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FOREST CONSERVATION NEWS TODAY
Bush Fire Policy: Clearing Forests So They Do Not Burn
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Forest Networking a Project of Forests.org, Inc.
http://forests.org/ -- Forest Conservation Portal
http://www.EnvironmentalSustainability.info/ -- Eco-Portal
http://www.ClimateArk.org/ -- Climate Change Portal
August 27, 2002
OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by Forests.org
The Bush administration has announced plans to greatly increase
logging on federal lands in order to reduce the risk of wildfires.
The Forest Service is using the fear of wildfires to allow logging
companies to remove medium- and large-diameter trees that they can
sell, rather than just the small trees and brush that can make fires
more severe. There is little evidence to show that such logging
will prevent catastrophic fires; on the contrary, logging roads and
industrial logging cause wildfires. Bush is a well known supporter
of the timber industry and has accepted huge sums of money from
wealthy timber company leaders. He is promoting misinformation about
forest fires in order to benefit timber industry campaign
contributors.
Bush administration environmental policies – or lack thereof - are
generating large scale, systematic dissent throughout the nation. It
is arrogant and tragic that the President is missing the Earth Summit
to hang out at his ranch and raise campaign funds. On forest fires,
the Bush Administration seems to be more interested in overriding
environmental laws and eliminating public participation than it is in
developing a comprehensive and broadly supported strategy for
reducing wildfire risks and restoring healthy forests. Environmental
issues are not going away and may prove to be the downfall of the
Bush dynasty – tarnishing the Bush Presidency as an era of ecological
vandalism that doomed the Earth to environmental collapse and great
human suffering. Expect massive protests and more organizing against
this horrendous proposed shift in forest policy.
g.b.
P.S. Below are some of best of the many articles on the misguided
forest policy of the Bush administration on the Forest Conservation
Portal’s “United States of America Forest Conservation News &
Information” page at: http://forests.org/america/ .
In addition, Forests.org has recently editorialized in-depth
regarding the fire situation; “Failed Bush Environmental Policy
Causes Wildfires” at http://forests.org/recent/2002/wiwestdr.htm and
“Commercial Logging Causes Forest Fires” at
http://forests.org/recent/2002/grgrurge.htm . Media queries and
interview requests are welcome at gbarry@forests.org and 608 213
9224.
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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
ITEM #1
Title: Timber policy reflects president's world view
Source: Copyright 2002 San Francisco Chronicle
Date: August 26, 2002
Byline: Editorial
WITH characteristic disregard for the environment, President Bush
last week announced a controversial plan to allow the timber industry
to log millions of acres of national forest land. The ostensible
reason? To prevent catastrophic fires.
Rather than pursue a policy of thinning undergrowth and small trees,
Bush prefers to give the timber industry a windfall by logging
larger, more commercially valuable trees.
The Bush plan opens the possibility of a replay of the notorious 1995
"salvage rider," in which Congress suspended environmental
regulations under the pretext of fire prevention. The loosened laws
led to a frenzy of logging -- and damage to forests and streams.
No surprise here. President Bush has arguably racked up the worst
environmental record since our most important environmental
regulations became law during Richard Nixon's administration. Paying
off the timber industry is just one of many gifts this president has
bestowed upon friends who profit from the commercial extraction or
exploitation of natural resources.
Nor is it surprising that President Bush -- unlike 60 other heads of
state - - refuses to attend the U.N. World Summit on Sustainable
Development that is taking place in Johannesburg, South Africa, from
Aug. 26 to Sept. 4. His administration, moreover, has already
announced that it will only accept voluntary, rather than obligatory,
agreements reached by the summit.
The Johannesburg meeting will assess how much progress has been made
since the nations of the world gathered at the first Earth Summit
held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. At that time, delegates pledged to
promote sustainable development -- to use resources only at the pace
we can replace them, to embrace "the precautionary principle," and to
adopt preventive rather than remedial policies.
Since that historic meeting, the degradation of the global
environment has accelerated rapidly in many respects. Emissions of
carbon dioxide, the main cause of global warming, have increased by
18 percent in the United States. But President Bush apparently would
rather go to war to protect American strategic oil interests or drill
in an Alaska wildlife refuge than promote conservation and require
better gas mileage from new automobiles.
Devastation of forests and the pollution of water has also proceeded
with devastating speed. In just the last decade, 13 percent of all
bird species, 25 percent of mammals and 34 percent of fish have
become extinct. Yet the Bush administration has turned its back on
the Convention on Biodiversity.
