To the Editor:

Under your feet, wherever you are standing in this part of the world, you are on rare ground. Some of it is about to get torn up.

The south portion of the Eastern Upper Peninsula is a bit of rock the United Nations terms "rare," called the Niagara Escarpment. My mother used to describe it as "the edge of a plate." It is a special geological phenomenon that runs from near Niagara Falls in New York around the northern rim of the Great Lakes into Wisconsin.

It is the unique geology of Cedarville and Drummond Island and Manitoulin Island. It is the Garden peninsula, the Bruce peninsula and the Door peninsula. It has "karsts" on it, which are special features formed by the dissolution of underlying rock, creating caves, springs and sinkholes. The Trout Lake area has a number of karst sites.

In the next few weeks, the U.S. Forest Service wants to know what you think of a proposal they have to develop and change about 64,000 acres of the Niagara Escarpment. They will be harvesting about 6,000 acres of timber, building some new roads and closing off some others. They will be, by their own definition "managing" the area.

This proposal began back in the late 1990s and was called the "Niagara Escarpment Project." Back then, it generated a lot of interest and a lot of worry. A public meeting brought out unusual crowds. People wanted to know more. That project died in 1997.

It's back on the table, only this time it is called the Niagara Project. The 400 million-year-old "escarpment" has disappeared. It is about 1,000 acres bigger now and, interestingly, it avoids trying to be sensitive.

In 1997, the project described the escarpment area as "a globally rare geologic feature," and, further, that within the project area "some finerscaled features…can also be considered rare," and "a community (of features) given a global ranking of G2 (globally imperiled)."

None of that language which is in the preamble of the 1997 project can be found in the 2009 project.

This is a timber sale. It is also, by USFS description, a money-losing idea, despite the timber sales. The U.S. Forest Service is, for a variety of reasons, proposing a favored option which is twice the timber cut of another option. Its preferred option recognizes that it has a "high probability" of promoting non-native invasive species into the area. Its other option, which it does not recommend, would allow a "moderate" opportunity for non-native species.

That's ironic. The Forest Service is trying to fight non-native species in a whole different program, spending thousands and thousands of dollars, yet it is creating a management recommendation for its most sensitive area that it knows will bring in non-native species.

The forest service has been working with a group to protect the karst areas, but they have not mapped out all the karsts in the project, and yet they state clearly, "The karst action in the proposed area may not be adequate to protect this resource." This is a globally imperiled resource, by their own description.

The proposed new project runs from Highway 123 to I-75, with East Lake at its center.

The Forest Service is taking public comments until August 10. If you want to know more, contact Martha Sjogren at (906) 643-7900, extension 117, or send comments to: Comments-eastern-hiawatha-stignace@ fs.fed.us. To date, no public meetings have been planned. Pat Egan Brimley