Rewrite of U.S. Forest Laws Rouses Environmentalists

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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises

http://forests.org/

2/2/97

OVERVIEW, SOURCE & COMMENTARY by EE

U.S. Senator Larry Craig, chairman of the Senate's natural resources

panel, is proposing rewriting of laws protecting America's forests.

Environmentalists charge the changes would make forests little more

than tree farms. The following photocopy from Associated Press

provides additional details.

g.b.

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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:

Rewrite of forest laws rouses environmentalists

February 2, 1997

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The chairman of the Senate's natural resources

panel plans to rewrite the main law protecting America's forests in a

way that environmental activists say would turn them into tree farms.

Critics charge that many changes proposed by Sen. Larry Craig, R-

Idaho, echo a timber lobbyist's testimony before a House subcommittee

last March.

His draft rewrite of the National Forest Management Act "is a bald

attempt to turn our national forests into tree farms," charged Kevin

Kirchner, a lawyer for the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund.

Craig said he's trying to bring order to the chaos of the Forest

Service. His proposal would restrict citizen appeals and lawsuits

meant to block logging and scale back environmental reviews and

consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National

Marine Fisheries Service.

"I want to try to bring a dysfunctional agency into an effectively

operating operation. I'm convinced that cannot happen without changes

in public policy," said Craig, chairman of the Senate Energy and

Natural Resources subcommittee on forests.

Of conservationists' charges he is too close to the timber industry,

Craig responded, "Some of these groups, if I had presented them with

127 blank pages, we would have gotten the same reaction."

Much of the draft bill does reflect positions taken by Steven Quarles

of the American Forest & Paper Association last March before a House

resources subcommittee. Twenty-three of Quarles' 28 recommendations

appear in Craig's bill using substantially identical language.

For example, Quarles testified the government's resource management

plans for determining which parts of a forest to log should maintain

to the maximum extent feasible the communities economically dependent

on national forest or Bureau of Land Management lands.

Craig's proposal reads:

"In preparing, amending, revising or implementing a resource

management plan, the secretary shall consider if, and explain whether,

the plan maintains to the maximum extent feasible under the Act and

other applicable law the stability of any community economically

dependent on the resources of the federal lands to which the plan

applies."

Quarles also asked Congress to allow only two levels of planning --

for multiple-use resources and for management activity.

So does Craig's proposal.

The staff director of Craig's committee, Mark Rey, rejected the charge

that the draft bill was tilted toward the logging industry.

Quarles provided Congress "with a lot of quality ideas" supported by a

broad range of other groups as well, said Rey, a Quarles predecessor

as executive director of the American Forest & Paper Association.

"The fact we responded favorably to a developing consensus that there

should be time limits and simplification of the planning process does

not make this an industry bill," he said.

Rey said the industry's top priorities are not in Craig's bill. They

include minimum logging levels for national forests and abrogation of

the requirement that the Forest Service maintain a viable population

of every creature found in each national forest.

Furthermore, many changes endorsed by the industry also are supported

by the Western Governor's Association, the White House Office on

Technology and the Forest Service itself, he said.

Chris West, vice president of the Northwest Forestry Association in

Portland, Oregon, said the current system "is broke."

"Right now, for a whole host of reasons -- the law, the courts, the

administration -- we're in gridlock," West said. "While the

environmentalists like gridlock ..., it is (not) in the public's

best interest."

But Tim Hermach, executive director of the Native Forest Council in

Eugene, Oregon, said Craig's proposals demonstrate "his servitude to

the timber industry."

Craig said he reached out to conservation groups for ideas, but so far

they have offered little constructive criticism. "It's amazing for one

interest group to say another interest group doesn't have a right to

be part of process," he said.

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