ACTION ALERT & UPDATE
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FOREST CONSERVATION NEWS TODAY
Ask the U.S. Senate to Reject President's Fire Plan
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Forest Networking a Project of Forests.org, Inc.
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ACTION ALERT
Protest Bush's plan to waive environmental laws and open up thousands
of acres of untouched wildlands to unrestricted logging, from the
Wilderness Society:
http://www.wilderness.org/takeaction/?step=2&item=1827
September 7, 2002
OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by Forests.org
President Bush (a.k.a. Chainsaw George and/or the Toxic Texan) is
rapidly moving to implement his recently unveiled "Healthy Forests
Initiative". The Bush administration on Thursday asked Congress to
exempt up to 10 million acres of federal forest land from
environmental reviews and citizen appeals to speed logging and
thinning projects aimed at reducing forest fires. The U.S. Senate
must be lobbied to ensure these policies are not enacted.
The President is using the issue of fire prevention as a guise to
enable timber companies to increase their logging on public lands.
Under the Bush plan, most forest thinning and restoration projects
performed in the name of fire management would be exempted from the
public and environmental reviews now required by federal law. The
Bush plan would also authorize long term stewardship contracts, under
which logging companies would perform forest thinning and restoration
projects in exchange for access to federal timber. This will result
in more logging of large trees in roadless areas to fund forest
thinning.
The proposed policy is an obvious move to increase commercial logging
in national forests under the pretense of reducing wildfires, while
suspending our nation's environmental laws and banning meaningful
public participation. This policy continues the Bush
Administration's all-out assault on our national forests. Under the
watchful eye of former timber industry lobbyist Mark Rey; the
President has rigorously pursued policy reversals, court actions and
a well-funded public relations campaign aimed at increasing logging
and other resource extraction. In sum, as Carl Pope of the Sierra
Club notes below, "this legislation sells out America's forests to
corporate special interests and muzzles the American public by
squashing their rights to speak out on behalf of forest protection."
One thing is absolutely ecologically clear - more logging will not
solve America's forest fire problem. In fact, the reverse is
known - saving America's forests requires ending the federal
timber sale program and charting a non commodity-based restoration
path for our national forests. It is troubling, and indeed Un-
American, to see President Bush and other politicians twist the
truth for partisan purposes at a time when both public safety and
ecological integrity hang in the balance. Under the fog of war
and for the benefit of his campaign contributors, the Toxic Texan
must not be allowed to dismantle environmental protections for
America's forests.
Take action now on the Wilderness Society's web page at:
http://www.wilderness.org/takeaction/?step=2&item=1827 . Below
are updates which indicate the immediateness of the threat. We
need to move now - organizing and protesting President Bush's
forest policy, lack of support for the Kyoto Treaty, and militarism
on behalf of the oil industry.
g.b.
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ITEM #1
Title: Bush's Forest Plan Seeks Waivers to Speed Logging
Congress: Proposal, citing fire safety, would exempt 10 million
acres from environmental review. Critics contend public would
lose its say.
Source: Copyright 2002 Los Angeles Times
Date: September 6, 2002
Byline: ELIZABETH SHOGREN, TIMES STAFF WRITER
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration on Thursday asked Congress to
exempt up to 10 million acres of federal forest land from
environmental reviews and citizen appeals to speed logging and
thinning projects aimed at reducing forest fires.
''The Healthy Forests Initiative will reduce catastrophic wildfire
threats to communities and the environment,'' Interior Secretary
Gale A. Norton and Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman said in a
letter to Congress.
The legislative language sent to Capitol Hill on Thursday added
details to the proposal unveiled by President Bush last month.
Elements of it could come up for a vote in the Senate as early as
next week as part of the debate over a spending bill for the Interior
Department. Many Democrats are expected to oppose it, but some,
including Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), have been negotiating
with the Senate sponsors.
Environmentalists hotly criticized the plan, saying it would force
the public out of decisions on the future of forests.
''The president made an attempt to sugarcoat the proposal, but this
is anything but balanced,'' said Jay Watson, California
representative of the Wilderness Society, a national environmental
organization. ''It's truly dangerous. It effectively removes the
public from having any kind of say on how the forests are managed.''
But Mark E. Rey, the undersecretary of Agriculture with
jurisdiction over forest policy, asked that the critics stop
''howling'' and participate in the administration's effort to find a
new way to thwart fires in just 5% of the 190 million acres of
federal forests that face a high risk of burning.
''We ought to be able to figure out how to trust one another without
worrying about whether they can sue us,'' he said.
