HOME FORESTS Bush Administration Opens Alaska's Tongass Forest to Logging The Bush Administration issued a final rule on December 23, 2003 to allow roads and logging in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, which covers about 500 miles of Alaska's southeastern coastline. The rule excludes the Tongass National Forest from the Roadless Area Conservation Rule (Roadless Rule). The Roadless Rule was enacted by President Clinton in 2001 with the intent of preventing access to pristine forest lands. The rule protects about 60 million acres of national forests from logging, mining,drilling and road development. The intent of the administration is to use a small part (25%) of the Tongass to sustain the people who live in southeastern Alaska. The Department of Agriculture proposed its final rule in June as part of an agreement in which the state of Alaska, which wanted the land opened, promised to drop a lawsuit against the federal government. Tongass is the nation's largest national forest, covering 16.8 million acres, of which 9.3 million acres consist of timber, 75% of which is still protected by the Roadless Rule. Alaska Gov. Frank H. Murkowski (R) and U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) support the decision. BUSH SIGNS 'HEALTHY FORESTS' LEGISLATION INTO LAW President Bush signed HR 1904 into law on Wednesday, Dec 21, 2003. The measure is designed to accelerate forest-thinning to prevent major wildfires. The bill is based on Bush's Healthy Forests Initiative, although it was substantially modified over the course of the year to win bipartisan support. It reduces the number of environmental reviews and accelerates judicial reviews of forest thinning projects when legal challenges are filed. The legislation allows thinning and the removal of debris from up to 20 million acres of national forests. About 4 million acres burned in 2003, including 750,000 acres in California during the month of October. The bill signing ceremony was at the Department of Agriculture. Healthy Forest Initiative The Healthy Forest Restoration Act of 2003 (H.R. 1904), cosponsored in the Senate by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, was approved by a vote of 80-14 on October 30, 2003. The legislation, a modified version of President Bush's Healthy Forest Initiative, calls for expedited procedures for tree thinning on 20 million acres of federal forest threatened by fire.
The "Healthy Forest Restoration Act of 2003," sponsored by Scott McInnis (R-CO3), was approved by the House of Representatives on a 256-170 vote on Tuesday March 20, 2003. Attention now turns to the U.S. Senate where action could occur sometime this summer. The Healthy Forest Initiative proposes to improve the capacity of the Secretary of Agriculture and the Secretary of the Interior to plan and conduct hazardous fuels reduction projects on National Forest System lands and Bureau of Land Management lands aimed at protecting communities, watersheds, and certain other at-risk lands from catastrophic wildfire, to enhance efforts to protect watersheds and address threats to forest and rangeland health, including catastrophic wildfire, across the landscape, and for other purposes. AAEA supports the Healthy Forests Initiative but we are concerned about the precedent set by weakening the environmental assessment provision included in the bill. However, we have to do something about forest management because millions of acres of forests are being devastated annually by wildfires. The specific environmental section of the bill we are concerned about: SEC. 104. ENVIRONMENTAL ANALYSIS. (b) DISCRETIONARY AUTHORITY TO ELIMINATE ALTERNATIVES- In the case of an authorized hazardous fuels reduction project, the Secretary concerned is not required to study, develop, or describe any alternative to the proposed agency action in the environmental assessment or environmental impact statement prepared for the proposed agency action pursuant to section 102(2) of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (42 U.S.C. 4332(2)). We understand the motivation behind eliminating the environmental assessment provision: traditional environmentalist use it to slow down or stop forest management practices they disagree with via litigation, thus slowing or stopping measures that could save millions of acres of forest from wildfire destruction. Also, unlike traditional environmental organizations, we do not believe the legislation is intended to get the courts out of the way to directly benefit the timber industry while doing almost nothing to help the communities threatened by fire. The "Forestry and Community Assistance Act of 2003," S. 1453 will protect communities and property from fire and leave intact long-established environmental, procedural and legal safeguards. This bill is sponsored
by Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA), CBC Opposes President Bush's Healthy Forest Initiative Eighty-nine percent (89%) of the Congressional Black Caucus voted against H.R. 1904. CBC members voting for the bill: 1) Sanford D. Bishop (2-GA), 2) Artur Davis (7 AL), 3) David Scott (13 GA), 4) Bennie G. Thompson (2 MS)  Rational Approach to Forests in a Climate Changing World We have lost millions of acres of forest lands to summer wild fires. People's lives are threatened by out of control fires and they are losing their homes. The Forest Service, part of the Department of Agriculture, spent a record $1.5 billion in 2002 to fight wildfires that consumed more than six million acres in the West and killed 20 firefighters. President Bush wants to relax environmental regulations so that timber firms can harvest more trees to prevent overgrowth and environmentalists fear relaxation of regulations will lead to clear cutting of entire mountainside forests, especially old growth public lands trees, by unscrupulous corporations. Clear cutting can be devastating to watersheds, habitats and can also lead to catastrophic flooding. Additional carbon dioxide from super wildfires will exacerbate global warming and nonattainment of cleaner air in Midwestern, Northeastern, Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern cities. We believe that global warming is causing severe drought conditions and combined with overgrowth of our forests leads to super wildfires. This year's drought is the worst in 31 years of record-keeping, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It is imperative that we reduce smoke, smog, drought and global warming. After preliminary study, discussions with firefighters and other forest management experts, we are convinced that President Bush's Healthy Forests Initiative has good forest protection and jobs creation components that build upon the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan. There is some disagreement on just how many jobs will be created by the President's plan. Our recommendations below would undoubtedly create a significant number of additional jobs to manage controlled burns and other sustainable forest management practices. The geographical area is simply too large and remote for us to cut our way out of this problem. We need to 1) significantly increase the federal budget to provide adequate funds to manage our forests and controlled burns , 2) conduct more controlled burns in early spring and late fall (we know this caused severe, uncontrollable wirefires in the past--we believe that was partially due to inadequate funding, manpower and equipment, 3) educate homeowners to ensure that houses are built with fire-resistant materials and that backyards are kept clear of flammable vegetation, (Forest Service research shows that most houses will survive forest fires if the landscape within 300 feet of the house is properly managed) and 4) educate the public to accept the fact that some of these fires will get out of control--a bitter pill to swallow, but we can't totally control mother nature. Additional funds will also assist in providing more resources to fight super wildfires with better-managed backfires--intentional burning to control wildfires. The overall result will, however, lead to fewer and smaller catastrophic wildfires. If we do not spend the money to manage and prevent these wildfires, we will spend more money and lose more lives fighting these fires once they are out of control. Although controlled burns also release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, we believe that the controlled burns will prevent massive multimillion acre burns--and the resulting astronomical CO2 loads. The world already gets significant CO2 loads from forest burning to clear land for agriculture. Moreover, significant jobs will also be created by properly funding, staffing and equipping firefighters, the Department of Agriculture Forest Service and the Department of Interior Bureau of Land Management. Our firefighters and our forests deserve the best.
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