In Antarctica, a huge ice shelf has broken off the continent. In
Alaska, the tundra has started to thaw. In the Arctic Ocean, sea ice
now covers 15 percent less water than it did 20 years ago. Yet Bush
refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.
At the 2002 Earth Summit, environmental activists will try to
challenge some of the assumptions about growth and conservation that
have contributed to the pollution of the soil, air, and water and
increased the illness and poverty suffered by millions of the Earth's
inhabitants.
These are not popular ideas, however, to a president who has worked
tirelessly to suspend or reverse our environmental regulations. In
his first year of office, Bush shocked public health officials when
he tried to roll back protections against arsenic in drinking water -
- a foolish policy that his administration eventually reversed. He
began his second year in office by launching a relentless campaign to
open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.
While the nation mourned the events of Sept 11, the Bush
administration has been quietly undermining environmental
protections. During the last year, for example, his administration
has weakened protection for endangered species in California;
exempted the Pentagon from environmental laws; refused to improve
automobile efficiency; ended environmental research funding; rolled
back air conditioner energy efficiency standards; sent conflicting
and confusing signals on enforcement of the Clean Air Act; lifted a
ban on mining in the Oregon national forest; revoked habitat
protection for the California frog; and, most recently, tried to roll
back ocean protection.
That's just the short list. Even more outrageous was his attempt to
conceal the fact that industry leaders actually authored his energy
policy, his eventual admission that global warming is a problem (for
which he offered no policy recommendations), and his public effort to
blame environmentalists for wildfires.
This week, the nations of the world will try to find a just and
equitable way to reverse environmental degradation and to promote
sustainable development. It won't happen this year, probably not
within the next decade, but eventually the entire global community
will agree that protecting the environment is necessary to sustain
life -- and commerce -- on this planet. When that distant future
arrives, the world may look back and cast a harsh judgement on Bush's
environmental record. By then, the protection of the environment may
be a definitive test of statesmanship, and if so, it will be one that
President Bush clearly failed.
ITEM #2
Title: Forest Thinning Challenged as Tactic to Control Fires
Source: Copyright 2002 New York Times
Date: August 27, 2002
Byline: JIM ROBBINS
HELENA, Mont., Aug. 26 — Even as President Bush urges increased
thinning of national forests, some scientists caution that there is
little evidence to show that thinning will prevent fires at the
catastrophic scales seen in the West this summer.
Moreover, some scientists say they believe that "one size fits all"
thinning, performed without adjusting for differences in soil and
vegetation, could damage ecosystems and actually make forests more
vulnerable to fire.
Last week, at the site of the worst fire in Oregon, Mr. Bush
announced that he would ask Congress to streamline rules to expedite
thinning projects. The Forest Service has spent more than $400
million in the last two years to reduce fuel loads in the forests.
To drive home the benefits of the agency's programs, Mr. Bush pointed
to two areas along a road, one unthinned and devastated and the other
thinned and relatively unharmed.
But scientists point out that other factors, like shifting winds or
different kinds of fuel, may have influenced the outcomes. Although a
few studies have shown that thinning reduces fire intensity on a
small scale, no controlled studies have been conducted on whether
large-scale thinning works or how best to carry it out.
"A forest scale is so big, you don't just thin and then you're done,"
said Dr. Don Erman, an emeritus professor of ecology at the
University of California at Davis and the leader of a 1996 federal
study, the Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project, that extensively examined
the role of fire.
When thinning a forest, Dr. Erman said, "you are creating new growth
of all kinds, and you create a situation that encourages fires."
Judging from that research, he said, thinning may need to be repeated
as often as every two years to be effective. That grace period could
be extended with prescribed burns."
It's a treadmill you have to be on all the time," he said. "And
realistically, that can't be done. Agencies can't carry it on in
perpetuity."
Jerry Williams, director of fire and aviation for the Forest Service,
said the agency's plans did not end with thinning. "The key to
restoration is the reintroduction of low-intensity fires," he said.
"To get there you have to take some of the heat out of the woods. No
one is talking about thinning and walking away."
But cost could get in the way of proper thinning. A recent Forest
Service study put the cost of thinning 1.6 million acres of forest in
the Klamath Mountain region of southwestern Oregon at $2.7 billion,
an average of more than $1,685 an acre.
