Welcome to the Web site of the Tuolumne Group of the Sierra Club. Our group is one of eleven groups in the Mother Lode Chapter of the Sierra Club. This Web site has information about our activities and conservation issues here in Tuolumne and Calaveras Counties.
APRIL 6, 2025
STANISLAUS HERBICIDE DECISION
Despite Strong Opposition from the Sierra Club and other Groups, the Stanislaus National Forest has Approved Herbicide Use for 7,500 Acres of Forest Fuel Breaks
When the Forest Service releases proposed projects for public comments, the agency consistently promotes the message that: “Your comments are important to us.” Yet when public comments from groups or individuals urge major changes in a proposed action, the Stanislaus Forest often shrugs off public comments and continues to stick with the agency’s original proposed plan without making any feasible adjustments to lessen controversy.
The massive SERAL 2.0 forest treatment project was put forward last year for public input. The Tuolumne Group of the Sierra Club and other local conservation groups all supported or at least accepted the high levels of fuel break construction, forest thinning logging treatments, broadcast burning, and road treatments proposed for the SERAL 2.0 project. But the Tuolumne Group and the other local environmental groups strongly objected to plans to allow spraying of herbicides across thousands of acres of local national forest fuel breaks.
While chemical treatments may be the cheapest and fastest method to control brush or small trees on fuel breaks, even the Forest Service admits that broadcast burning, mastication with shredding equipment, hand cutting of brush and trees, or targeted grazing may be feasible alternatives to herbicides. Yet in March, the local Forest Service not only approved the controversial plan to allow spraying on up to 7,500 acres, but the agency also approved another controversial “condition based” proposal for the Forest Service to be “pre-approved” to log trees killed or damaged by some potential future fire or some future outbreak of bark beetles.
Despite the conservation community’s requests to scale back or to eliminate herbicides, the Stanislaus Forest now intends to use spraying as a key treatment on up to 12 square miles of the local forest.
The Tuolumne Sierra Group will be submitting a letter objecting to the recent decision to allow the spraying of herbicides across thousands of acres of local national forest fuel breaks.
You can add your voice expressing your objections to the decision to allow herbicide applications in the forest: USFS SERAL 2 COMMENTS PAGE