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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Menu Guide Wedding Weather Subscribe Contact Us July 11, 2005 Thinning proposal hashed out By Robert Plain Ashland Daily Tidings The city subcommittee working to draft comments for the U.S. Forest Service plan to thin vegetation in Ashland’s watershed is working on a hectic schedule to draft and submit comments by the Aug. 8 deadline. On Thursday, the Ashland Forest Resiliency Community Alternative committee met at the fire station to divvy up the workload among its members and further devise a strategy for submitting comments to the Forest Service. The AFRCA committee is the first of its kind in the nation. It has authored a community alternative to the Forest Service’s plan to treat areas of the watershed in an attempt to make it more fire-adaptive. The Healthy Forests Restoration Act, passed by Congress in 2003, allows the Forest Service to partner with a municipality when developing a management plan for wildfire prevention. The Ashland Ranger District and the City of Ashland are the first to take advantage of this provision. Since then, similar relationships have been entered in Bend and Flagstaff, Ariz. The AFRCA committee is actually a subcommittee of the Ashland Forest Lands Commission. Consisting of experts in almost all fields of forest ecology, the group last year wrote an expansive alternative to the Forest Service’s plan to thin and treat areas of the watershed to prevent a catastrophic fire from damaging the ecosystem of the forest or the community of Ashland. This month, the group is holding a series of public meetings to develop comments on how the Forest Service can improve both alternatives and, eventually, implement the needed work. Members of AFRCA said on Thursday that one of the primary differences between the Forest Service alternative and the one they wrote is that they had the leeway to account for treatments that would also improve or aid the forest ecology. The federal legislation prevents the Forest Service from dealing with issues beyond fire prevention, said a member of AFRCA. AFRCA will meet again Tuesday at 4:30 p.m., Thursday at 7 p.m., July 19 at 4:30 p.m., and July 22 at 4 p.m.. All four meetings will be held in the Siskiyou Room of the Community Development Building at 51 Winburn Way. Staff writer Robert Plain can be reached at 482-3456 x 3040 or [email protected]. DailyTidings.com Home Page Archives | Revels | Classifieds | Real Estate Guide | Weather | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2005 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Free Music Downloads Slippers Ceramic Piggy Banks Heloc Calenders 2006 Calendar Women's & Men's Slippers Accelerate Weightloss Products Memory Foam Mattress tcg student loan consolidation Home Equity Loans teleconferencing W2 Forms cortisol; weight loss Diamonds Futures Broker Bad Credit Loans Auto & Personal Loans Search Engine Optimization Free Home-Loan Referrals Sports Betting Website Design & Marketing Student Loans African Safari Conference Calls - $50/Month Security Systems Helzberg Diamonds Currancy Exchange Online Casinos Community Student Loans Bonus Casino Poker Games Homeschooling ink cartridges Mortgage Calculator Mailing Lists Mystery Shopping Jobs Debt Consolidation Loans Canadian Pharmacy Air Purifiers Click Here .:Advertisements:. Site Search: RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams