I'm sure there's some element of fear that President Bush's commitment to protecting the environment aren't strong enough. But as he said recently about winning the war in Iraq, when he says he's going to do something, people are finding out he says what he means and does what he says.
Anyway, this act looks quite reasonable to me. It doesn't change the rules that require environmental impact studies before logging in the monuments and national parks, so it just encourages thinning where we've already had a lot of human activity. Again, I might have reservations about how to monitor the increased logging activity, but the fire hazzards we've seen must be addressed. (And anyway, on BLM and non-monument/parkland, why shouldn't we be more aggressive about human-intervention in the tree growth cycle?)
The Bush team seems to be on top of things by including the pre-positioning of firefighting crews this summer. That's also impressive.
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| President Bush Ron Wenker of the Medford Bureau of Land Management Properties District touring the Squires Peak Fire Area in Medford, Oregon. Source: Whitehouse page on the Healthy Forests initiative |
The exemptions requiring impact studies for logging and preemptive burns of under 1,000 acres will only be for areas outside the parks. Also, endangered species impact would be eliminated. Given that species come and go all the time, this sounds reasonable, as well. As a conservationist, I used to see the species angle as a good way to protect the forests. But in practice, it has opened up a floodgate of lawsuit ideas and redtape for the econuts to exploit.