On September 18, Indiana Forest Alliance (IFA) staff and Dr. Paul Rothrock, Professor Emeritus at Indiana University and a top botanist in the country, met with State Forester John Seifert and the High Conservation Value Forest (HCVF) determination committee at the Indiana Division of Forestry (DoF) headquarters in Indianapolis. The purpose of this meeting with DoF was to discuss the Morgan-Monroe/Yellowwood Back Country Area and convey the importance of designating this one-of-a-kind biological hotspot in our state forest system as a HCVF.
On May 9, IFA received a Committee Recommendation letter from the DoF with the recommendation to reject our proposal to classify approximately 2,380 acres of forest land in the Backcountry Area (BCA) of Morgan-Monroe and Yellowwood State Forests as a HCVF 2, a designation which would allow this older forest to return to the old growth condition and require DoF to manage the forest to conserve its biological and ecological attributes.
We asked for this meeting with DoF to encourage the Committee to reconsider their rejection recommendation and convince Seifert to accept our HCVF 2 proposal. We made this argument based on FSC guidelines for making these determinations as they apply to “regional significance” and “biological diversity.” We pointed out that there are no other areas in the state forest system (including existing HCVF 2 areas) that contain landscape-level forests of more than a thousand acres in size and have the same floristic quality and overall species diversity in this ecoregion.
Dr. Paul Rothrock emphasized the scientific value of using the Floristic Quality Assessment (FQA) in making these determinations. FQAs are used to determine the conservation value of a natural area by looking at the affinity for lack of disturbance (called a coefficient of conservatism) for each native plant species and the average of this value for all native plant species in an area as well as the species richness or overall diversity of the plant community in the area.
A plant inventory and two FQA’s done on the Morgan-Monroe/Yellowwood BCA by a team of botanists have found it to be of exceptional conservation value and the pinnacle of floristic quality and diversity of this size within the entire Highland Rim Natural Region. The second FQA done with a more complete plant list rated the natural quality of the BCA’s plant community above all but one of 13 other nature preserves and higher than any other nature preserve in the Brown County Hill section of this Natural Region. Dr. Rothrock characterizes the BCA as, “an area of superlatives…a biological hotspot that deserves only the most sophisticated management protocols and the highest conservation priority.”
IFA needs your support in urging Seifert and the DoF accept our proposal to designate a large, landscape-level section within the Backcountry Area (BCA) of Morgan-Monroe and Yellowwood State Forests as High Conservation Value Forest.
The DoF has not made their final decision. We need John Seifert and Governor Eric Holcomb to know the public overwhelmingly wants the DoF to designate this area as an HCVF to protect one of the last refuges of rich, diverse, older forest habitat in our state forest system.
Please act now! A decision could be made any day now. We need to make our collective voices heard!
Please email or call Mr. Seifert and Gov. Holcomb at:
John Seifert
State Forester
Phone: 317-232-4116
Email: jseifert@dnr.IN.gov
Governor Eric Holcomb
State House Room 206 Indianapolis, IN 46204-2797
Phone: 317-232-4567
Fax: 317-232-3443
Contact Page: https://www.in.gov/gov/ask-eric/
Please also copy your State Senator and State Representative on these communications:
Click here for their contact information.
Click here to view Dr. Paul Rothrock’s full presentation document.
