecological integrity, ecosystem resilience, and species viability throughout the restoration process and to ensure that future generations may experience and enjoy a structurally and biologically complex, and ecologically rich post-fire landscape.