Both sides agree that decades of fire suppression and selective
logging of the largest trees in the national forests have left many
stands crowded with trees of varying sizes, making them fodder for
super-hot fires.
The Bush administration says its plan would empower the U.S. Forest
Service to thin out these trees, preventing the catastrophic fires
that have grown in frequency and scale in the last decade. But
environmentalists accuse the administration of using the issue of
fire prevention as a guise to enable timber companies to increase
their logging on public lands.
''This is using a real disaster facing people as a smokescreen for
the biggest handout to the timber industry that I have seen in 20
years,'' said Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.). ''I personally am going to do
everything that I can to stop this from going forward.''
One of the biggest changes proposed would exempt thinning projects in
fire-prone forests from the National Environmental Protection Act,
which requires the government to review its proposed actions for
their impact on the environment. This law gives the public a chance
to comment on big timber sales and salvage projects, which remove
trees after a fire.
Public comments "should result in better decisions that more
carefully take into account effects on wildlife and old growth and
recreation and the environment,'' said Tom Waldo, staff attorney for
Earthjustice, an Oakland-based environmental law group.
The Bush administration proposal ''eliminates the single most
important environmental law that applies to logging projects,'' he
added.
The law also removes the administrative appeals process that the
environmental groups, Forest Service employees and others use to
challenge timber sales that they feel violate laws or threaten
wildlife.
Environmentalists said that these proposals would only increase the
already heated controversy over timber sales in the West, where those
who want the forests for recreation and wilderness fight those whose
livelihoods depend on timber harvests.
''If you're going to build consensus and bring people together, you
don't waive laws; that's guaranteed to be divisive and polarizing,''
Watson said.
But the proposed law would also make it harder for individuals or
groups to sue the Forest Service over a sale by requiring that suits
be filed within 60 days. In addition, it abolishes the ability to get
a court order blocking the sale while a lawsuit is decided.
Rey said the suggested changes are intended to force resolution of
the cases ''while there is still something on the ground to be
saved.''
As it now stands, Rey said, court cases take so long that
environmental groups know that merely filing a suit and gaining a
temporary injunction can effectively block the timber sale.
Environmentalists also said that the broad wording of the legislation
would give the administration authority to exempt far more than 10
million acres from these key environmental protections.
One clause would waive environmental review for fuel reduction
projects in areas affected by disease and insect activity.
''Forest areas affected by insect activity--that's basically any tree
made of wood,'' said Keith Hammond of the California Wilderness
Coalition.
Times staff writer Bettina Boxall in Los Angeles contributed to this
report.
ITEM #2
Title: Sparks Fly at Hearing on Bush Fire Plan
Source: Copyright 2002 Environment News Service
Date: September 6, 2002
Byline: Cat Lazaroff
WASHINGTON, DC, September 6, 2002 (ENS) - Fire experts,
environmentalists and politicians faced off today in House
subcommittee hearings over newly introduced legislation to enact the
president's so called "Healthy Forests Initiative."
While nearly all the speakers agreed that some forest thinning will
be needed to reduce the risk of devastating wildfires in the nation's
forests, there was little agreement on how that thinning should be
achieved.
Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman and Interior Secretary Gale Norton
delivered several legislative proposals to Congress on Thursday, two
weeks after President George W. Bush called on these agencies to
support a massive new effort to actively manage forested areas to
reduce fire risk. Under the Bush plan, most forest thinning and
restoration projects performed in the name of fire management would
be exempted from the public and environmental reviews now required by
federal law.
The Bush plan would also authorize long term stewardship contracts,
under which logging companies would perform forest thinning and
restoration projects in exchange for access to federal timber.
Veneman and Norton delivered the administration's four part proposal
to Congress while testifying before the House Committee on Resources
on fire related topics, including the President's initiative.
"This legislative proposal would give us management tools we
desperately need to help get our forests and communities out of the
crisis they are in," said Veneman.
Today, the two secretaries testified at a joint hearing before two
House Resources subcommittees - Forests & Forest Health, and National
Parks, Recreation, & Public Lands.
The secretaries noted that this year's record wildfire season has
burned more than six million acres, more than double the 10 year
average, and "based on current fuel conditions and weather
predictions, the potential for more fires remains high through the
fall." The U.S. Forest Service has spent more than $1.25 billion
fighting wildfires this year, and other federal, state and local
agencies have spent many millions more.
Thousands of people have had to evacuate, hundreds have lost their
homes, and 20 firefighters have lost their lives in this year's
wildfires. These statistics illustrate the need for the federal
government to take a more active role in managing the nation's
forests, the secretaries testified.
