Oct/Nov 2002
A
Statement of Conscience: "Not In Our Name"
The Bill of Rights Foundation
We
Must No Longer Tolerate a Culture of Violence
Depak Chopra
Murder
for Profit
William Rivers Pitt
Opposing
the President's Call for "Relentless War"
David Krieger
"Diplomacy"
in the Age of the American Empire
Robert Jensen and Rahul Mahajan
The
Middle East: A Human Perspective
Pam Derby
What
Awaits Us in Iraq "Warrior Kings and the Test of True Vision"
David LaChapelle
Free
to Choose: Health Care for All-Oregon: Measure 23 on the Ballot this November
Gerald Cavanaugh
We
Have the Right to Know What's in Our Food
Louis Mincer
Oregon's
Measure 27
Give Oregonians A Choice
Same
News Every Channel, Every Media
Don Monkerud
The
Cult of Greed and the Anesthetization of Democracy
John Darling
Forest
Health & Logging Wealth
Lesley Adams and Joseph E. Vaile
Finding
Balance in the Autumn Season with ayurvedic Practices
Myrica Morningstar
Sacred
Plants
David Crow
The
Movie Mystic
Stephen Simon
The
Thomas Messages
James Twyman
The
Yearly Round
Richard Moeschl
Cosmic
Calendar
Salina Rain
Forest Health & Logging Wealth
By Lesley Adams and Joseph E. Vaile
An acutely perceptive Thomas Jefferson commented in 1816, “I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”
President George W. Bush visited Southern Oregon recently and unveiled a new initiative to address forest fires in the West while raising campaign funds for Republican Senator Gordon Smith (R-OR). The plan, dubbed the “Healthy Forest Initiative,” includes weakening environmental laws to allow logging companies to cut big, fire-resistant trees in public forests. To accomplish this, the plan would reduce public involvement in forest management decisions.
Bush’s “Healthy Forest Initiative” is in large part a public relations move to convince Congress to attach a “rider” to the Interior Appropriations Bill that funds the federal forest system. Assessments of the political situation in Washington D.C. in early September indicate that such a rider or stand alone legislation will be introduced to weaken environmental laws and reduce public involvement.
With the help of Senator Smith, Bush received $1 million in logging company contributions in Oregon during his election campaign. Bush’s August fundraiser for Smith in Portland raised over $1 million as well. Bush’s “Healthy Forest Initiative” is political payback to timber industry contributors.
The Forest Service, and particularly the federal timber sale program, is one of the most fiscally mismanaged agencies in America. Criticized for waste and fiscal abuse, the Forest Service reported a loss of $126 million in 1998. An independent study completed by Taxpayers for Common Sense estimated an actual loss three times that amount. The Forest Service announced in 1998 that they would no longer prepare accounting documents. Fiscal responsibility of the Forest Service to the government or the public is currently impossible.
Taxpayers subsidize public lands logging. Road construction and maintenance on national forests is paid for with our tax dollars, yet most national forest roads are built and maintained for logging operations. A scientific assessment of fire, fuels management and roadless areas completed in 2001 concluded that roads increase fire risk due to increased fire suppression (builds up fuels) and human-caused ignitions.
Despite its rosy name, the Bush administration’s “Healthy Forest Initiative” is not about the health of forests; it is about industry profit. Bush has appointed former timber industry lobbyist Marc Rey to head up the Forest Service. Mr. Rey’s agenda for over 30 years has been to get more federal timber sales to his timber industry colleagues. From day one as President, all Bush forest policies have increased public lands logging, mature forest removal, and timber industry profit.
With Oregon’s forest fires having swept over hundreds of thousands of acres, and other fires being reported almost daily in nearby western states, this is one of the largest fire seasons in decades. Opinions abound as to why the fires are so large. Certain timber interests and western lawmakers are blaming environmentalists and cumbersome environmental laws for the severity of these forest fires. Industry proponents claim that litigation and appeals filed by environmental organizations have effectively prevented fuels reduction projects, and hence created severe fire conditions.
Smokey the Bear taught a generation that, “only you can prevent forest fires.” Decades of errant fire suppression policies, aided by vast networks of logging roads and military-style firefighting, has created a buildup of “fuel” in the forests in the form of slash (branches left after logging, a.k.a. kindling), and small, young trees. Also, decades of logging has removed the largest, oldest trees, which are the most fire resistant part of the forest.
Scientific assessments completed by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in 1996 in the Sierra Nevada and in 1997 in the Interior Columbia River Basin found fire hazards far higher in intensively managed areas. The Sierra Nevada study concluded, “Timber harvest, through its effects on forest structure, local microclimate and fuel accumulation, has increased fire severity more than any other recent human activity” (Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project 1996). While the logging of large trees continues today in fire prone western forests, one wonders why Bush would put logging companies in charge of “reducing the danger of wildfire.”
Media sensationalism has targeted current western fires to imply that fires completely destroy the forest. However scientists agree that fire is a natural and vital component of forest ecosystems. While the total amount of acres burned is usually given as an estimate from the fire’s perimeter, a closer look will show the mosaic pattern of natural burns. For example, the Biscuit fire complex in the Kalmiopsis was reported to have burned nearly 500,000 acres. Post-fire analyses tell a different story. Approximately 19% of the area did not burn at all, while 41% burned at low intensity (healthy ground fires that do not reach the canopy are important for clearing ground fuels and regenerating certain flora). This fire season is natural, and in wildland areas it is proportional to those that have happened for millennia in the western U.S.
