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FOREST CONSERVATION NEWS TODAY

Toxic Texan’s Next Campaign: Recommencing War on Environment

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Forest Networking a Project of Forests.org, Inc.

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12/18/01

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by Forests.org

Flush with victories on foreign battlefields, the Toxic Texan is

riding high in the polls.  Indications are the next campaign is

recommencing an environmentally regressive war against forests, air

and water; governing as if the Earth does not matter.  Under the

cover of war the Bush administration has begun a systematic assault

on popular environmental protections.  The list is long and tragic:

heavily logging forest wildernesses recovering from natural fires,

moving to remove protections for roadless forests, a complete

obliviousness to changing climate caused by American’s penchant for

unsustainable energy use, to name but a few.  The Bush

administration’s policies threaten to accelerate and perhaps complete

the devastation of the nation’s and Earth’s critical life-giving

ecosystems.  The collapse of global ecosystems - as shown by

desertification, plunging fish harvests, scarcity of fresh water and

regional climate shifts - is the penultimate and final assault on the

false sense of security to which the Toxic Texan and the developed

World clings.  September 11th was a ghastly tragedy which nonetheless

pales in comparison to coming global ecological collapse. 

It is time for environmentalists to take off the kid gloves, get

beyond mourning terrorist horrors and the false notion that demanding

environmental sustainability is unpatriotic, and label the Toxic

Texan as the greatest threat ever to global ecological security.  His

policies threaten us all with ecocide, and must be stopped.

g.b.

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ITEM #1

Title:  Forest Service Seeks Policy Changes

Source:  Copyright 2001 Associated Press 

Date:  December 17, 2001

Byline:  KATHERINE PFLEGER, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Forest Service is moving to change Clinton-era

policies designed to protect undeveloped portions of national

forests.

Agency spokeswoman Heidi Valetkevitch said Monday that the interim

directives remove redundancies in agency guidelines and provide

protections to pristine forest areas. But environmentalists contended

the changes will open up an uncounted number of acres to logging,

road-building and other projects, as well as weaken requirements for

scientific review.

The directives alter a forest transportation policy developed during

the Clinton administration that required each national forest to

decide how many miles of roads it needs. Right now, more than 383,000

miles weave through some 192 million acres.

The changes include removing a requirement that smaller, undeveloped

areas next to large swaths of unroaded forest lands be protected,

unless there is a compelling need to develop them.

They also allow regional officials to decide if environmental and

public reviews are necessary to determine if development is

appropriate. The Clinton administration mandated the reviews.

Valetkevitch said those areas are best managed by local officials and

other policies. ``The roads management policy really is about

managing a road system,'' not making decisions about undeveloped

forests lands, she said.

Tim Preso, attorney with the environmental group Earthjustice, said

the administration is substantively trying to chip away at

environmental protections. ``It is a lot of little tinkering, but all

the little tinkering paves the way for more logging in roadless

areas,'' he said.

Mike Anderson, forest analyst at the Wilderness Society, saw even

bigger changes. ``It removes all protection for smaller undeveloped

areas that are often critically important wildlife habitats,'' he

said.

Anderson said subtle language changes in the directives also mean

fewer safeguards for larger unroaded areas protected under the

previous administration's ``roadless rule.'' The rule excluded 58.5

million acres of forest land from logging, road building and other

development except in rare circumstances.

The directives will remain in effect for 18 months while the Forest

Service decides what to do about a court decision that temporarily

blocked the roadless rule from taking effect.

The changes took effect Friday and will be published in the Federal

Register, a clearinghouse of government regulations, later this week.

The public will have 60 days to comment.

Meantime, Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey and Forest Service

Chief Dale Bosworth have approved logging in Montana's Bitterroot

National Forest scarred by wildfires, setting the stage for a court

battle with conservationists.

Fires last year consumed more than 307,000 acres in Bitterroot, a 1.6

million-acre tract that is one of the largest stretches of American

wilderness outside Alaska.

Rey and Bosworth on Sunday approved a restoration plan that includes

logging dead and dying trees, planting new trees, closing some forest

roads and restoring stream beds.

