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Zero-cut
campaign forces bad ideas,
such as Bush's Healthy Forests plan
By
Daniel Kemmis
for Headwaters News
President Bush’s "Healthy Forests Initiative"
appears designed to use fuel reduction and forest health arguments
to justify heightened levels of commercial timber harvest in fire-prone
national forests.
This will almost certainly spark renewed calls from some environmental
groups to end commercial logging on national forests altogether.
While that reaction would be perfectly understandable, there are
several reasons to think that it would be both bad environmental
policy and bad environmental politics. In fact, this would be an
excellent time to recognize that the End Commercial Logging Campaign,
despite its best intentions, is now doing more harm than good.
Proponents of what was originally called "zero cut" have
been motivated by both ecological and economic concerns. They note
the extensive damage that careless logging practices have inflicted
on forested ecosystems by contributing to loss of biodiversity,
while damaging water quality and recreational opportunities. And
they argue that these activities have also cost millions of taxpayer
dollars to support below-cost timber sales, while eliminating
future economic opportunities that rely on recreation or fish
and wildlife.
Based on these arguments, the End Commercial Logging
campaign has supported the National Forest Protection and Restoration
Act, co-sponsored by Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) and Rep. Jim
Leach (R-Iowa). The bill would prohibit commercial logging on public
lands, with a few specified exceptions that include hazardous fuels
reduction. It would also develop national standards for forest restoration
and create a National Heritage Restoration Corps.
While the bill has never made any significant headway in Congress,
the zero-cut campaign has provided motivation to countless activists
who have persistently resisted timber sales throughout the national
forest system.
To a person, those who support this approach are doing what they
believe will best protect forests about which they care deeply and
genuinely. But in a number of ways, the weapon they are using to
protect those forests has begun to backfire.
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Western
Republicans rush
to back Bush's forest initiative
By
Greg Lakes, editor
Headwaters News
Sept. 11, 2002
President Bush's "Healthy Forests Initiative"
may be the backlash to years of challenges to national forest timber
sales, but there's seems no shortage of supporters -- elected, Republican
and conservative -- across the West.
Some columnists are saying the debate will be a bitter and protracted
conflict, but while the specifics vary, the momentum is swinging
toward the right.
Bush's environmental agenda scored a point with approval of Yucca
Mountain but lost big on plans to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge. The
administration badly needs a win, observers say, and the summer's
drought and wildfires will make it politically difficult for Democrats
and environmentalists to counter.
Bush's plan, of course, would encourage logging and thinning to
reduce fire risks on national forest land and eliminate most chances
for environmentalists to appeal or file suit.
Well before Bush announced his plan, Montana
Gov. Judy Martz, Arizona Gov.
Jane Hull and Wyoming Rep. Barbara Cubin were among those loudly
blaming environmentalists for holding up projects and helping the
forests burn.
Democrat and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle gave Bush supporters
a big boost in July when he made some forest projects in his home
state of South Dakota off-limits to appeals. Interior Secretary
Gale Norton and a variety of Bush backers pointed to Daschle's move
as proof of bipartisan recognition of the need to eliminate red
tape and forest fuels.
Since, Western representatives and senators have hurried to introduce
bills supporting all or part of the Bush plan.
Colorado Rep. Scott McInnis would force logging on 40 million
acres of national forest, including extensive cutting of beetle-infested
timber on Colorado's Routt National Forest. Portions of that project
had already been proposed by forest officials and appealed by environmentalists,
who said it would encroach on roadless areas and do little to stop
the beetles.
Montana's
two senators, Republican Conrad Burns and Democrat Max Baucus,
have competing proposals: Burns has sided with Idaho Rep. Larry
Craig's amendment to make projects on 10 million acres of national
forest immune to appeal. Baucus worked with Sen. Jeff Bingaman,
D-N.M., and other Western senators on an alternative that would
allow
projects on 3.7 million acres and exempt them from appeals under
stricter conditions.
After the Rodeo-Chediski fire, Arizona's worst ever, U.S. Sen.
Jon Kyl planned to exempt from appeal 39 million acres, including
salvage sales on the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests and the
Fort Apache Reservation, legislation he said he was tailoring after
Daschle's.
To round
out the scorecard, Reps. Dennis Rehberg, R-Mont., and John B.
Shadegg, R-Ariz., have introduced bills in support of the Bush plan.
Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) and Ron Wyden (Ore.)
have called for compromise.
And as
Utah Rep. Jim Hansen joined in sponsoring three bills that would
largely codify the Bush plan, he shrugged off the barely 2-year-old
National Fire Plan written by the Western Governors Association.
The plan involved agencies, industry and environmentalists in a
much-touted
enlibra doctrine that focused on consensus and called for thinning,
logging and controlled burns to reduce fire risk. It was approved
by the secretaries of Interior and Agriculture and was to guide
policy for the next 10 years.
Hansen's reaction, as
quoted in the Salt Lake Tribune: "Just because a bunch
of governors come together and say, 'We've come up with a fire plan,'
am I supposed to bow down?"
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