Logging without
limits or laws 

By TIMOTHY INGALSBEE, Ph.D.

In the midst of one of the most severe wildfire seasons in decades, some lawmakers are opportunistically using the wildfires to further a longstanding agenda to allow unfettered commercial logging in the National Forests.

Several legislative proposals have recently been introduced in Congress that would suspend all environmental protection laws for the sake of “fire prevention logging.” These legislative proposals—which harken back to the infamous “logging without laws” Salvage Rider of 1995—would effectively strip citizens of their legal rights to be informed participants in forest management and hold government agencies accountable when they break the law.

To justify these Draconian measures, members of Congress have seized upon the accusations of Forest Service officials that environmentalists have obstructed fire hazard reduction projects with frivolous appeals and lawsuits.

Most embarrassing to the accusers of “environmentalist obstructionism” is the fact that the General Accounting Office, the non-partisan research wing of Congress, found that only 20 out of 1,670 fire hazard reduction projects planned over the last two years had been appealed, and zero had been taken to court. In response, the Forest Service claimed to have its own list of 326 projects in which 154 of them had been stopped by appeals or lawsuits. But, when Congressmen Jay Inslee (D-WA) and Tom Udall (D-NM) asked to see this list of appealed/litigated projects, the agency was forced to admit that no such list existed.

This begs the question: Is Congress now reacting to a problem fabricated by the Forest Service?

If and when a comprehensive list of fire hazard projects is ever produced, the end result will most likely be the discovery that environmentalists have consistently challenged only those projects that involve commercial logging of large-diameter trees in remote backcountry areas, but have not opposed projects that involve non-commercial cutting and prescribed burning of small-diameter understory trees and brush in areas adjacent to communities. The distinction is critical to addressing both the source of the wildfire crisis and its solution.

In recent years Forest Service managers have believed that if they refer to logging as “thinning,” or used phrases like “fuels reduction” or “forest restoration,” then the public will accept these projects at face value, and business-as-usual commercial logging can proceed.

There does appear to be growing consensus among forest managers, fire scientists—and environmentalists, too—on the need for some kind of carefully targeted tree thinning as one tool for reducing wildfire hazards. But the consensus centers on the need to thin the “thin stuff,” (cutting brush and understory trees under 12 inches) not the “thick stuff” (logging large-diameter mature and old-growth trees). However, logging corporations desire to take only large-diameter trees because these are the ones most profitable to them.

We need to utilize fire science to determine what kind of thinning will most effectively protect communities and restore ecosystems.

The Forest Service would not generate public opposition or run afoul of the law if it were to propose legitimate fire hazard reduction projects that target small-diameter surface fuels in priority high-fire risk areas adjacent to communities. And Congress does not have to suspend environmental laws in order to provide adequate funding—using just a fraction of the $1 billion dollars it will spend on this year’s firefighting costs--to accomplish these kinds of projects.

It is time for Congress and the Forest Service to put the need for community fire protection ahead of commodity timber production, and design fire hazard reduction projects that are scientifically sound, socially acceptable, and offer real solutions to real problems. By proposing logging without limits or laws, Congress is heading full steam on the wrong track, and is going to ignite a firestorm of public controversy and social conflict that will only worsen the wildfire crisis.

Last week, a fire logging bill, the National Forest Fire Prevention Act, H.R. 5214, was introduced in the House by Rep. Dennis Rehberg (R-MT) that proposes to permanently suspend all laws for logging and bans citizen appeals and judicial review. This language is much broader than the infamous Salvage Logging Rider of 1995.

The bill’s “not withstanding any other law provision” suspends the National Environmental Policy Act, the National Forest Management Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Wilderness Act of 1964 and all other laws. The bill applies to all “existing timber sale analysis areas.” Depending on how far back that term applies, this bill could overturn forty years of conservation progress by allowing currently protected old growth, roadless areas and Wilderness Areas on the National Forests to be roaded and logged with no option of appeal.

[Timothy Ingalsbee, Ph.D. is the director of the Western Fire Ecology Center for the American Lands Alliance in Eugene, Oregon. He may be contacted at P.O. Box 51026, Eugene, OR 97405; 541/302-6218; fire@efn.org.]