According to the secretaries' testimony, active forest management
includes thinning trees from unnaturally dense stands to produce
commercial or pre-commercial products, removing biomass such as
downed trees and shrubs, and igniting controlled burns.
Bush Administration Offers Four Part Plan
The first piece of the Bush administration's proposal would aim to
reduce forest fuel loads in areas that pose the greatest risk to
people, communities and the environment, including forests around
community water supplies, the wildland-urban interface, and areas
affected by forest disease and insect infestations.
This proposal would extend a blanket exemption from all environmental
analysis, public comment, and administrative appeal to fire
management projects on millions of acres of federal forest lands with
high fire risk. The proposal also mandates "expedited" interagency
consultations regarding the impacts these projects might have on
endangered species.
The proposal would not apply to designated wilderness areas, but
could apply to eight million acres of inventoried roadless areas that
are now classified as high fire risk. On these lands, fire management
projects would be conducted "notwithstanding the National
Environmental Policy Act" (NEPA), the law that requires federal
agencies to consider the environmental impacts of their actions.
According to an analysis by the Wilderness Society, "this NEPA
exemption, coupled with repeal of the Appeals Reform Act in Section
3, means that the Forest Service could approve logging of old growth
forests, road building in roadless areas, and other projects with
absolutely no environmental analysis, public notice, or opportunity
for public comment."
The next piece of the proposal would authorize the Secretaries of
Agriculture and the Interior to enter into long term stewardship
contracts with the private sector, nonprofit organizations and local
communities. The stewardship contracts would retain contractors to
thin trees and brush, and removing dead wood, in exchange for the
economic value of the wood they removed. This controversial proposal
has been criticized as providing incentives for contractors to remove
the largest, most valuable trees.
The Bush administration argues that the proposal would give
contractors the incentive to invest in the equipment and
infrastructure needed to use smaller trees and brush in products such
as particle board, or to produce energy through biomass burning.
The third proposal would repeal the Appeals Reform Act that was a
rider to the fiscal year 1993 Interior Appropriations Bill, which
imposes certain procedural requirements on the U.S. Forest Service
when administrative appeals are made on forest projects. The proposal
would allow appeals of forest management decisions, but specifies
that any court ruling could "not provide for the issuance of a
temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction," and would
give courts up to one year to reach a final decision.
The Wilderness Society and other critics argue that this provision
would allow the Forest Service to undertake and complete a
controversial logging or road building project before a court could
issue an injunction, rendering the court appeal moot.
A fourth administration proposal would establish guidelines for
courts to use when ruling on challenges to fuels reduction projects
such as mechanical thinning or prescribed burns, requiring courts to
"give deference to any agency finding" that the long term benefits of
projects outweigh their short term risks. The Bush administration
says these guidelines would ensure that judges consider the long term
risks of harm to people, property and the environment when
considering appeals based on the alleged short term risks to species
or ecosystems.
The departments are also working on a fifth legislative piece,
addressing the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan's original promise of a
sustainable habitat and forest economy, which will be sent to
Congress at a later date. In addition, the departments are working
with the Council for Environmental Quality to develop draft
regulations and policy guidance to reduce the time and cost of
planning and improving collaboration with local governments on
hazardous fuels reduction projects.
Three House Bills Support Bush Plan
The Bush plan is also supported by three new bills introduced in the
House on Thursday by Republican Representatives Scott McInnis of
Colorado, John Shadegg of Arizona and Denny Rehberg of Montana.
The Healthy Forests Reforms Act of 2002, introduced by McInnis, would
establish an expedited environmental analysis procedure under NEPA,
and restricts the appeals process by mandating time limits and
allowing for negotiated settlements.
The bill also funds fuel reduction programs through fiscal year 2011
at the levels requested by the Western Governors Association.
"Looking backward, this wildfire crisis is unprecedented in the last
several decades. Looking forward, this fiery carnage is going to
continue for decades unless we take bold and decisive steps," McInnis
said. "My bill preserves the right of citizens to challenge thinning
projects administratively and in the courts, but there will be no
more endless stalling. Thinning projects will no longer be subject
to death by unending delay."
Shadegg's bill, the Wildfire Prevention and Forest Health Pro
tection Act of 2002, allows thinning to prevent wildfire where it is
"likely to cause extreme harm to the ecological balance."
"This legislation is designed to break the current gridlock on
responsible forest management," Shadegg said, "by allowing projects
involving the removal of trees to proceed if they are based on sound
science and are intended to improve the health of forest ecosystems.
The bill is critical to the future of our forests."
