July 24, 2002


The Honorable Thomas A. Daschle
Majority Leader
U.S. Senate
SH-509
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Majority Leader Daschle:

We were pleasantly surprised and heartened to learn of your support for a provision in the Supplemental Appropriation that clears the way for implementation of long-stalled hazardous fuels reduction projects on the Black Hills National Forest. As you know, efforts to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire on the Black Hills have been thwarted for over a decade by a continual march of appeals, lawsuits and other frivolous objections by environmental organizations. The frightening result of this litigious campaign has been to leave a number of communities in South Dakota susceptible to the ravages of wildland fire.

We were pleased to learn of your willingness to join with Congressman Thune in addressing this crisis, particularly after the Senate was unwilling to include similar language in the Farm Bill earlier this year.

But we would like to point out that South Dakota’s wildfire problems are not isolated. Indeed, catastrophic wildfire is destroying communities throughout the American West, incinerating homes and threatening lives in Colorado, Arizona, Utah, Oregon, New Mexico, Wyoming, Nevada, California, Washington, Montana, as well as South Dakota. In addition to threatening communities, these explosive fires are destroying old growth forests, habitat for threatened and endangered species, and sources of clean drinking water.

It is no secret why the threat of catastrophic wildfire has reached a breaking point in the last few years. The wildfire problem has been elevated to crisis proportions by appeals, lawsuits and gratuitous bureaucracy that effectively prohibit forest management on any meaningful scale. You have seen it first hand on your forests, just as we have experienced it on ours. The Forest Service estimates that 72 million acres of national forestlands around the country are at high risk to catastrophic wildfire. Yet, thanks in large part to red tape, lawsuits and appeals, the Forest Service will reduce fire hazards on less than 2 million of those at-risk acres this year.

This crisis demands a swift and meaningful solution. We call on you to join with us in pursuing it. Prompt relief, like the provision in the Supplemental for the Black Hills National Forest, is urgently needed for other communities at risk. After crafting an expedited solution for the Black Hills, opposing similar solutions for other vulnerable forests in the West would smack of hypocrisy.

In short order, proposals for reforming the Forest Service’s decision-making process and troubled appeals statute will come down the pike. These reforms are essential to save our forests. In one case, a single thinning project had to go through 800 steps to be approved. After all that, the project was tied-up in appeals for nearly nine months. In all, this single project took nearly three years to work its way through the Forest Service’s decision-making pipeline. Today, the area slated for treatment is a blackened moonscape, scorched for decades to come by Colorado’s Hayman Fire. The project was never fully implemented.

Like the Chief of the Forest Service, we believe that a substantial overhaul of this unacceptably slow decision-making process is in order. The Forest Service estimates that it spends 40% of its time and resources on planning and process activities. With wildfire racing across the West at an unprecedented pace, clearly the time for change is now.

As reform efforts move forward in the coming weeks, we challenge you to rise above the chorus of voices in the environmental community who have committed to fighting these desperately needed reforms. As the Majority Leader of the United States Senate, you are in a uniquely strong position to help us overcome the forces trying to preserve the disastrous status quo on our national forests. After supporting bold steps to protect South Dakota’ communities, we hope and trust that you will support broader efforts to contain the rampant threat of catastrophic wildfire on forests across the nation.