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FOREST CONSERVATION NEWS TODAY
Failed Bush Environmental Policy Causes Wildfires
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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 13, 2002
OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by Forests.org
The Bush Administration response to raging forest fires would be
comical if it were not so environmentally dangerous. Below are a few
articles regarding the fire situation and the ecologically challenged
Bush Presidency. The first one by Randal O’Toole is truly marvelous.
He cuts to the chase: the fires are mostly the result of drought
(intensified by climate change, I would add) and dumping money on
putting these fires out is economically and ecologically senseless.
“The West has always had big fires and it always will... ...Ponderosa
pine forests are ecologically adapted to frequent, low-intensity
fires. But most Western forests, including Douglas fir, lodgepole
pine, spruce, fir and hemlock forests, are adapted to infrequent,
high-intensity fires.” Look at Yellowstone and many other areas that
had severe fires – the ecosystems have been regenerated and the
natural cycle of renewal is well underway.
Policy initiatives from the ecologically challenged Congress and
Toxic Texan essentially is limited to proposing to log the hell out
of America’s forests so they will not burn. One pending bill allows
24 million acres of federal timberland with high fire potential to be
thinned without going through standard environmental reviews. In
many cases, “thinning” is proving to be a euphemism for lawless
commercial logging.
An ecologically based policy response to surging forest fires that
goes beyond political posturing and has some chance of contributing
to America’s ecological sustainability (which is at stake) would
include: 1) real measures to reduce the risks of climate change and
resultant droughts through massive investment in renewable energy and
emissions reductions, 2) letting forest fires in remote areas burn
and naturally regenerate as they have naturally for eons, 3) limiting
impacts upon structures and people through tighter building codes, 4)
reducing industrial logging and roading, which opens forest edges and
increases fire intensity and frequency. Large, intact and fully
operable forest ecosystems are a requirement for sustaining America.
The Toxic Texan - that is so consumed by security - does not seem to
realize Rome is burning as he diddles. Global security and the well-
being of humanity are most threatened by imminent and already evident
ecological collapse. It has been announced President Bush will not
even leave his ranch to go to the Earth Summit in South Africa. This
man is a disgraceful sham of a leader – a true eco-terrorist. The
blood of the dying Earth is on his oil soaked hands.
g.b.
P.S. There is much more information on these matters at
http://forests.org/ and the Action Alert to the Toxic Texan at
http://forests.org/emailaction/bush.htm is still relevant.
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ITEM #1
Title: Wildfire in the west
Culprits: Drought and money
Source: Denver Post
Date: August 11 2002
Byline: Randal O'Toole, perspective
Sunday, August 11, 2002 - This year's fierce wildfires have led to
even fiercer political battles over who's to blame. Is it the Forest
Service, which suppressed previous fires it should have let burn? Is
it loggers, who left debris behind after timber sales? Or is it
environmentalists, who delayed and stopped timber sales and other
projects that could reduce fuels?
The answer turns out to be none of the above. The hazardous-fuel
crisis is mostly a myth. Drought, not fuel, is the chief culprit
behind big fires in Colorado, Arizona and elsewhere in the West, and
perverse incentives are the main reason why the Forest Service spends
so much money suppressing fires that it should let burn.
Forest Service stories about a hazardous fuel crisis convinced
Congress to give the agency a whopping 38 percent, $1.4 billion
increase in its budget last year, mostly for fire-related activities
such as thinning overgrown forests.
Hazardous fuels also excuse the Forest Service's big fire-suppression
program, which - if you include activities such as keeping
firefighters on standby - nearly doubled its budget to well over $1.3
billion. Though everyone agrees federal land managers should let more
fires burn, the supposed danger of hazardous fuels gives them a
pretext to fight more than 99.5 percent of all wildfires.
I am not claiming there are no fuel problems on federal lands. But
after studying all available data, I can't find any evidence that
fuel build-ups have much to do with recent fires. More acres burned
in 2000 than in any of the previous 40 years, and even more may burn
in 2002. But the average number of acres burned in the last five
years is no greater than the average number burned 40 years ago.
That figure depends mainly on droughts.
The number of firefighters killed each year more than doubled, from
about eight per year in the 1950s to nearly 17 per year in the 1990s.
But that was not because of fuels: The average number killed by fire
declined from about six to five a year. Where fatalities increased
was in aircraft and vehicle accidents - increasing from one to six
per year - and heart attacks, which increased from an average of one-
half to five per year. An aging workforce and greater use of aircraft
and vehicles, not fuels, are responsible for increased firefighter
deaths.
