Log trees to save forests from fire?
Bush administration, activists at odds over where and how

By Miguel Llanos
Reporter
MSNBC
Updated: 4:36 p.m. ET June 15, 2004
© 2004 MSNBC Interactive

ROOSEVELT NATIONAL FOREST, Colo. - Parts of this forest 60 miles west of Denver could use a thinning — on that locals, U.S. Forest Service staff, academic experts and even many environmentalists agree. The same could be said of national forests across the West thick with brush and younger trees that act like kindling for wildfires.

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At Roosevelt and other public forests, there's consensus to clear trees and brush around nearby homes and, a bit farther out, to use deliberately set "prescribed burns" — fires that usually, but not always, stay under control.

But that consensus quickly breaks down over what kind and size of trees to thin, how far out to thin and, most importantly, whether to use commercial loggers to help — an idea championed by the Bush administration and some experts.

Environmentalists are quick to welcome prescribed burns, but very few are willing to consider even limited commercial logging. Their mistrust runs deep, built on Bush administration actions that they see as a renaissance for the timber industry on public lands, particularly in the Northwest. Those policies, they say, are personified in Mark Rey, a former executive with timber lobby groups and now the Agriculture Department official who oversees the U.S. Forest Service.

With that kind of mistrust, it's no wonder that both sides are as rooted in their convictions as a thousand-year-old Giant Sequoia.

Academics have joined the debate as well, among them those who accept a limited role for commercial logging while worrying about a "slippery slope" of more flexible federal policies.

'Healthy Forests'
There's no question that the Bush administration has been working hard on revising forestry law and regulations. While environmentalists see an industry agenda, the administration says it's all about keeping America's 192 million acres of national forests healthy and wildfires at bay.

In 2002 President Bush announced his "Healthy Forests Initiative" to speed up treatment of diseased and overcrowded forests by limiting the process to legally challenge thinning decisions. He also proposed legislation and Congress a year later passed a bill by the same name but with far less reach.

Norm Christensen, an ecology professor at Duke University, says that the president's initiative was "so open-ended and so clearly industry-oriented that the law really is an improvement."

Most importantly, the law makes treatment near communities the first priority, he says. On the other hand, Christensen adds, the law is still "too open-ended" on when and where commercial logging is appropriate and it's weak on funding.

The issue, he continues, "really gets down to precisely what is the prescription, what level of cutting is acceptable, what constitutes a restoration versus a cut."

Debating the distance
Deciding exactly where to cut, or thin as some like to say, is controversial. The Sierra Club endorses research from the Forest Service Fire Sciences Lab that advises forest communities to remove brush within a quarter-mile buffer of homes and to thin trees 40 yards from the homes themselves.

Some forest scientists and the industry argue that's often not far out enough. Tom Bonnicksen, a forest science professor at Texas A&M University, believes thinning should extend two miles or more from communities because large wildfires with 200-foot flames and debris that can fly as far as a mile can easily jump a fire break.

Sean Cosgrove, forest policy specialist for the Sierra Club, counters that such an approach would mean thinning vast areas that might never be touched by wildfire. It makes more sense to defend the perimeter of a community, he says, since "there's not a high likelihood that you're going to be able to predict where a fire will start."

Two newer tools of the trade
In addition to the debate over where to cut, the Bush administration is pushing two controversial tools for when and how to cut:

Salvage logging. This concept opens parts of a burned area to logging of dead trees. The poster child for salvage logging is a proposed sale at the site of the biggest wildfire in 2002: Oregon's 500,000-acre Biscuit fire. The older, bigger dead trees are still commercially valuable and the Forest Service contends removing dead trees will help restore the forest to a less fire-prone status.

The agency scaled back the proposed area after activists, backed by Environmental Protection Agency scientists, raised concerns that the salvage logging would erode soils and muddy salmon habitat. The revision hasn't satisfied activists, however, who also note the proposal would allow logging in areas that they'd hoped would one day be set aside for permanent protection as wilderness or roadless areas.

Even whether to log dead trees is debated. "Once dead, a tree becomes a magnet for insects and diseases that ... (can) spread to other, healthy trees," says John Mechem, a spokesman for the American Forest & Paper Association.

Cosgrove counters that standing dead trees "are very valuable habitat components for wildlife," particularly for birds and other animals that live in those trees.

Stewardship contracts. These give loggers access to profitable trees in national forests in exchange for agreeing to thin overgrown areas that don't have commercial value. Started as pilot projects in 1999 under the Clinton administration, these now number nearly 90 after Congress expanded the program in 2002.