Other research calls into question a main justification for thinning:
protecting the housing that has proliferated around the edges of
federal forests. The Fire Sciences Laboratory in Missoula, Mont., the
premier laboratory to study fire behavior, recently found that the
only thinning needed to protect houses — even in the most tinder-dry
forest — was within a "red zone" of 150 to 200 feet around the
building.
"Regardless of how intense the fire is, the principal determinant is
based on the home and exterior characteristics," said Jack D. Cohen,
a research scientist with the fire laboratory, which is part of the
Forest Service's Rocky Mountain Research Station. Mr. Cohen has
studied houses burned in Los Alamos, N.M., the Bitterroot and other
large blazes.
Every site has different characteristics, Mr. Cohen said, so there is
no single recipe. Critical factors include a metal roof; clearing
pine needles and brush around the house; and thinning large trees in
the red zone to increase the space between tree crowns. From the
standpoint of protecting the houses, he went on, it does not matter
what happens to the forest 200 feet away.
Supporters of thinning, including Forest Service officials, agree
that critical research is missing. But they argue that the situation
is so dire that the agency has no choice but to thin aggressively and
adjust.
"We thought we had more time," said Dr. W. Wallace Covington, a
professor of forest ecology and the director of the Ecological
Restoration Institute at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff.
"We have to move forward with large-scale restoration-based fuel
reduction and learn as we go."
Severe tree-killing fires used to constitute 20 percent of large
blazes, Dr. Covington said. The average has grown to almost 40
percent, and in the recent Arizona fires it was near 50 percent.
The Forest Service itself helped lay the groundwork for the increase
in severe fires. Agency officials say 50 years of fire suppression,
which it began to reverse in the 1970's, deprived the forests of the
periodic purging fires that they had evolved with.
Vegetation was further encouraged, experts say, by three decades of
unusually wet weather. As a result, much of the national forest is
overcrowded with trees, with as many as 700 or 800 trees an acre in
some ecosystems instead of the more normal 40 or 50.
In such an environment, a prescribed burn is not an option: there is
too much fuel. Usually, a wind-driven wildfire is capricious and
burns unevenly. It burns intensely in some areas and lightly burns or
skips other areas altogether. That leaves islands of trees and other
vegetation to repopulate burned areas after the fire has passed.
But with an unnatural buildup of fuels, large areas can burn with
extreme intensity, destroying the natural fire mosaic and thwarting
recovery.
"When they burn, they'll cause excessive heating of soils," in effect
sterilizing an area, said Mick Harrington, a fire ecologist with the
Fire Research Center here. "There is a volatilization of carbon and
mineral nutrients, and it will kill existing plant parts, seeds and
tubers. The biota of the soil will be killed to a much greater
depth."
Even as thinning moves ahead — last year more than two million acres
of federal forest were thinned, and more will be thinned this year —
some research suggests that it is being done inefficiently. Recent
computer models of fire behavior at the laboratory in Missoula show
that if thinning is strategic, according to a formula based on
topography and other factors, just 20 percent of the forest needs to
be thinned to halve the area burned by a fire. If thinning is done
randomly, as is done now, 60 percent of the forest must be treated to
achieve the same effect.
Mark Finney, the research scientist who does the modeling with a
program called Farsight, said that the findings were experimental but
that "at a landscape level it's all experimental."
Environmentalists say the Forest Service is rushing with a thinning
program that is costly, poorly planned and possibly damaging in the
same way its previous suppression policy was.
"Thinning is a data-free exercise," said Niel Lawrence, director of
forests programs for the Natural Resources Defense Council in
Olympia, Wash. "There are lots of different things that affect how a
forest burns. And logging is a coarse tool that uses heavy equipment
that causes a lot of collateral damage."
Scientists for and against thinning the forest at large say it has to
be carried out according to a prescription or it may cause serious
ecological problems. Just small fuels on the ground and trees up to
three or four inches in diameter should be removed instead of larger
trees, which are more fire-resistant. After thinning, the forest
needs prescription burning and then should be monitored for invasion
of exotic weeds.
Environmentalists say the Forest Service is using the fear of
wildfires to allow logging companies to remove medium- and large-
diameter trees that they can sell, rather than just the small trees
and brush that choke the understory of the forest and make the fires
more severe.
That could mean more trouble. A growing body of research shows that
clear-cuts and thousands of miles of logging roads carved into the
forests over the last century have greatly altered ecosystems, drying
out large areas and leaving behind vast expanses of wood waste.