Firefighting costs have flamed skyward, but for reasons other than
fuels. Besides droughts, there's the growing number of homes in the
"wildland-urban interface" near federal lands. One study says 38
percent of new homes built in the West are in this zone, and the
Forest Service spends extraordinary amounts of money trying to
protect them.
But the biggest reason for high firefighting costs is more basic:
Congress gives the Forest Service a blank check to put out fires.
This was also true before 1978, but in the 1980s, Congress tried to
rein in fire costs by giving the Forest Service a fixed amount each
year. Deficits in one year were to be covered by surpluses in the
next.
This led the Forest Service to control its costs for nearly a decade.
Then severe fires in 1987 and 1988 forced the agency to borrow
hundreds of millions of dollars from its reforestation fund.
Forest Service officials persuaded Congress to reimburse this money
in 1990. The agency is now free to spend as much as it likes on fire
suppression, and Congress always covers the deficits.
No wonder firefighters say the Forest Service attacks fires by
dumping money on them. After the great fires of 2000, Congress began
an even greater firestorm of spending on fuel treatments, research,
community assistance and, especially, suppression. Once again, we're
trying to solve a problem by dumping money on it. But it won't work.
Ponderosa pine forests are ecologically adapted to frequent, low-
intensity fires. But most Western forests, including Douglas fir,
lodgepole pine, spruce, fir and hemlock forests, are adapted to
infrequent, high-intensity fires. The West has always had big fires
and it always will.
The real problem with fire is the Forest Service's incentive to
spend too much money. Except to protect adjacent private lands,
federal land managers should let fires burn on federal lands. This
will save money, save lives and restore ecosystems.
Randal O'Toole is the senior economist with the Thoreau Institute
and a lifelong resident of Oregon. He is a contributor to Writers on
the Range, a service of High Country News.
ITEM #2
Title: Wildfires stoke tensions over conservation policy
Source: Associated Press
Date: August 13, 2002
Byline: MATTHEW DALY, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (August 13, 2002 10:24 a.m. EDT) - The spate of wildfires
this summer is inflaming more than just the Western landscape.
Longtime allies are turning into adversaries as the fires stoke
tensions between environmentalists and some normally supportive
Democrats in Congress.
Environmentalists who had long sought a bill to protect old-growth
forests in the Pacific Northwest are now vowing to oppose it,
accusing Senate Democrats of undercutting conservation in the name of
wildfire prevention.
Republicans and representatives of the timber industry say it is
environmentalists who have a credibility problem. The fires now
raging in the West are helping build public support for more logging
to thin overstocked forests after decades of fire suppression, they
say.
Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and other Western senators are leading an
effort to loosen federal restrictions that have allowed dry tinder to
build up in the national forests, fueling the devastating blazes.
"You've got forests that don't look like forests anymore," Domenici
said. "They're totally built up with undergrowth. You try to do
something about it, you're in court - it takes forever. We want to
change that and I think we're going to do it."
Among those caught in the shifting political winds is Sen. Ron Wyden,
D-Ore. A longtime friend of the environmental movement, Wyden now
finds himself under attack from it because he's willing to allow
increased logging in some areas to reduce the fire threat in exchange
for GOP support of bill to ban timber harvesting in old-growth
forests in western Oregon.
With much of his state on fire, Wyden was under pressure to do
something, said Chris West, vice president of the American Forest
Resource Council, a Portland-based timber group.
So Wyden agreed to allowing expedited thinning in dry areas east of
the Cascades to win Republican support for his plan to ban logging in
areas where trees are more than 120 years old. With a Republican-
controlled House and a closely divided Senate such a compromise was
essential for Wyden's old-growth bill to have a chance of becoming
law, West said.
Jasmine Minbashian, coordinator of the Northwest Old Growth Campaign,
called Wyden's proposal "somewhat shocking." Conservationists will
not agree to a "divide and conquer approach" that sacrifices eastern
trees in return for protection of older, western trees, she said.
Wyden is not alone among Senate Democrats in challenging the
conventional environmentalist line that prohibitions on logging
represent the best forest policy. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle
of South Dakota moved quietly last month to exempt some areas of his
home state from environmental constraints on tree cutting.
Daschle attached a rider to an emergency spending bill to allow some
logging in areas of South Dakota's Black Hills National Forest. The
measure waives key restrictions on forest thinning and blocks court
challenges by logging opponents - a heresy the environmental movement
fears will spread to forests throughout the West.
