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The Mark Twain National Forest, located in the Missouri Ozarks, encompasses 1.5 million acres spanning the southern half of Missouri, including 11 percent of all forested land and over half of all publicly-managed land in the state. The Forest contains seven federally-designated wilderness areas, a national "wild and scenic river" (the Eleven Point River), the largest spring on U.S. Forest Service land in the country (Greer Spring), the watershed of the "Ozark National Scenic Riverways" administered by the National Park Service (the Jacks Fork and Current Rivers), and over 500 native wildlife species, including bald eagles, black bears and the Ozark hellbender (a rare large amphibian).
Commercial timber harvesting, including even-aged management and clear-cutting, is promoted by the U.S. Forest Service as a primary use of the Mark Twain. The amount of timber sold for the past 10 years declined from a high of 63.3 million board feet in 1993, to 16.1 million board feet in 2001. However, in 2002, 50.8 million board feet were sold, and the Forest Service expects this level of sales to continue. This amount of timber production requires cutting ten to twenty thousand acres or more each year, depending on the type of cutting and the size of the trees. The lower than average cutting in the late 1990s was the result of successful litigation relating to the federally endangered Indiana bat.
We encourage you to become more familiar with how the Mark Twain is being managed by the Forest Service, and to provide your comments when the Forest Service proposes a timber sale. You can learn about timber sales on the Forest Service’s web site. Please call us if you have questions about how to locate this information. The links below provide examples of comment letters submitted by MCE on past timber sales.
MCE Comments 2/19/02
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