Researchers on the Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Report wrote, "Timber
harvest, through its effects on forest structure, local microclimate
and fuels accumulation, has increased fire severity more than any
other recent activity." That includes fire suppression.
Mr. Cohen, who acknowledges that the science on thinning beyond a
house's red zone is incomplete, nonetheless supports widespread fuel
reduction as quickly as possible to head off ecological disaster.
"Our ecosystems cannot sustainably tolerate wildfires without some
kind of change," he said.
He pointed out that Colorado, Arizona and Oregon suffered their
largest fires on record this year.
Dr. Erman advocates more research before wide-scale thinning.
"Think about it over the winter," he said. "Then prioritize those
areas that are most critical. Then do some thinning and long-term
monitoring, so we know we're on the right track."
One point on which scientists, including Mr. Cohen, are unanimous is
the need not only for more research, but also for research with a
different focus.
"We've been asking commodity questions," Mr. Cohen said. "Now we're
faced with questions of environmental sustainability, and we've not
been asking those questions."
ITEM #3
Title: Fire Suppression Bush Style: Cut Down the Trees!
Source: Copyright 2002 Environment News Service
Date: August 25, 2002
Byline: Healing Our World: Weekly Comment, by Jackie Alan Giuliano,
Ph.D.
"A further sign of health is that we don't become undone by fear and
trembling, but we take it as a message that it's time to stop
struggling and look directly at what's threatening us."
-- Pema Chodron
"Perhaps our eyes need to be washed by our tears once in a while,
so that we can see Life with a clearer view again." -- Alex Tan
Police in Portland, Oregon battled protesters on August 22 when
President George W. Bush came to town to raise money for Republican
Senator Gordon Smith and to announce his new forest policies. The
scene looked like something from the futuristic movie “Robocop” where
high-tech police constantly battle the population. Pepper spray
filled the air and police looked ominous in their riot gear.
Protesters sat in trees, and blocked intersections, and by late
afternoon, police declared a state of emergency. The Associated Press
article on the event, reprinted in newspapers around the world, said
there were a “few hundred” protesters and maybe as many as 500 at one
point.
But the Portland Independent Media Center (IMC), a network of over 75
regional independent media centers offering grassroots, non-
corporate, non-commercial coverage of issues and events, reported
that over 3,000 protesters were on hand. As usual, the corporate
controlled media wants to minimize the fact that the policies of the
Bush administration are generating large scale, systematic dissent
throughout the nation.
Rubber bullets were used on the protesters, and eyewitnesses report
seeing police use pepper spray on peaceful people at point-blank
range. In one instance, police drenched a family of four, including a
10 month old baby, with pepper spray and refused to allow them to
leave to seek medical attention.
What were these so-called environmentalists and radicals and
extremists protesting? Surely things can’t be that bad, can they?
These radicals, who included mothers, children, and veterans from
nearly every U.S. sponsored war, are angry about plans to go to war
again for the sake of the few remaining barrels of oil in the Earth
and President Bush’s newly announced policy to thin our forests to
prevent fires.
Rob Moitozo, 57, carried a sign in the protest that said “Vets
Against Bush.” He said, “I don’t think any American boys’ lives are
worth a barrel of oil. He was voicing the widespread understanding
that the proposed war with Iraq has little to do with the terror
policies of Sadam Hussein. It is really about Hussein's potential to
interrupt the flow of oil from the Mideast.
But the majority of the protesters were angry about Bush’s plans to
implement rules that would thin our national forests to reduce fire
risk. Cascadia Forest Alliance volunteer Carrie Taylor said Bush’s
plan to log mature and old forests “will only increase fire risks
while providing taxpayer subsidized logs to the timber industry.”
According to the Cascadia Forest Alliance, under the Bush proposal,
“environmental laws and citizen involvement will be undermined or
suspended so that federal land management agencies can increase
logging and roadbuilding on public lands, one of the timber
industry's highest priorities.”
There is general agreement that decades of fire suppression in our
forests has resulted in an unnatural buildup of dead wood that
provides an ample fuel source for wildfires. Forests are designed to
withstand regular fires that clear the ground and keep the impact of
subsequent fires to a minimum. Some species of trees even need fire
to reproduce, requiring the high heat to burn protective coatings
from their seeds. Fire also provides important nutrients in the soil
from the burned material.
