The Indiana Department of Natural Resources’ (DNR) plan for the “strategic direction” of the DNR Division of Forestry (DoF) is now available for public comment. This plan is what Indiana DoF will use to justify the excessive logging, burning and other destructive “management” practices they will conduct in our State Forests from now through 2029.
Much of what DNR would like to do to our forests is rationalized by the erroneous notion that Indiana’s forests depend on burning for natural succession (they don’t), cannot remain healthy without “manipulative intervention” from DNR (they can) and that Indiana’s native wildlife will not survive if our forests are left undisturbed (they will). DNR’s draft strategic plan is full of misstatements and half-truths, leading to a fundamentally flawed view of forest management which just so happens to serve the interests of the commercial logging industry.
The plan can be reviewed, and public comments can be made at: on.IN.gov/forest-management
Comments will be accepted through Dec. 17 at 5 p.m. ET.
Before you submit your comments, there is one last chance to attend a DNR public meeting about the plan, on Wednesday Dec. 4 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the Spring Mill State Park Inn located at 3333 State Road 60 East, Mitchell, IN 47446. At this meeting you will have the chance to directly question DNR’s Division of Forestry staff on specific provisions within the strategic direction plan, provisions missing from this plan that should be included and many general practices it has used in our state forests for years.
(Indiana DNR’s Division of Forestry strategic direction plan will be the guide to the next five years of management practices across DNR properties, including areas such as the Starve-Hollow State Recreation Area, a pristine natural area in Jackson-Washington State Forest meant to be managed for public enjoyment, where IFA recently documented heavy logging on steep slopes and degrading scenic vistas. Photos by: Evan Robbins)
To help prepare for this meeting, we encourage readers to review IFA’s previously published guide to questioning DNR about its forest management practices. This guide, which was originally prepared for the State Forest open houses earlier this year, can be found by clicking here. In addition to the questions and issues raised at this link, readers should ask the DNR to provide any research that supports their repeated assertion that fire was a significant agent of natural disturbance in Indiana’s pre-settlement hardwood forests. Assertions that Native Americans used burning to clear areas of forest do not establish that our hardwood forests are prone to burn naturally (from lightning strikes).
