Montana salvage logging reignites national controversy

By Todd Wilkinson
for Headwaters News

 

"Ultimately its force is to allow the democratic process of participation in governmental decisions the full breadth of scope to which citizens are entitled in a participatory democracy."

—Judge Donald Molloy, scolding the Bush Administration

The great Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset once observed: "We have need of history in its entirety, not to fall back into it, but to see if we can escape from it."

So it is, then, that the history of U.S. national forest management seems to be circling back upon itself, carrying lessons from the past that for some seem hard to learn a second time around.

Today, Ortega’s words are arguably most visible in a legal smoke signal emanating from a federal courtroom in Missoula, Mont.

Judge Donald Molloy recently issued a ruling that not only condemns the cavalier attitude with which the Bush Administration approaches environmental policy, but also calls attention to the fundamental right of citizens to have a say in forest management and participatory democracy.

Both issues are sparked by a proposal to log fire-burned trees on the Bitterroot National Forest, long a prominent bellwether in the so-called timber wars of the West.

What happens here could set a precedent for environmental policy on a number of fronts and, in particular, presage future conflict over millions of acres of national forests believed to be vulnerable to wildfire.

Decades ago, the Bitterroot found itself at the center of debate over the industrial tree-felling practice known as clearcutting. A national outcry from citizens prompted Congress to give the public more influence in scrutinizing national forest management. It is this sacred piece of democracy that the president is challenging.

The latest saga on the Bitterroot began in 2000 when an estimated 300,000 acres of forest were blackened by wildfires, some burning so hot that soils were sterilized and natural seeds normally ready to start regrowth were incinerated.

For the past two years, the issue has focused on the best means of achieving landscape restoration. In response to calls from the timber industry to "heal" the Bitterroot — and to fire-proof it in the future — by expediting the removal of huge quantities of "salvageable" wood, the Forest Service initially proposed felling 280 million board feet of dead and green trees.

The plan was controversial from the start, leaving many environmentalists and independent scientists breathless from its sheer grandiosity.

Salvaging fire-charred trees has an urgency. Unless the trunks are hauled out in a few years, the wood fiber rots and cannot be converted into useable two-by-fours. On the other hand, conservationists argued for just leaving the charcoal totems in place, to let them fertilize the soil and provide habitat for wildlife.

Recognizing the certainty of a looming battle, Bitterroot National Forest Supervisor Rodd Richardson instructed his team to reduce the proposed volume of logging to about 176 million board feet.

If that seems like a major concession, consider this: Even the reduced scale of logging would result in one of the largest fire-related salvage logging operations in U.S. history. In just two or three years, it would yield more timber from the Bitterroot than has been harvested over the past decade.

And, as one conservationist estimated, the total number of logs bound for mills would fill a line of trucks extending for a couple of hundred miles.

Wisely, Richardson attempted to be creative and respond to local concerns. He made sure the logging would not invade roadless lands earmarked for protection by the Clinton administration because of their high value for wildlife, clean water and solace; he proposed closing old logging roads; and he directed his foresters to steer clear of stream drainages that are home to imperiled bull trout.

But environmentalists continued to rattle their sabers, proclaiming the blueprint for logging was still too great, that it would result in ecological harm, and if pursued, might cause them to seek court action to stop it.

In Richardson’s defense, it is easy to understand his frustration. While some environmental groups say they were willing to negotiate limited salvage logging, others are opposed to any commercial harvest. The message from environmentalists is divided.

However, any room for further discussion ended abruptly when senior bureaucrats with the Bush administration stepped in and usurped Richardson's authority. In Washington, D.C., Agriculture UndersecretaryMark Rey — a former timber industry lobbyist — and Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth hatched their own plan to bypass further public scrutiny.

Rey’s message to greens was that if you’re going to sue us, make our day — we’ll meet you in court. Invoking executive power, he signed a directive that took away the public’s right to challenge Forest Service action through the appeals process — an important element of citizen involvement designed to prevent lawsuits.

"The notion that federal decisions can’t benefit from public scrutiny is either incredibly cynical or incredibly obtuse. You take your pick."

– Chris Wood, a natural resource expert with Trout Unlimited
and senior adviser to former Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck

More than a generation ago, the Bitterroot figured at the center of a citizen-led movement to bring public oversight to the Forest Service after it became clear the agency had become captive to the timber industry.

Despite knowing full well the harmful consequences of clearcutting and the fact that clearing trees from entire drainages was not sustainable, the Forest Service still set artificially high timber targets to ensure a steady flow of trees to local mills.

In so doing, the agency violated the original intent of the 1897 Organic Act, which mandated carefully planned lumbering in which forests were methodically subjected to harvest on a tree-by-tree basis.

The first public recognition of abuses came in a 1973 lawsuit brought by the Izaak Walton League against the Forest Service over clearcutting on the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia.

Logging-related landslides, rivers running chocolate-brown with silt, and declining fish populations were cited as evidence of abuse. Siding with conservationists, the judge ordered the Forest Service to justify all of its timber proposals based on sound science and informed public scrutiny.

Congress further reined in the Forest Service a few years later by passing the National Forest Management Act, which requires each forest in the country to have a publicly reviewed management plan. More important, lawmakers gave citizens the right to appeal questionable decisions.