Environmental organizations agree that forest management practices
are out of step with ecological reality, but they say increasing
logging is the exact opposite of what should be done.
Bush is a well known supporter of the timber industry and many of his
largest contributors come from timber company management. Bush broke
Oregon fundraising records in May 2000 while accepting huge sums of
money from wealthy timber company leaders.
Environmentalists accuse him of promoting misinformation about forest
fires in order to capitalize on Oregon's wildfires and the public's
fears to promote logging in order to benefit timber industry campaign
contributors.
Over a million dollars was raised for Senator Smith on August 22,
making it the largest single fundraising event in Oregon political
history. Timber companies and their executives are among the donors.
Senator Smith also favors eliminating environmental rules to
encourage destructive ancient forest logging. This plan has probably
been in the works for some time.
Last year, Bush appointed former timber industry lobbyist Mark Rey to
the post of undersecretary for the environment and natural resources
for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a post in which he really
serves, the words of one conservationist, as "political boss of the
Forest Service."
But doesn’t it make sense that if you cut the trees, there would be
less to burn? If you take a look at fire suppression thinning
projects that have taken place to date, you will see a few scattered
trees surrounded by barren ground. The forest that was there is gone
and the life that is left is severely impacted.
There is a difference between clearing small trees and underbrush to
reduce fuels and the logging of large trees under the guise of fuels
reduction.
But America needs wood anyway, right? We have to build our houses and
repair the infrastructure of our cities. And don't forget jobs.
Well, it doesn't take much research to discover that a large number
of the trees cut in the U.S. are not even used here in this country!
In 1997, 1.6 billion board feet of softwood lumber were exported to
other countries. Nearly 40 percent of that went to Japan alone.
In the same year, over two billion board feet of whole logs were
shipped to other countries and 65 percent or 1.3 billion board feet
of that went to Japan.
Japan is said to be hoarding uncut logs, storing them in hi-tech
underwater storage containers. When the U.S. is out of harvestable
trees, guess who will be selling them back to us? It is
understandable to want to think that everything is OK and that our
leaders have our best interests at heart.
Unfortunately, greed rules the land, and forests are under the
control of a few powerful companies who do not have to work together
or worry about the future. There only responsibility is to their
shareholders who want the highest price for the trees.
A forest is a vibrant and mysterious place that gives us the air we
breathe and nurtures the thin layer of soil that gives us our food.
Every fallen tree in an untouched forest is not a wasted product or
just fuel for fire. It is a vibrant birthplace for new trees. And
every inch of moss on a forest floor is a mysterious universe unto
itself.
We need to appreciate the importance of an intact forest and expose
he mythology of the U.S. lumber industry and its partner, the Bush
administration. We must prevent this industry from exporting our
heritage and selling our future.
Don't let it happen.
RESOURCES
1. Check out the Portland Independent Media Center at:
http://portland.indymedia.org/
2. Visit the Cascadia Forest Alliance at:
http://www.cascadiaforestalliance.org/
3. Find out who is giving money to your elected
representatives with the help of the Center for Responsive
Politics at: http://www.opensecrets.org/
4. Check out Senator Gordon Smith’s 2002 campaign contributors
at:
http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.asp?CID=N00007815&cycl
e=2002
5. Learn about forest issues from the American Lands Alliance
at: http://www.americanlands.org/
6. Keep an eye on Northwest forest issues with the help of the
Northcoast Environmental Center at:
http://www.necandeconews.to/portal/index.php
7. Understand the importance of biodiversity from Biodiversity
Northwest at: http://www.pcbp.org/
8. Find out who your Congressional representatives are and
e-mail them. Demand that they work to keep our forests safe
and strong while protecting the communities around them. If
you know your Zip code, you can find them at:
http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/ziptoit.html
{Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D. is a writer and teacher in
Seattle and the author of "Healing Our World", A Journey from
the Darkness Into the Light," available at:
http://www.xlibris.com/HealingOurWorld.html or your local
bookstore. Please send your thoughts, comments, and visions to
him at: jackie@healingourworld.com and visit his website at:
http://www.healingourworld.com}
ITEM #4
Title: Bush's Forest Safety Plan Kindles a Debate Policy
He moves to ease the way for 'salvage logging' in burned-over
areas. Foes say it's a Trojan horse that opens the way for loggers.