A safety net of environmental laws were created in the 1960s and 1970s, including the National Environmental Policy Act, Endangered Species Act, National Forest Management Act, and the Clean Water and Clean Air Acts. The influx of these policies indicated a public that was growing concerned about the squandering of the country’s once seemingly limitless resources.
These environmental laws were designed to assess environmental impacts of human activity, protect biological diversity from extinction, defend clean water, and provide the public with tools to enforce environmental regulations. Using fire season hysteria, the Bush Administration, the timber industry and some Congressional representatives are now attempting to weaken these fundamental rights in order expedite commercial timber sales on public lands. Private profit is being prioritized over public good.
Conservation groups such as the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center (KS Wild) give the public a voice in the management of their public lands. They keep federal agencies honest by tracking actions and ensuring they are in the public interest.
In a 2001 report, Congress’ General Accounting Office stated that only one percent of the over one thousand projects aimed at reducing fuels were objectionable to environmental organizations. Forest protection groups often support true fuels reduction projects, while working fervently to stop egregious proposals aimed at logging the public’s old-growth.
For example, the North Murphy timber sale on the Medford BLM has not moved forward since 1999 because the sale would jeopardize the continued existence of coho salmon. Since declining species often flag larger issues of resource scarcity and damaged ecosystems, the existence of healthy salmon populations are of great importance. Despite these constraints on the timber sale, the BLM has reduced hazardous fuels throughout the North Murphy project area using appropriated funds through the National Fire Plan.
Genuine fuels reduction takes place in an expedited fashion. Projects that focus on the real threat to communities and work to make forests more resilient to fire are not the target of environmental protest. These projects do not entail the removal of large trees, the building of more logging roads, or are they illegal by the standards of environmental law. Conservationists encourage fuels reduction by removing excessive brush, ground fuels, and small trees from fire prone forests and send letters of support to federal agencies when they propose such projects.
Another case in point, the Kelsey-Whiskey timber sale (which does include some real fuels reduction) on the Medford BLM calls for building logging roads and clearcuts into the largest forested BLM roadless area in the nation. Yet the BLM’s environmental impact statement for this project plainly states, “Past clearcutting in areas of Mule Creek, East Fork Mule Creek and North Fork Kelsey Creek has created additional risk of stand replacement fire through both brush invasion and new young plantations (Kelsey-Whiskey DEIS 3-11).”
Illogically, the BLM is proposing nearly 400 acres of new clearcuts (6 trees per acre), and 900 acres of select cutting of large trees in ancient forests. Much of the proposed logging will increase the risk of catastrophic wildfire by opening the tree canopy, creating slash, and encouraging brush encroachment.
By removing the most fire resilient component of a forest—the trunks of large trees—forest managers encourage the growth of thick stands of young trees and shrubs. Moreover, logging operations fail to deal with the most flammable part of forest and the greatest cause of severe fires: small, noncommercial trees, branches, kindling and twigs. In the Forest Service and BLM National Fire Plan, scientists cautioned against the use of this type of logging to address fuel build up. The report found that removing large, commercial trees increases fire severity. Yet the Bush administration is proposing more commercial logging in order to fund “fuels reduction” projects. The irony is as clear as the political corruption.
Dangers to homes near the forest are real, but the timber industry’s intensive logging practices can actually put homes at greater risk of burning. Jack Cohen, the Forest Service’s expert on the subject, reports that logging on public lands isn’t the way to protect homes from wildfire. According to Cohen’s research, the only way to protect homes effectively is to reduce the flammability of the homes themselves and their immediate surroundings within about 130 feet.
Fire scientists have known for years that homeowners need a “defensible fuel space” around their homes in forested and brushy areas to adapt to the inevitability of wildfire. What we need is to invest in the health of our forests and communities. By protecting homes, reducing fuels, and thinning and restoring fire-prone forests, we can reap greater rewards down the road. As the old adage goes, an once of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
High-skilled, high-paid forest jobs are vital in a restoration economy. Rather than subsidize private profits and forest degradation, we could subsidize living wage jobs and restoration (read: clean water, clean air and healthy soil). The Lomakatsi Restoration Project, based in Ashland, Oregon is receiving federal dollars through the National Fire Plan and is effectively reducing fuels in the urban-interface while training local crews in forest management. They are utilizing poles and fire-wood as a byproduct of their restoration activities. They are not cutting large trees that they know are the best fire insurance in the forest.
Albert Einstein once said that problems couldn’t be solved with the same level of thinking used when creating them. Though scientists and agencies realize commercial logging increases fire hazard, the Bush administration and other industry proponents are pushing for more commercial timber sales to fix the fuel hazard problem. To expedite the matter, they are blaming environmentalists for slowing down the process.
As Bush continues to advocate for “fire hazard reduction” in the same breath as commercial logging, let us not forget that industrial logging got us into this mess in the first place.
We need to fight fires with real solutions. We need to pay for our mistakes of the past by investing in our forests. We need to engage in fuels reduction projects that get at the real threat to the forest. Taking advantage of the fire season by increasing logging serves no one but monied interests. Please engage in the “logging for fire protection” debate by speaking truth to power. Visit your public forest and our website at www.kswild.org.
Lesley Adams is a Conservation Intern and Joseph Vaile is a Wildlife Biologist for the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center. KS Wild defends the outstanding biological diversity of the Klamath-Siskiyou province of northern California and southern Oregon.
