Bush signs into law "Healthy Forests" initiative

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http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/08/22/bush.timber/

CENTRAL POINT, Oregon (CNN) -- Generating criticism from environmentalists, President Bush Thursday announced a new initiative to allow more logging in national forests, a move that he said will curb the threat of wildfires.
"We need to thin," Bush said in a speech that followed a tour of some fire-ravaged land in southwestern Oregon. "We need to make our forests healthy by using some common sense ... We need to understand, if you let kindling build up and there's a lightning strike, you're going to get yourself a big fire."

The "Healthy Forests" initiative calls on Congress to pass laws that would "expedite procedures for forest thinning and restoration projects" and "ensure the sustainable forest management and appropriate timber production."

Wildfires, the president said, have destroyed too much, and he criticized regulations that he said undermine effective management of federal lands.

"The forest policy of our government is misguided policy," Bush said. "It doesn't work."

Decrying "endless litigation," Bush said he wants to limit the "red tape" surrounding management of national forests.

"We'll make sure that people have their voice, but aren't able to tie it all up," Bush said.

Some environmental groups said the Bush proposal does little more than put the logging industry in charge of protecting the nation's wilderness areas from fire while ignoring the real needs of communities on forest edges.

This long, hot summer

The 2002 wildfire season has been one of the worst in modern history, torching 6.1 million acres so far.

Forestry officials said they believe the main culprit is a long-standing policy that called for protecting the forests at all costs -- no logging, and no fires to burn off dry brush and create natural burn lines that might stop the spread of wildfires.

The result, officials said, is over-populated forests with mounds of wildfire fuel -- underbrush and small trees -- on forest floors.

At the Biscuit fire complex in southern Oregon, Bush got a first-hand look at a fire that's burned since July 13, when a lightning strike touched off dry timber. Now 60-percent contained and battled in four zones, Biscuit has blackened almost a half-million acres and threatened hundreds of homes.

While forestry groups, the president and environmental groups agree that almost unlimited fuel is a serious problem -- one virtually untouched by a current policy of limited "prescribed burns" in areas deemed high risks for fire -- they seriously disagree on how to approach it. (Full story)

Bush wants to make it easier for loggers to thin out backcountry forests by easing regulatory restrictions and making it harder for environmentalists to stop or delay that work. Environmentalists and conservationists, however, say it's drought, and not environmental laws, that has created the current atmosphere.

"Wilderness and roadless areas are too valuable to be handed over to the logging industry in the name of 'fuel reduction,'" said Wilderness Society president William H. Meadows. "Environmental laws are not to blame for our fire problems. Eight out of ten Western fires start in roaded areas."

Meadows called Bush's plan "cynical politicking" and called for the federal government to "provide meaningful funding" for the Forest Service and set it free to focus "on the areas where our communities and forests intersect, not on increased logging far from homes."

Environmentalists call for alternate plan

The Wilderness Society joined with the Sierra Club and other groups Wednesday to release a $10 billion plan -- based on U.S. Forest Service research -- that they called "a blueprint for the Bush administration and the Forest Service."

In addition to making community protection the top firefighting priority, the environmental plan would increase the use of prescribed burns -- and naturally occurring, low-intensity burns -- to reduce fuel buildup.

"No community deserves to be left at risk of wildfire," said Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope. "The Forest Service should focus its people and resources on Community Protection Zones, not let them be diverted to low-priority backcountry projects."
A key element missing from Bush's proposals, according to J. Boone Kauffman of Oregon State University's Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, is the concept of restoration.

"A century of fire suppression and misguided forest management has left many forests and their surrounding communities at risk," Kauffman said. "We need to proactively protect and restore our forests -- we can't simply be reactive."

Bush's trip to Oregon included some fund raising. He was expected to raise $1 million for Oregon Republicans and the re-election campaign of Sen. Gordon Smith, who spent much of the day with the president.

 

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Experts disagree on forest management

'The devil is in the details'

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- As environmentalists denounce President Bush's proposal to ease restrictions on logging in the name of fire prevention, forestry experts allow the idea could have some merit -- but disagree on how to go about it. (Full story)

"The devil is in the details," said Ann Camp, a professor of forestry at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies in New Haven, Connecticut. "There is no hero and villain here."

Environmental groups have been quick to denounce Bush's proposal as a giveaway to the timber industry. Several environmental advocates say the administration's plan will open too much federal land to increased road building and logging, even within unspoiled areas deep within a forest.

"This is a pretty major offensive to rewrite national forest management laws on behalf of the timber industry," said Sean Cosgrove, the national forest policy specialist with the Sierra Club.

What should be cut?

Other forestry experts, including professors and those with backgrounds in the U.S. Forest Service, say the science of maintaining a healthy forest is far more complicated, a task affected by often competing ecological, recreational and commercial interests.

"There are many different types of logging," said Robert Shaffer, a forestry professor at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia. "The question is, how much is enough?"

Shaffer said the argument by some environmentalists that only underbrush and small trees ought to be thinned is simplistic. He said large trees often become the fuel for "crown fires," those spectacular blazes where huge flames consume treetops, leaping from one to another. Smaller trees act as steppingstones for the flames to reach the larger trees.

"We think of it as a ladder effect, and the fire can quickly move up into the crowns of the trees," Shaffer said. "That's when the wildfires move really fast."

Shaffer stressed "a judicious use of thinning" and said some larger, healthy trees could be included in such harvesting.

"Some groups would say no harvesting at all," he said. "Other groups would carry it too far."

Where to cut?

Within the academic and scientific communities, there seems to be little consensus on how much -- or what type -- of harvesting is appropriate to reduce fire hazards.

Jim Lyons, a forestry professor at Yale and the undersecretary for natural resources and the environment under the Clinton administration, said Bush ought to focus on "communities at risk" and not allow logging in roadless areas. The Sierra Club favors that approach, as do many other environmental groups.

"I think, in theory, thinning forests even in remote areas could have some value, but you have to be a pragmatist about this," Lyons said. "The Forest Service's budget is inadequate to march into roadless areas to do thinning. It's simply a misuse of funds. The smart way to go is to work in those areas where there is a clear and definable risk to communities and where there is already access."

Camp, a former research scientist with the U.S. Forest Service, said it makes sense to prioritize and focus first on forested areas close to towns. But, she said, even if one concentrated on such areas, it would be a mistake to think that larger, healthy trees would not be part of the harvesting effort.

"It's very difficult to conduct a harvesting kind of operation if you don't take out some of the larger trees," she said. "It's very, very difficult to have the kind of logging that dramatically reduces the risk of fire unless you are taking out the larger materials."

And she warned that if a thinning operation is sloppy with branches left on the ground, it could increase the risk of fires in the short term.

How long a review process?

For some forestry experts, the most controversial aspect of the Bush proposal has nothing to do with the logging itself, but that it will reduce the chance for the public to challenge or appeal some logging decisions. Some of this effect lies in the White House Healthy Forests Initiative's call for "reducing the number of overlapping environmental reviews by combining project analysis and establishing a process for concurrent project clearance by federal agencies."

Lyons said that this is certain to generate more controversy and distract from the goal of reducing the risk of fires. "This is going to make things more difficult," he said.

But Joe Cox, college forest manager with North Carolina State University in Raleigh, said he's glad the president has broached the subject.

He said the risk of fires has increased over the years because there's been too little thinning of brush and other fire fuel within national forests. (U.S. wildfires update)

"I have to applaud President Bush and the administration for at least tackling the issue and starting a dialogue on it," he said.