Source: Copyright 2002 LA Times
Date: August 23, 2002
Byline: GEOFFREY MOHAN, TIMES STAFF WRITER
As the Bush administration spells out an aggressive new fire
prevention strategy that would increase logging on public lands, the
U.S. Forest Service is preparing to auction off tens of thousands of
acres of marketable timber left standing in areas that have already
burned.
Nearly half of that timber is in California's Sierra Nevada, where
30,000 acres in remote national forests are on the auction block this
year. The area is currently subject to strict limits on logging under
a plan developed during the Clinton administration to protect old-
growth trees and wildlife habitat.
On Thursday, President Bush unveiled a proposal to make it easier to
remove trees and brush from fire-prone forests by making it more
difficult for opponents of the logging to use environmental laws to
delay or cancel the projects.
Until now, the Forest Service has been required to consider
objections to plans such as those underway in the Sierra, but that
avenue of appeal would be restricted if Congress goes along with the
administration's proposals.
Proponents of cutting trees in fire-damaged forests, a practice known
as salvage logging, say it is a good way for the Forest Service to
make money from wood that might otherwise rot, and use some of the
proceeds to replant and restore a thinner, more balanced forest where
fires will be less likely to burn out of control.
"If there is something of commercial value that can be taken without
any environmental damage, then the proceeds can be reinvested to
restore the land," said Mark Rey, a former timber industry lobbyist
who, as the Bush administration undersecretary overseeing the Forest
Service, is putting salvage logging on a fast track.
"If we have to rely exclusively on appropriated [tax] money, we'll
never get this thing done," Rey said.
Conservationists regard salvage logging as the ecological equivalent
of mugging a fire victim. Salvage sales, they say, allow timber
companies to cut many trees that survive the flames in areas far
removed from towns or cities that could be threatened by wildfire.
And, foes of the practice contend, the contracts seldom require
timber companies to remove the very fuel that stokes wildfires--the
smaller trees and underbrush for which there is little or no market.
As a result, conservationists say, burned-over forests are further
weakened by depriving them of their most fire-resistant trees as well
as large standing snags and fallen logs that shelter wildlife and
restore nutrients to the forest soil.
"The Forest Service is using fire as a Trojan horse to get into our
forests," said Brian Vincent, an activist with the American Lands
Alliance in Nevada City who is battling the sales in the Sierra
Nevada.
"They're using all kinds of explanations, like restoration, salvage,
thinning, fuel reduction. But when you take the ribbons and bows off
the box, it's still a timber sale."
Although salvage logging received only passing mention in the Bush
plan, the administration already has been pushing such projects.
Among them is a 41,000-acre auction in Montana's Bitterroot National
Forest that was delayed by a federal judge in December because the
administration had sought to preempt a public-comment period.
In California, if the salvage plans are carried out, at least 250
million board-feet of timber--enough to fill 50,000 log trucks--will
roll out of nearly every national forest in the Sierra, from Lassen
south to Sequoia, some of it cut from fragile watersheds and the high
elevation habitat of endangered spotted owls, northern goshawks and
Pacific fishers. The work is scheduled to begin this fall.
Both the administration and its critics agree that many forests,
including some that have burned recently, are tinderboxes.
And both sides blame decades-old policies of quickly suppressing
fires and allowing unchecked growth of younger tree and shrubs amid
wider-girthed old stands. One day, they hope, naturally occurring
fires that do not flare out of control will do nature's
housecleaning.
Where they disagree is whether commercial logging has any role in
returning forests to a more healthy, fire-resistant state.
The advocates say that without thinning, the burned-over forests are
more likely to burn again.
"Left to its own devices, most of the forests will shrub over and
they'll stay that way for decades," said Mike Landram, regional
silviculturist for the U.S. Forest Service in California. "That's
fine if we want our forests to be shrub fields. But what we have said
is we favor old forests, and we don't have enough old forests.
"If the delays continue, then the net result is the American people
get to have all these large stands of dead wood, and the alternative
way of getting it removed is your tax dollars," Landram added.
While salvage may help clear out dead wood, the vast majority of the
money it generates goes into planning further salvage sales,
according to congressional reports.
For example, timber companies paid more than $2 million to salvage
18.5 million board-feed of timber from the 1999 Pendola fire in Tahoe
National Forest, according to the Forest Service. Of that sum,
$235,594 was spent on reforestation, and the Forest Service spent
nearly $300,000 of additional tax money to clear out smaller fuels
and replant new trees.