The National Forest Fire Prevention Act, a bill by Representative
Rehberg, addresses the risk for catastrophic fire and insect
infestation by adopting language written by Senator Tom Daschle, a
South Dakota Democrat, for the recently passed Supplemental
Appropriations Act, and extending that language to all national
forests. Daschle's amendment exempted forest fire management projects
in his home state from most environmental regulations, including the
Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the National Forest
Management Act, in addition to NEPA.
"We must have strong, common sense laws to protect the environment,
there's no question about that," Rehberg stated. "Yet those same laws
should not be so burdensome that they prevent local forest managers
from implementing common sense land management solutions."
"Senator Daschle understands that such regulations can negatively
affect the health of our forests by preventing active forest
management practices from being implemented," Rehberg added. "And
that's exactly the reason I introduced this legislation to extend
Senator Daschle's South Dakota exemptions to all national forestland
at risk of catastrophic wildfires."
Action Needed - But What Action?
During today's testimony, all the experts - whether from conservation
groups or the forest industry - agreed that some action must be taken
to reduce wildfire risk. But while House Republicans and the timber
industry called for widespread forest thinning with few if any
restrictions on the areas that could be mechanically thinned, or the
size of the trees that could be cut, other experts disagreed.
David Callahan, a retired firefighter from the Pacific Northwest,
argued that logging large trees in many cases may make wildfires burn
hotter, and noted that most natural forest fires are "a good thing"
for the environment.
"We need to remove the premise that logging mature trees is a
substitute for thinning," Callahan said. "Thinning the forest will
not prevent wildfires."
Todd Schulke, forest policy director for the Center for Biological
Diversity, noted that arguments for removing any mature trees - such
as logging only diseased trees - ignore the fact that "diseased trees
are a natural part of a healthy ecosystem."
In fact, diseased trees form the only habitat for some specialized
species of wildlife, which require trees with holes in them, or with
softened wood that can be penetrated to find insects or build cavity
nests, he added.
But Dr. Wally Covington, a forestry professor at Northern Arizona
University, argued that mechanical thinning - in some cases, even of
large trees - is necessary to protect healthy forest ecosystems. He
noted that prescribed burning does not always remove small trees and
brush without killing mature trees, for example.
"You can not safely remove the trees that need to be destroyed ...
with prescribed burning," Covington testified.
Covington also noted that many of the nation's western forests are
now packed with many more trees than they would naturally carry, if
humans had not been restricting natural fires for the past century or
more. While acknowledging that removing small trees only, and leaving
large trees, would prevent the devastating "crown fires" that consume
entire forests and leave nothing but scorched earth, Covington argued
that achieving that goal is not enough to produce "robust,
biologically diverse ecosystems."
"Every tree you leave in excess of natural carrying capacity of the
land," Covington said, "comes at the expense of grasses, wildflowers,
shrubs." The natural spaces around mature trees in a forest that is
regularly swept by small wildfires, Covington said, provide niches
for the wide variety of plant species needed to support a diversity
of animals.
Representative Jay Inslee of Washington, the ranking Democrat on the
Forests & Forest Health subcommittee, concluded that one of the
biggest obstacles preventing wider acceptance of the Bush fire
management plan is its proposal to finance forest management by
allowing some companies to cut trees, through so called stewardship
contracts.
The administration's proposal asks citizens to trust that the
companies and groups entrusted with such contracts will make
decisions on which trees to cut based on the needs of the forest, not
on economic considerations, Inslee argued.
"This is not a moment where citizens are reacting real positively to
that request," added Inslee, alluding to previous Bush administration
decisions to overturn environmental laws in favor of economic or
commercial interests.
On Thursday, Inslee and colleague Tom Udall, a New Mexico Democrat,
released a report challenging the Bush administration's argument that
lawsuits and appeals by environmental groups have often blocked
forest management projects.
The report, "Comparison of Two Government Reports on Factors
Affecting Timely Fuel Treatment Decisions," details data errors and
sampling bias found in a recent Forest Service report, and concludes
that the agency's report is unreliable.
"This report shows that the attempts by the U.S. Forest Service to
cut large trees located deep within our forests for commercial profit
under the guise of fire prevention efforts often meet with appeals,"
Inslee said. "It is regrettable that the U.S. Forest Service has not
focused its efforts on preventing fires near homes; this error forms
the crux of the problem between the agency and the public."
The Forest Service is not the only federal agency to be accused of a
bias toward tree cutting. In his testimony, Callahan noted that
during his firefighting days, he worked often with representatives of
the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the agency responsible for much
of the land around Callahan's home.
"A lot of people in the BLM want to speak out," about better
management practices, Callahan said. But "the people that care are
overruled most of the time," because of the agency's long history of
cooperating with the timber industry, he added.
