News Service June 4, 2003

By TED MONOSON
Gazette Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration's plan to improve the health of the nation's forests marched forward on Friday to a drumbeat of criticism from environmental organizations.

Agriculture and Interior Department officials rolled out the latest parts of an effort to expedite the thinning of forests filled with flammable debris and make the most of the money they receive.

The most significant of the new rules would permit logging projects of 1,000 acres to proceed without environmental reviews.

"These new tools will reduce the layers of unnecessary red tape and procedural delay that prevent agency experts from acting quickly to protect communities and our natural resources from devastating wildfires," Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman said.

The administration officially released rules that would exempt relatively small timber projects from environmental regulations and limit the appeals process for thinning projects. It also released proposed regulations to limit the process for applying the Endangered Species Act to projects to improve the health of forests and range lands.

"This is a step in the right direction," Sen. Conrad Burns, D-Mont., said. "This is something I have been asking the administration to act on for almost four years now, and I am glad to see these new rules go into effect. They will be positive for Montana communities, because each allows the agencies to spend more time and money solving problems on the ground instead of on endless paperwork."

Administration officials stressed that the changes would allow federal agencies to protect communities from wildfires, but environmentalists say that the main purpose is to increase logging in the backwoods.

Rebecca Watson, the Interior Department assistant secretary in charge of the Bureau of Land Management, said the rules exempting small timber would only exempt timber projects in burned-over areas and area where communities abut forests from federal environmental laws.

"The primary purpose must be fuels reduction," Watson said. "Any timber purpose will be secondary."

Environmentalists say the rules do not include provisions that would prevent backwoods logging.

"They talk about fire protection for homes and communities, but it is specifically designed to cut large trees in the backwoods," said Amy Mall, Natural Resources Defense Council forest and public land specialist.

In October, 1999, a federal district court judge in Illinois struck down the exemptions, known as categorical exclusions. Under the rule that was struck down, categorical exclusions were permitted for timber sales of up to 250,000 board feet of green sticks and 1 million board feet of salvage sticks. The judge ruled that the categorical exclusions could not simply be based on the number of board feet that were going to be cut. The new rules replace the board feet limits with acreage limits.

Federal agencies would be able to treat 4,500-acre areas using prescribed burns and 1,000-acre areas using logging. Habitat restoration projects would be limited to 4,200-acre areas.

"A thousand acres may seem big to a lot of people, but that is a thousand acres that is not susceptible to catastrophic wildfires," said Mark Rey, the Agriculture Department undersecretary for natural resources and environment.

The rules on appeals would codify who has the right to appeal and allow the Bureau of Land Management to make decisions immediately when areas are threatened by wildfires or significant erosion. The rules would require someone filing an appeal to have participated in the initial comment period.

The proposed rules on the Endangered Species Act would permit agencies to make decisions on projects in areas where endangered species without consulting the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.