Bush Signs Bill to Curb Wildfire Threat (Healthy Forests)

Yahoo News ^ | 12/3/03 | Robert Gehrke - AP

[NormsRevenge]

WASHINGTON - President Bush (news - web sites) signed legislation Wednesday that he said would help prevent "sudden and needless destruction" from wildfires like the California blazes that destroyed thousands of homes.

AP Photo

Related Links

•	Healthy Forests Restoration Act [PDF] (house.gov)

"With the Healthy Forest Restoration Act, we will help to prevent catastrophic wildfires," Bush said in a signing ceremony at the Agriculture Department. He was joined by firefighters who fought the Western blazes.

"We're proud to be standing with them up here," the president said. He said wildfires had destroyed 11 million acres over the last two years, and killed 22 people in Southern California this year alone.

Rep. Scott McInnis, R-Colo., who sponsored the House version of the legislation, compared the measure to President Theodore Roosevelt's call for the establishment of the National Forest system 99 years ago this week.

Critics, however, decried it as a payback to the timber industry, which will get greater access to pristine stands of old-growth trees.

"This law will not prevent every fire but it is an important step forward," the president said. Decrying what he said has been a "misguided forest policy," Bush said that "a lot of people have been well intentioned. They saved the trees. But they lost the forest. We want to save the forest."

"We'll help save lives and property and we'll help protect our forests from sudden and needless destruction," Bush said.

The Senate passed the bill by voice vote on Nov. 21 less than an hour after the House approved it, 286-140.

For three years, a deadlock in the Senate had prevented the passage of legislation intended to speed forest treatment. But 15 raging fires driven by Santa Ana winds through Southern California prompted Democrats to compromise on the bill. The wildfires burned more than 750,000 acres, destroyed 3,640 homes, 33 businesses and 1,141 other structures.

Even after the California fires, 2003 was slightly below average in terms of acres burned and nowhere near the severity of the 2000 and 2002 fire seasons. In the past year, 3.8 million acres have burned across the country. Twenty-eight firefighters died battling the blazes, according to the Wildland Firefighter Foundation.

The bill — the first major forest management legislation in a quarter-century — is similar to Bush's "Healthy Forests Initiative," which he proposed while touring a charred forest in Oregon in August 2002. The measure streamlines the approval process for projects to cut excess trees out of thick, overgrown forests or stands of trees killed by insect infestation.

Other elements of the president's proposal had already been enacted through administrative actions.

The Bush administration estimates roughly 190 million acres are at risk for a severe fire, an area the size of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming combined.

Sean Cosgrove, a forest expert with the Sierra Club (news - web sites), said some good may come from the increased spending on forest treatment, but there is bound to be unnecessary logging in roadless areas and wildlife habitat as the timber companies try to harvest valuable old-growth trees.

"The timber industry fought real hard for this bill for a reason and it's not because they want to remove brush and chaparral," Cosgrove said. "Through and through this thing is about increasing commercial logging with less environmental oversight."

Since 1999, the timber industry has contributed $14.1 million to political campaigns, 80 percent of it going to Republicans, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics. Bush has received $519,350 from the industry in that period.

The timber industry also spent $23.8 million on lobbying efforts since 2000, according to figures compiled by Political Money Line.

The measure would authorize $760 million a year for thinning projects on 20 million acres of federal land, a $340 million increase. At least half of all money spent on those projects must be near homes and communities.

The bill also creates a major change in the way that federal courts consider legal challenges of tree-cutting projects.

Judges would have to weigh the environmental consequences of inaction and the risk of fire in cases involving thinning projects. Any court order blocking such projects would have to be reconsidered every 60 days.

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The bill is H.R. 1904.

