United States Department of the Interior

BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT Coos Bay District Office 1300 Airport Lane, North Bend, OR 97459 Web Address: http://www.blm.gov/or/districts/coosbay E-mail: [email protected] Telephone: (541) 756-0100 Toll Free: (888) 809-0839 Fax: (541) 751-4303

IN REPLY REFER TO

5400/1792 (ORC030) DOI-BLM-OR-C030-2012-0004-EA Soup Creek VRH Environmental Assessment

July 20, 2015

Dear Citizen:

The Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) for the Soup Creek Variable Retention Harvest (VRH) Environmental Assessment (DOI-BLM-OR-C030-2012-0004-EA), released on December 17, 2014, has been withdrawn and revised in its entirety to provide additional clarifying information relating to determining significance.

While revising this FONSI, it came to light that the EA contained several minor numerical errors within the wildlife section. Therefore, the Soup Creek Variable Retention Harvest (VRH) Environmental Assessment (EA), released on December 17, 2014, has also been updated to correct these numerical errors. The result of these changes does not change the results of the analysis and only clarifies the supporting information for the effects analysis. The summary of changes for this July 23, 2015 update of the EA is provided below, followed by the summary of changes made for the EA released on December 17, 2014.

The Soup Creek VRH Environmental Assessment and signed Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) have been posted to the district’s website: http://www.blm.gov/or/districts/coosbay/plans/index.php. This project has been designed to implement management objectives and direction of the 1995 Coos Bay District Resource Management Plan and ecological restoration principles designed by Drs. Norman Johnson and Jerry Franklin. The Environmental Assessment analyzes a No Action Alternative and a Proposed Action Alternative for conducting variable retention harvest in the General Forest Management Area portion of the Matrix Land Use Allocation (LUA).

The treatments would be implemented through a timber sale contract to be offered in FY 2015. A Decision Document has been prepared and a notice will be advertised in the local paper as of the date of this letter.

EA update (July 23, 2015) - Total dispersal habitat acres within the CHU was added in Table III-8, page 52, to reflect the tables additive total of suitable and dispersal-only habitats. The total dispersal habitat (acres) within the watershed (all ownerships) in Table III-9, page 53, was also corrected along with suitable habitat acres and total acres within the action area in Table III-10 on page 53.

Reference to the relevant percent harvest was adjusted in each Table to match these changes. In addition, reference to suitable habitat in Table III-10 was differentiated into two rows to show general regional data with site specific data. Reference to spotted owl site in the title of this table, along with the corresponding row heading, was changed to better reflect the information’s intent. Lastly, correlating sentences on page 58 of the effects analysis were changed to reflect the number changes within Table III-8 and III-9. 2

Upon reviewing public comments from the draft EA and FONSI, released on August 6, 2014, the BLM made some notable changes to the EA to provide additional information. These do not constitute substantive changes or result in different outputs or alternatives; therefore, additional effects analysis is not needed. Additions do not change the proposed action or effects, and only provide additional clarity to the analysis.

The following is a summary of the notable changes to the EA from the draft. Appendix D has been added (p. 112-116) to provide the public comments with detailed response and EA changes.

RMP - There was a comment that the BLM did not adequately consider an alternative to use prescribed fire to manage seral stage diversity as mentioned in the RMP. Response – We have included additional information on page 5 to clari