Back in Montana, a parallel and equally momentous chain of events was unfolding on the Bitterroot. In 1970, Arnold Bolle, the esteemed dean of the forestry school at the University of Montana released the findings of a scientific investigation of clearcutting.

One of Bolle’s pronouncements was that "multiple use management, in fact, does not exist as a governing principal on the Bitterroot National Forest."

Dominating the forest’s agenda, he concluded, was an attempt to maximize timber production. Combined with the Monongahela decision, the passage of NFMA, and the right granted to citizens to appeal questionable management proposals, the Forest Service and, in particular, managers on the Bitterroot, were forcibly subjected to unprecedented scrutiny.

Still, it took more than a decade for the science of national forest management to prevail over the deeply engrained political power of the alliance between the timber industry and politicians from the Pacific Northwest who leaned on the Forest
Service to maximize production to create jobs and happy voters.

The timber industry benefitted from Forest Service policies and, in turn, contributed handsomely to political re-election campaigns. Similarly, the Forest Service was rewarded with flush budgets from Congress for getting out the cut.

Today, less than 3 percent of all timber harvested in the U.S. comes off public lands, which increasingly are valued more for their recreational and ecological values, and less as industrial tree farms.

Although timber yields on the Bitterroot fell off dramatically during the 1990s — mirroring the national trend on public lands that saw total timber production decline from 12 billion board feet annually to less than 3 billion board feet today — there are some who see salvage logging of fire-burned trees as a way to get the cut back up.

"Things have come full circle," says Chris Wood, a natural resource expert with Trout Unlimited and a recent senior advisor to former Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck. "Some people criticize the litigious environment that public lands are managed in, but the Monongahela decision and the Bolle report set the stage for the arguments that conservationists made in challenging the Forest Service’s attempt to evade the public appeals process with salvage logging on the Bitterroot."

Now fast-forward to the present. Bush administration appointee Rey is no fool. He understands keenly the art of rewarding special interests. During the 1990s he served as a senior policy staffer for Republican-controlled committees in both the House and Senate. He was credited with orchestrating the notorious "Salvage Logging Rider" in 1995 after the Republican takeover of Congress.

Rey’s legislation argued that wide-scale logging of fire-burned trees in the Pacific Northwest would result in increased "forest health" — an assertion that backfired and became a public relations disaster for the GOP.

In December 2001, after Rey signed his executive order removing citizens’ right to appeal the Bitterroot salvage sale, Doug Honnold with Earthjustice, an environmental law firm, filed suit. If the Bush administration succeeded in unilaterally voiding the appeals process here, Honnold warned, it could happen with virtually any federal land management decision in the country.

Suddenly, far more was at stake than trying to resolve the important philosophical question of whether forests should be viewed as logs on the stump or coveted for their intrinsic natural value. The Bitterroot summoned our attention again to the fundamental issue of citizen involvement with lands we own.

The case went before federal Judge Molloy, who agreed with Honnold.

"In electing to disregard the express mandate of Congress, the Forest Service is acting without authority," Molloy wrote in a temporary restraining order preceding his final ruling. "The precipitous action here of electing to take the law into its own hands will cause the very difficulty the agency reasons it is trying to avoid."

Molloy added, with incredulity: "The notion that a signature by the Undersecretary transforms the action from Forest Service business to the business of some other agency is mystical legal prestidigitation. The reasoning seems to be that if a decision by the Forest Service involves a large project with great public interest and comment, then there should be less opportunity for public participation. ..."

The maneuverings of Rey and Bosworth are filled with irony. The Bush administration claims to be devoted to bringing land management decisions closer to the people, yet its actions undermined the ability of Richardson to work with different constituencies.

Richardson proposed a number of small salvage sales totalling 5,000 acres that could have been used to gain the confidence of environmentalists. Trees could already be coming off the forest bound for mills.

"Inexplicably, Chief of the Forest Service Dale Bosworth chose not to act on Supervisor Richardson’s request," Judge Molloy noted.

Second, Rey, in the eyes of some, seems guilty of the same kind of management by fiat that he and others accused Clinton and Dombeck of foisting on the West with the rule to protect 60 million acres of roadless lands.

The difference, notes Wood, is that Clinton and Dombeck embraced the public process by holding hundreds of public meetings and forums that generated 1.6 million comments, 95 percent of which favored protecting roadless lands.

"What is so frustrating is the bureaucratic arrogance exercised by the Department of Agriculture in saying we know best and democracy only works if it validates our position," adds Wood.

Previous congresses and two Republican presidents saw the virtue of allowing the public to scrutinize the way that its forests are managed, he asserts, and that approach was upheld in the ruling by Judge Molloy now under appeal by Rey and the Bush administration.

"The notion that federal decisions can’t benefit from public scrutiny is either incredibly cynical or incredibly obtuse. You take your pick," Wood says. "The Bush administration in trying to skirt the appeals process and daring conservationists to sue, has found itself in a box without an exit door.

"They said, basically, that they have no intention to acknowledge what anyone says in the appeals process and that environmentalists might as well sue. They have created a self-fulfilling prophecy for litigation, and on this one, they’re going to lose – if not again in court, then with the jury of public opinion."

Todd Wilkinson lives in Bozeman and writes for several national magazines.

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