"If we can use a timber sale to offset some of the cost, why wouldn't
we do that and save the taxpayers' money?" said Steve Eubanks, forest
supervisor for the Tahoe National Forest, where about 9,500 acres of
timber are being considered for salvage logging this year.
"Why would we not take advantage of trying to offset some of the
costs by doing that?"
The timber industry, meanwhile, has grown increasingly impatient at
the prospect of having to fight to cut even the dead wood left from a
fire.
"That whole concept of mugging a burn victim is ludicrous," said Tom
Nelson, director of forest policy for Sierra Pacific Industries, a
top participant in Forest Service salvage sales in California.
Leaving dead logs behind just creates the conditions for the next
fire, Nelson said. "It's still out there, it's still fuel and the
brush is going to grow up under it," he said.
"Instead of spending $17 million to put out a fire that destroys the
habitat, why not spend the money to get in and thin it? You get the
products and you save the habitat. There's nothing pretty about the
aftermath of a wildfire."
When you get down to the details, there's nothing pretty about the
way salvage logging is done, according to those fighting companies
like Sierra Pacific.
Chad Hanson and Rachel Fazio of the John Muir Project, an
environmental group in Cedar Ridge, Calif., have marshaled biologists
and silviculturists to their cause. They have bypassed "No
Trespassing" signs in order to walk nearly every acre of the largest
proposed salvage projects to gather evidence to support their appeals
in three Sierra forests.
The pair have infuriated forest rangers and logging companies, and
weathered accusations of environmental terrorism.
"It's not about [forest] health. It's not about protecting
communities. It's about profit," Hanson said during a recent session
of what he calls "ground-truthing" salvage plans. "Let's not sit
there and say it's about protecting communities that are five, 10, 20
miles away."
In the woods, they point out massive trees marked for harvest that
have green crowns and barely a scorch mark at their base. Smaller
trees that were severely scorched are not marked for cutting. These
are the real culprits, Hanson and Fazio contend, that become the
kindling that fuels wildfire and carries it high into the crowns of
taller, older neighbors.
Even in severely burned areas, the two said they have found evidence
that spotted owls have returned to perch on dead trees, which often
provide nesting cavities and hiding places for other species as well.
On a backwoods logging road of the Tahoe National Forest, Hanson and
Fazio conducted their own inspection last month. Hanson knelt before
a freshly cut ponderosa pine felled as a potential hazard to loggers
in preparation for salvage operations. All around it were supple
green limbs hacked from the trunk. Hanson counted the rings, losing
track at 360. Fresh sap oozed from the pink cambium, the membrane
that transports a tree's nutrients just inside the bark, which
measured 5 inches thick in most places. The fire had burned its way
less than an inch into the bark.
Hanson and Fazio made similar discoveries in three other Sierra
Forests they visited this summer.
"This tree probably has seen at least half a dozen fires more severe
in its lifetime," Hanson said, pointing to a lightly scorched red fir
that predates the Declaration of Independence.
The tree stands on a swath of the Lassen National Forest that will be
logged unless the Muir Project's appeal prevails.
"We see this over and over again," Hanson added. "They just don't
think anyone will go out and check."
Arguing tree-by-tree is crucial to both sides in the salvage battle.
If enough of a stand can be declared dead--more than 75%--loggers can
cut much bigger trees. That rule applies to healthy forests governed
by the Sierra Nevada Framework, which was developed during the
Clinton era and covers 11.5 million acres of federal land in the
Sierra.
When it was adopted last year, the framework plan was hailed as a
landmark attempt to promote habitat preservation in a dozen national
forests in the Sierra, particularly on 4.5 million acres of old-
growth forest that is ideal for endangered species like the spotted
owl.
The outcome of the battle over salvage logging in the Sierra forests
may turn on the meaning of the word "dead."
The Forest Service follows guidelines that declare a tree dead based
on a percentage of scorched needles in its crown, or if the heat
killed the cambium inside the bark.
Environmentalists say the guidelines allow some trees that have a
good chance of survival to be cut down. The Forest Service counters
that its predictions of which trees will die are 75% to 80% accurate,
and it is willing to live with that outcome.
"Right now there are more trees dying by far than what the Forest
Service is harvesting. There's plenty of dead trees out there. The
idea of running out of dead trees is ridiculous," said Nelson of
Sierra Pacific ries.