U.S. Forest Service
Methods to remove logged trees from forests include using helicopters and in this case a truck called a yarder.
The projects include three inside Roosevelt, a forest that has had its share of fires in recent years and which is also home to a large community, Estes Park. The resort town swells from 5,000 people in winter to 20,000 in summer.

Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth calls himself "a strong supporter" of stewardship contracts — "almost to the point of obnoxiousness," he told senators last year.

Rey, the USDA official who oversees the Forest Service, expects to see many more contracts in areas with the largest overcrowding and least commercially valuable trees. But he's also promised to focus on communities "where people are agreeable."

Activists, however, voice skepticism. The contracts might have developed into a useful tool, Cosgrove says, but the program was expanded before studies were even completed on the effectiveness of the pilot projects. "Once again the administration clamped onto it as a way to get timber out," he says.

$60 billion cost?
Beyond the politics of forest policies are the facts that basic research into which treatments work best is lacking, only a fraction of forests have been treated and cost of full treatment is enormous.

Christensen and others have lamented the fact that the Healthy Forests Restoration Act didn't fund any new science research.

As far as actual treatment goes, the administration argues that most of the 192 million acres of national forest need to be thinned. But just 2.2 million acres were treated last year, either by prescribed burns or logging, and 2.7 million are scheduled for this year.

Forest politics

Below are other areas where environmentalists and the Bush administration have clashed over forests.

Roadless rule. Environmentalists are appealing a court order overturning a Clinton administration decision to ban roads on 58 million acres of national forest. The Bush administration did not defend the rule in court and has exempted Alaska's Tongass National Forest, the nation's largest, from the rule while the case proceeds. The administration also wants to let governors decide where new roads can be built in national forests in their states.

National Forest Management Act. A soon-to-be adopted proposal will allow regional forest officials to make quicker decisions on the ground. Environmentalists fear that will diminish public and scientific participation in environmental reviews and wildlife protection.

Northwest Forest Plan. Drafted a decade ago, this plan brought together environmentalists and industry for a compromise on logging in the Pacific Northwest. Environmentalists fear Bush administration changes to two provisions will undermine salmon protections and open thousands of acres of old-growth forests to logging.

Sierra Nevada Framework. The Bush administration amended this Clinton-era plan to allow three times as much logging, but it emphasized that is still just half of logging levels in Sierra Nevada national forests from 1986-92. Environmentalists don't buy the rationale that the new logging will reduce fire threats by removing dead and diseased trees
Some $500 million is set aside for treatment projects this year but that's a fraction of what's needed.

Bonnicksen estimates the full cost at $60 billion over 15 years, followed by $31 billion in maintenance for 15 years after that.

Bonnicksen, who is also a board member of the Forest Foundation, a nonprofit funded in part by the timber industry, doesn't think taxpayers will want to pay for the cure even though it would be less than the cost of fighting fires.

"But if private companies could harvest and thin only the trees required to restore and sustain a healthy, fire-resistant forest, it could be done," he told the House Resources Committee last September. "In exchange, companies sell the wood, and public expenditures are minimized."

That's where Christensen starts to have reservations. "I'm not necessarily against" that approach, he says, "but we begin to go down a slippery slope when economics drives our decisions on problems we're trying to solve."

'Rubber meets road' in Oregon
Groups like the Sierra Club and Greenpeace believe America has already started down that slope and vow to use lawsuits and peaceful protests to stop the slide.

Greenpeace's strategy includes what sound like SWAT teams. "Forest rescue stations," made up of a mobile lab and tents, will be set up at the site of controversial timber sales to monitor activity. The first one opened this month in southern Oregon. "That's where the rubber's meeting the road," says Greenpeace spokeswoman Celia Alario.

Charles Wilkinson, a University of Colorado law professor who advised the Forest Service during the Clinton administration, considers that grandstanding by environmentalists "searching for a mission."

Mechem, the industry spokesman, notes "it's an election year" and that "many people feel President Bush is vulnerable on the environment."

Wilkinson is also skeptical that the timber industry will go back into national forests in a big way because it now has vast private tree farms in the Southeast. Mechem echoes that view, noting the industry gets just 3 percent of its fiber from public lands.

But Wilkinson also says he can't rule out the possibility that he could be underestimating what's happening in national forests, especially because the Forest Service has been given "very broad discretion" that he feels courts are unlikely to overturn.

Christensen says "there is not a single fix" for controlling wildfires. "We need a portfolio of approaches that include fuel management, prescribed fire where feasible, growth management and protection around existing dwellings."

Media contact: Tim Lucas, 919/613-8084 or tdlucas@duke.edu