State of the Rockies 2007

Day 2: Panelist: ‘Healthy Forests’ Objective Mired in Poor Practice

By Daniel Berger
assistant editor
Headwaters News
April 12,2007

It’s hard to argue with legislation that aims to reduce the risks from wildfires to humans, structures and ecosystems, such as the Healthy Forests Initiative of 2002, but Phillip Kannan has a real problem with the way the objective of that law is executed.

“All it’s about,” he told an audience at the 2007 Colorado College Report on the Rockies Conference, in Colorado Springs, “is reacting” to the wildfire situation.  “What would be better is to be a better planner.”

Kannan, a legal-scholar-in-residence at Colorado College and author of the chapter on the Healthy Forests Initiative in this year’s report, laid out his problems with the law in his chapter (pdf), and gave that critique some bite when he presented at the report’s conference.

The law has two components, he said, an administrative component and a legislative component. Taken together, he said, they are a dramatic shift from previous forest management policy; reduce public input; weaken existing environmental laws; and don’t help prevent the problem of large-scale, threatening wildfires.

Part of the problem, he said, is that there is too much focus on mechanical thinning, instead of other forest treatment methods.

“Mechanical thinning,” he told the crowd, “need not be a mask for logging, but it is subject to abuse and that is the source of so much litigation.”

Another problem with the law, said Kannan, is its expanded use of categorical exclusions. “This is where the debate centers, right here,” he said.

For this law, the Forest Service expanded some categorical exclusions, which are projects that are exempt from environmental review because a manager decides they have no defined environmental impact. These expanded categorical exclusions, he said, allow forest managers to set specific project sizes just under the limits, which in some cases are 4,200 acres.

The projects can be stacked next to or near each other and, even where one may not have much of an environmental effect, combined, they could have any number of effects. Still, Kannan noted, the projects would not be open to any review outside the agency. 

In addition to limiting the scope of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), he said, the Healthy Forests Initiative also limits the scope of the Endangered Species Act because it again allows for no review by anyone outside the agency, including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is responsible for managing endangered species.

Kannan offers no suggestions for fixing this legislation. Instead, he says it should have been modeled after other, more successful federal legislation, such as the Coastal Barrier Resources Act, which restricts federal expenditures and financial aid, which could encourage development in coastal barriers.  The same should have been done in this case.

“The federal government should stop subsidizing at-risk areas.” He said. “Period.”