In the end, separate comments by Professor Covington and the Center
for Biological Diversity's Schulke offered a ray of hope for common
ground. Both noted that the environmental community and forest
industry experts agree that small trees must be thinned to reduce
fire risks, and that the only economic way to thin the nation's
millions of forest acres is to make those small trees more valuable.
The government could make it more cost effective to harvest trees and
brush, both men noted, by supporting biomass power production - a
green, environmentally friendly energy source.
ITEM #3
Title: Which forests to thin? Bush not sure
President submits bill, but no answer to 10-million-acre question
Source: Copyright 2002 MSNBC
Date: September 6, 2002
Byline: Miguel Llanos, MSNBC
Sept. 6 - The cornerstone of President Bush's forest plan is a
proposal to suspend a landmark environmental law in order to expedite
thinning on 10 million acres of federal forest. The question now is
which 10 million acres - and who'll decide. "We need to come to an
agreement" on which acres, U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman Heidi
Valetkevitch told MSNBC.com on Friday. She said "there will be ways
for the public to provide feedback."
THE FIGURE of 10 million acres was cited Thursday by Interior
Secretary Gale Norton as she testified before a House hearing at
which President Bush's "healthy forests" legislation was introduced.
The idea is to expedite the thinning of some forests and underbrush
that have built up over decades as the Forest Service strove to
suppress fires. Supporters say the growth is fuel for wildfires that
ravaged the nation's West over the past couple of summers.
Opponents, however, fear that increased thinning would open the door
to logging old-growth trees and sensitive wildlife areas.
To speed up thinning, the president wants congressional approval
to suspend the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, a tool
used by environmentalists to fight logging licenses.
Valetkevitch noted administration estimates that 190 million acres of
federal, private and state forests are at high risk from fire. Of
those, 23 million are federal forestland, and the 10 million is a
subset of that number.
"We need to come to an agreement" on which acres should get priority
designation, she said, and "we'll be working with the Western
governors to do that."
Governors in the West, where most of the fires in this summer's
severe season have burned, have played a major role in drafting
forest policy, coming up with a bipartisan, 10-year plan last May
that the Bush administration has promised to work with. The
governor's plan urges expedited thinning but does not seek to suspend
NEPA.
Valetkevitch said the collaborative process would start soon but that
details have yet to be worked out.
STRONG REACTIONS
The president's plan was welcomed by Republicans, questioned by
Democrats and criticized by environmentalists.
House Resources Committee Chairman James Hansen, R-Utah, called it an
"excellent" start, asking subcommittees to set up additional
hearings to discuss the forest-thinning measure and related bills.
Democrats raised concerns that more widespread thinning would
open the door to logging old-growth and sensitive wildlife areas.
Norton said the focus of the thinning would not be commercial logging
but smaller thinning, and provided an example of a landscape company
that might contract to thin a forest in exchange for using the
material it removed as mulch.
Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., had reservations about the entire
legislative process but acknowledged that he could find some room for
agreement with a related bill proposed by Rep. Scott McInnis, R-Colo.
As for environmentalists, while many support the governors' plan,
they believe the president's bill is a bid to wipe out the National
Environmental Policy Act.
"Instead of protecting communities," Sierra Club Executive
Director Carl Pope said in a statement, "this legislation sells out
America's forests to corporate special interests and muzzles the
American public by squashing their rights to speak out on behalf of
forest protection."
OTHER PROPOSALS
In addition to expedited thinning, the administration said in a
statement that the president's legislation includes three other
proposals:
Authorize "stewardship contracts" that allow contractors to thin
trees and remove dead wood. These would provide incentives "to invest
in equipment and infrastructure" so that contractors can make use of
the removed material, such as to make particle board or even to
produce electricity by burning wood and brush.
The idea, Norton told the House hearing, is to shift "some of the
costs for the thinning that needs to take place ... onto the private
sector."
Repeal the 1993 Appeals Reform Act, which imposes "extraordinary
procedural requirements" on the Forest Service when administrative
appeals are made. "The proposal would still allow an individual to
appeal a forest decision," the administration said.
Environmentalists believe this plan would essentially block citizens
from asking for internal reviews of Forest Service decisions.
Establish "common-sense rules" for courts on thinning cases. "It
would ensure that judges consider long-term risks of harm to people,
property and the environment in court challenges based on alleged
short-term risks of forest health projects," the administration said.
Environmentalists noted that loggers would be permitted to log while
a court decided if an activity was legal. And they said the provision
would require courts to defer to federal agencies even when timber
sales they are planning are found to be in violation of the
Endangered Species Act or other laws.
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