McInnis Critical of Daschle's Tactic

By GARY HARMON The Daily Sentinel

What's good for the Black Hills of South Dakota also is good for Grand Mesa, the Flattops and other mountains in Colorado, as well as the rest of the West, said Rep. Scott McInnis, R-Colo.

McInnis gave backhanded praise to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle for his legislation that exempts his home state of South Dakota from environmental rules and lawsuits in an effort to prevent forest fires.

Daschle's South Dakota-only provision was discovered in a spending bill by lawmakers this week, just before the House and Senate passed it overwhelmingly. It awaited President Bush's signature.

"South Dakota's wildfire problems are not isolated," McInnis, chairman of the House subcommittee on Forest and Forest Health, wrote to Daschle. "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 as well as South Dakota."

The provision would allow logging in areas of the Black Hills deemed susceptible to wildfires.

Efforts to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire in the Black Hills have been thwarted for more than a decade by a "continual march of appeals, lawsuits and other frivolous objections by environmental organizations," McInnis wrote to Daschle. "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."

The U.S. Forest Service, McInnis wrote, estimates 72 million acres of national forests around the nation are at high risk of catastrophic wildfire. Hampered by red tape, lawsuits and appeals, the Forest Service will reduce fire hazards on less than 2 million of those at-risk acres this year, he said.

"This crisis demands a swift and meaningful solution. We call on you to join with us in pursuing it," McInnis wrote. "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."

McInnis also called for "a substantial overhaul" of a system in which the Forest Service estimates it spends 40 percent of its time on planning and process activities.

Daschle didn't immediately respond to McInnis' letter, said Blair Jones of McInnis' Washington, D.C., office.

 A Colorado environmental organization dismissed the entire congressional exchange as "false hysteria."

The Forest Service frequently uses so-called categorical exclusions to expedite fuels-reduction efforts, said Jeff Berman of Durango-based Colorado Wild.

Categorical exclusions involve no public comment and no appeals, except to the courts. No categorical exclusions in Colorado forests have been appealed to the courts, Berman said.

"There's no need for this kind of rider," he said of the South Dakota provision.

Logging is no guarantee of fire protection, he said. The Jasper Fire in the Black Hills last year burned 80,000 acres in logged areas, as well as those with roads, he said.

Eliminating reviews and public comment from logging proposals is a "recipe for disaster," yet Congress is "just going to go out and do it."

A California congressman, meanwhile, demanded a Daschle-like exemption in his district as a wildfire in the Sequoia National Forest has forced the evacuation of about 1,000 people, destroyed more than 50,000 acres and moved within a mile of the ancient stand of trees. Rep. George P. Radanovich, R-Calif., demanded an immediate exemption in his district "so that the magnificent trees don't end up like charcoal."

McInnis and Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., meanwhile, were scheduled to debate the level of regulation on public lands tonight on Fox News Network's "Hannity and Colmes" show.