Nonetheless, faced with arguments that many trees can survive even
severe scorching, Forest Service officials in the Tahoe National
Forest banned any salvage logging of trees that still show green
needles. Other forests, including the neighboring Eldorado, have not
followed suit. Each forest is free to tailor its own plan.
Caught between forest antagonists, many Forest Service veterans are
anxious to find a middle ground.
"Really, all this business is, is trying to make the kind of forest
we want to be there," said Landram, the Forest Service
silviculturist.
"We're in the middle of a great national debate over what the forests
are for."
ITEM #5
Title: Analysis: Bush Administration's "Healthy Forests Initiative"
Source: The Wilderness Society
Date: August 22, 2002
Byline: Mike Anderson, The Wilderness Society
For more information, contact:
Mike Anderson (206) 624-6430, ext. 227 (Seattle)
Greg Aplet (720) 244-2083 (Denver)
Chris Mehl (406) 581-4992 (cell, in Medford, Oregon)
Michelle Ackermann (202) 429-2616, cell: (206) 910-0118
Following is a quick analysis of the Bush Administration's "Healthy
Forests Initiative," as described in a briefing paper distributed in
advance of President Bush's speech in Medford, Oregon, on August 22.
This analysis focuses on the proposed legislative and regulatory
actions that appear to be the centerpiece of the Initiative. In
essence, the Bush Administration is proposing three types of actions:
1. Administrative guidance and procedures designed to cut red tape
and "improve regulatory processes" for fuels treatments and
restoration projects. The briefing paper does not provide enough
detail to evaluate the impacts of these administrative actions on
environmental protection and public involvement.
2. Legislation to curtail or eliminate administrative appeals and
lawsuits challenging fuels treatments and restoration projects. This
appears to be the most radical and controversial part of the
Initiative. The briefing paper suggests that the Bush Administration
wishes to exempt some or all fuel reduction and restoration projects
nationwide from judicial review, as Congress recently did in order to
implement a revised settlement agreement for portions of the Black
Hills
National Forest. The impacts of such an exemption would likely be
similar to the 1995 Salvage Rider (a.k.a. Logging Without Laws),
which effectively barred appeals and lawsuits of salvage timber sales
and generated tremendous controversy. Vice President Gore later said
that signing the Salvage Rider was the worst decision made by the
Clinton Administration during its first term.
The Initiative also proposes legislation to authorize use of long-
term "stewardship contracts" for fuels treatments and restoration
projects. This is also a controversial proposal because it allows
logging companies and the Forest Service to trade "goods for
services" - i.e. to cut federal timber in return for reducing fuel
loads. A similar provision was considered but dropped from the Farm
Bill earlier this summer, due in part to environmental concerns that
it would create a perverse incentive for loggers and Forest Service
managers to cut bigger and more valuable trees.
3. Legislation to increase timber sales in the Pacific Northwest by
"removing needless administrative obstacles" in the Northwest Forest
Plan and by expediting implementation of projects determined to be
consistent with the Plan. It is important to note that this part of
the Initiative is not limited to fuel reduction and restoration
projects. Instead, the primary impact would be to increase logging
of old-growth forests in the relatively moist western Cascades, where
fuel reduction generally is not a management objective.
Environmentalists have been working with Senator Wyden and others to
develop legislation that would protect the remaining old-growth
forests and encourage ecologically beneficial thinning projects in
the Northwest. However, the Healthy Forests Initiative suggests that
the Bush Administration is only interested in cutting more of the old
growth. Environmentalists almost certainly will strongly oppose this
part of the Initiative.
In conclusion, key elements of the Healthy Forests Initiative are
likely to be extremely controversial and vehemently opposed by the
environmental community. The Initiative is remarkably narrow in its
scope: it focuses almost exclusively on reducing "needless red tape
and lawsuits" as the key to improving forest health and preventing
unnaturally intense wildfires. The Initiative does not even mention
the need for additional funding to implement the National Fire Plan;
nor does it address many key issues in fire prevention, such as
actions to reduce fire risks in the wildland-urban interface.
Thus, from an environmental perspective, the Bush Administration
seems to be more interested in overriding environmental laws and
eliminating public participation than it is in developing a
comprehensive and broadly supported strategy for reducing wildfire
risks and restoring healthy forests and rangelands. Unfortunately,
the Bush Administration seems to be missing an historic opportunity
to forge a public consensus on how to deal with wildfire prevention.
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