Conservationists say the ``restoration'' label attempts to mask the

fact that the plan allows 181 million board feet of lumber to be

harvested over three years from more than 46,000 acres of charred

trees. They fear the logging will increase sediment in streams that

are home to endangered fish.

ITEM #2

Title:  U.S. Approves Timber Sale, Prompting Court Challenge 

Source:  Copyright 2001 The New York Times 

Date:  December 17, 2001

Byline:  KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

WASHINGTON, Dec. 17 — The Bush administration cleared the way today

for a gigantic sale of trees charred last year by fires in a

national forest in Montana and Idaho, prompting two environmental

groups to go to court to challenge the move.

The administration action is a victory for the timber industry,

which has pushed for salvaging of the wood, from the Bitterroot

National Forest, before it rots or cracks and loses its value. The

administration says it intends to use the proceeds from the sales to

restore some of the forest's watershed areas by replanting trees,

closing roads and protecting stream beds. Officials also say quick

removal of the timber will help prevent fires next year.

More than 300,000 acres in the forest burned in the fires last year.

Some environmental groups argue that removing the wood will disrupt

the natural cycle of decomposition and promote runoff of sediment

that could harm fish. And they are worried about the method of

today's decision, essentially, just the signature of an

administration official, eliminating the public appeal process and

forcing opponents to lodge their protests in court.

They are seeking an injunction in Federal District Court in

Missoula, Mont., to block the sale, which the government has set to

begin at noon on Wednesday.

The plan calls for logging 181 million board feet of timber from

more than 46,000 acres of ponderosa pine trees that are dead or

dying because of the fires. The sale, which covers 30 sites within

the forest, amounts to one of the biggest salvage logging operations

in the nation's history.

The decision, announced and put in effect as of today, was signed on

Sunday by Mark Rey, under secretary for natural resources and

environment in the Agriculture Department and a former timber

industry lobbyist.

Mr. Rey said he agreed with Dale Bosworth, chief of the United

States Forest Service, "that immediate implementation of the

projects will reduce unacceptable risks to public safety, private

property and the national forest system resources."

He and Mr. Bosworth have said there is no need to go through the

customary 45-day public appeals process because the timber needs to

be salvaged quickly and because environmental groups are already

planning to sue. Mr. Rey said the decision to bypass the appeals

period was legal.

Mr. Rey was expected to announce the decision last Friday but

postponed doing so, telling reporters he wanted to review how the

salvaging would affect downstream land and the local economy. He

said the Forest Service had estimated that the projects would

generate 4,000 jobs and pump more than $75 million into the economy.

While he was not disputing those figures, he said, he wanted to make

sure that a "significant portion" of that money would help the local

economy.

In today's four-paragraph announcement, he provided no details about

the economic effects, saying only that "these restoration projects

provide significant local economic benefit opportunities."

He did discuss the process, asserting that the method of decision

did not set a precedent and was "an exception and not the rule."

But environmental groups said the action set a dangerous precedent.

"This is the first step down a slippery slope of shutting the public

out," said Bob Ekey, the Northern Rockies director of the Wilderness

Society. "We fear they are going to do away with appeals on

controversial projects in the future. They haven't indicated what

the threshold is that they'll use, and why this is the exception and

not the rule."

Mr. Ekey said the scope of the plan was excessive, with the number

of board feet being more than all timber logged in the Bitterroot

over the last 15 years.

"Some restoration projects in this are good, but we don't want them

to use those good restoration projects as an excuse to go in and do

more damage to the landscape through logging," he said.

Doug Honnold, a lawyer with EarthJustice, a nonprofit law firm

representing the two environmental groups going to court, the

Wilderness Society and American Wildlands, is seeking an immediate

injunction to block the sale. He said the Department of Justice

lawyers had agreed not to start the sale until noon Wednesday.

"It buys us 36 hours," Mr. Honnold said. "But if the Forest Service

is not willing to allow the public to take administrative appeals,

we will take that issue to a federal judge and let him decide."

His legal argument is focused solely on the appeals process and does

not take up the environmental issues.

The service filed its first draft environmental impact statement on

May 24 and a final one on Oct. 10. It then modified its proposal and

issued its decision today. The only formal comment period was in

May, "long before the real nuts and bolts of what they were planning

to do was disclosed," Mr. Honnold said.

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