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On the Net:

White House: http://www.whitehouse.gov

National Interagency Fire Center: http://www.nifc.gov

Sierra Club: http://www.sierraclub.org

[.38sw]

Timber companies don't "apply" to cut timber on US Forest Service lands. The Forest Service must decide that there is timber to be cut in an area, then go through a lenghty process to get the sale approved. Part of the process is an Environmental Assessment followed by a decision document that offers timber for sale. Usually, the decision is appealed by one or more environmental groups. If the appeal is denied and the decision to sell timber is upheld (the process can take months), then the lawsuits begin. If the timber to offered for sale is bug-killed, there is a limited period of time when it can be cut before it is too far gone to be commercially viable. Lots of hurdles to be conquered before a single tree can be cut.

[Cuttnhorse]

The information I have read is that 90% of such requests clear in 60 days.

Your information is wrong. After the Lowman, Idaho fire in 2000, timber companies petitioned to go in and cut dead standing trees, and as I would have guessed, but you wouldn't, the sale was challenged and delayed.

25-years ago there were 5-sawmills operating within 30-miles of the small Idaho town where I still have property. Now there is not one. There hasn't been a timber sale on this national forest land in 10-years, and the enviro nuts have stated they would rather see the forest burn than be selectively logged.

You live in a dream world.

[AuntB]

I'm going to try to find some facts to back this up, but the timber companies have been crying, trying, begging to log burned areas, infested areas for years. The enviro's have kept them out maintaining they'll disturb the dirt. They have stopped every bid to get to this wasted timber. Mills have rebuilt to handle 6 and 8 inch timber. They've transititioned to chip mills to process the junk and waste.

Remind me if I don't get to this soon, I should be able to find some data for you. Every night on our local news, we hear about the enviro's lawyers challenging each bid to log the stuff you mention and dragging the court process out until the timber is no longer useful.

[AuntB]

Hi EBUCK...do you have some information on this handy?? Please see post's #13 &23.

[AuntB]

Hi guys, thought maybe you'd like to chime in on this. Please see Post #13 & 23.

[The Westerner]

What idiot asserted that the rot would be left standing?

[The Westerner]

Sorry Ron. I should have read ahead. See post #15 for a history of what's been preventing the rational clean up of the forest. Unfortunately, the prevalent ideology of the people in control has created the conditions for these conflagrations. I've often heard Dr. Bill Wattenberg talk about this issue. He grew up in the Sierras with a dad who worked in timber. Bill still fights forest fires every summer up near his property, where he owns some kind of bulldozing equipment. He's a nuclear scientist by profession.

[AuntB]

Thank you. You explained it well. Did you know that a logging company in .... testing memory...Montanta, I believe pays the Forest Service $25,000.00 per year for a permit to go in a clean out burned up trees...they make log homes from them. The enviro's were trying to shut that down the last I heard. What I don't understand about the new forest plan is ALL the billions allocated to do this work, when logging companies have to lease or buy permits.

[forester]

RonF had a bad experience with loggers in his area, that, coupled with his belief that what happens in the lake states is no different then what happens in the west, accounts for his point of view....facts will not overcome his bias.

[forester]

What I don't understand about the new forest plan is ALL the billions allocated to do this work, when logging companies have to lease or buy permits.

From what I can see in the bill, the gov't will pay contractors to remove non-merchantable trees and brush. Ideally, the USFS would add dead and dying timber to these thinning sales. The value of the merchantable trees would then "carry" the cost of removing the un-merchantable stuff. This may not be possible in all cases.

The real issue is who will conduct the sale prep work. If these sales are contracted out to the private sector, economically viable sales will be the result. If these sales are layed out by the enviro's that currently run the agency, these sales will be un-economical by design.

[RonF]

Just to make it clear: I understand that we need forest-based products, and the companies that manufacture and supply them need to make a profit. My bias is that I don't trust the Bush administration to see National Forests as anything but a source of raw-materials for logging companies, instead of trying to balance the multiple uses they were established for. These uses are not always consistent with the aims of companies that are legititmately trying to make a profit with their operations. So giving a profit-making company the right to run certain operations in the National Forests is not always a good thing.

[forester]

I don't trust the current generation of anti-capitalist types that have infiltrated the agencies.

Without trust, societies cannot function.

[illumini]

http://www.tejavia.com/pages/401886/index.htm