Republican lawmakers quickly seized on Daschle's measure, calling it
a model for allowing speedy action on thinning other national
forests.
Domenici and Republican Sens. Jon Kyl of Arizona and Larry Craig of
Idaho have vowed to introduce legislation that would allow up to 24
million acres of federal timberland with high fire potential to be
thinned without going through standard environmental reviews.
"If it can happen in South Dakota it should happen in all of the
West," the three senators said in a statement.
Daschle, in a letter last month to Republican lawmakers, defended his
measure, saying it was the product of months of negotiations that
involved all sides, including local chapters of the Sierra Club, The
Wilderness Society and other environmental groups.
"If Congress is ever to succeed in resolving the ongoing national
debate over forest management ... it should foster more consensus-
based decision-making like the one that produced the Black Hills
agreement," Daschle wrote.
Some environmentalists are not convinced.
Measures similar to Daschle's could be used to bypass environmental
laws "and log old-growth forests in the name of fire protection,"
said Joseph Vaile of the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center in Oregon.
"It's pretty scary."
Those fears were exacerbated when Wyden and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-
Calif., appeared at an Aug. 1 news conference with Domenici. Wyden
did not speak in favor of the forest-thinning plan, but his presence
- coupled with his proposal for expedited logging east of the
Cascades - was troubling, Vaile said.
Wyden declined to be interviewed for this story. But his chief of
staff, Josh Kardon, said his office was "a little surprised that some
of the groups seem to prefer to clear-cut the senator's proposal
instead of selectively thinning what they don't like."
"Unless you are willing to compromise," Kardon said, "you are
resigned to sloganeering and accomplishing nothing."
ITEM #3
Title: Quiet Raid on Public Lands
Source: Los Angeles Times
Date: August 12, 2002
Byline: EDITORIAL
The battle for the environment is never easy. The struggle to clean
the air and water and preserve wild lands for our children and our
children's children was tested in the 1980s by the attacks of
Interior Secretary James G. Watt. Fortunately, public outrage stymied
Watt.
But today, from Florida to Alaska, the environment again is under
assault. The Bush administration is undercutting laws and reversing
regulations under the guise of "balance" and of what's good for the
nation. The beneficiary is industry.
It's the most concerted exploitation of the public's land, air and
water since fundamental protection laws went into effect three
decades ago.
Many worthy initiatives are being junked, including a Clinton
administration decision to halt road building in 59 million acres of
untracked national forest. Corporations itching to tear up federal
lands in the West for their energy and mineral wealth are getting a
sympathetic hearing in the White House.
The present reversal is smarter, broader and more threatening than
the Watt actions. Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton, a Watt protege,
extols the parks and wild animals; behind that shield, damage is
taking place.
Many Americans are familiar with the administration's quest to drill
for oil on the Arctic plain in Alaska and repeal the snowmobile ban
in Yellowstone. Scores of other rollbacks never make headlines. A
sampling:
* A new Environmental Protection Agency rule allows companies to dump
mine waste into rivers and streams.
* The Interior Department is pushing to develop oil and gas leases
off the Central California coast and new energy leasing in the Los
Padres National Forest, part of it habitat for the California condor.
* The EPA ordered a 16-year delay in enforcing rules to clean
emissions from dirty older electric power plants.
* The Interior Department says it will allow drilling of 51,000
methane gas wells in northeast Wyoming, threatening the area's
groundwater supply. Interior also is opening the pristine Rocky
Mountain Front in Montana and the red rock country of Utah to oil
exploration.
* The U.S. Forest Service is expanding logging plans in the national
forests and Interior is proposing oil exploration near Florida's
Everglades.
The administration also is slashing the regulatory budgets of
agencies such as the EPA. Committed professional staff members have
felt ignored, sometimes driven out. Former energy and logging
industry executives manage the nation's parks and forests.
Norton talks of restoring balance between protecting the environment
and the need to develop public resources. But her initiatives, far
from being balanced, are a swing back toward the exploitation that
ravaged the public estate in the 20th century.
Congress should be fighting these shadowy dealings, but most members
are preoccupied with national security issues and some are simply
cozy with the energy industry and thus happy with the Bush
administration actions.
If Congress continues its passive acceptance of this environmental
reversal, the courts may be the only defense left. Americans should
make their voices heard before it comes to that.
*
To Take Action: Contact your U.S. representative at (202) 225-3121 or
www.house.gov, or senators, (202) 224-3121, www.senate.gov.
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