‘Healthy Forest’ Bill Goes to Conference
By Mark Friedman
Arkansas Business - 11/17/03

U.S. House and Senate negotiators are ironing out legislation that will ease environmental restrictions on removing dead and dying trees from national forests.

On Oct. 30, the U.S. Senate passed the Healthy Forest Restoration Act, 80-14, which was touted as a way to prevent forest fires by hauling away underbrush and dead and bug-invfested trees in national forests. While the bill was being debated, wildfires marched though southern California, scorching more than 700,000 acres, burning 2,600 homes and killing 20.

In May, the House had passed its version of the bill, which was based on President Bush’s Healthy Forests Initiative.

Both versions of the bill were sent to a conference committee to resolve the differences.

Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark., said he hopes a bill emerges and legislators will vote on it this week before they leave for the year.

In Arkansas, the legislation is desperately needed to reduce the threat of forest fires, stop the spread of the red oak borer beetle and help the timber industry — or so timber industry groups say. Meanwhile, environmentalist groups have blasted it for not

doing enough to protect communities from forest fires.

“A lot of the funding priorities in the bill are skewed toward logging trees out of the back country instead of focusing on protecting homes and communities first,” said Mitzi Emrich, conservation associate for the Sierra Club.

Rep. Vic Snyder, D-Ark., was the only member of Arkansas’ delegation to vote against the bill. Snyder said he voted no because the House bill didn’t say its purpose was to protect homes and community watersheds.

But the Senate version of the bill does. Highlights of the Senate bill are:

• It establishes a process for the U.S. Forest Service and the Department of the Interior to speed up the removal of trees and brush to reduce the chance of wildfires. The accelerated process will remain in place until the agencies have treated 20 million acres that are considered high risk for forest fires.

The bill also allows for $760 million annually for the removal of the trees and brush, a $340 million increase over current funding.

• It requires at least 50 percent of the money to go toward reducing wildfire fuel near communities. The rest of the money would go toward municipal watersheds, endangered species habitat or areas that have suffered from wind damage or insect infestations.

The Senate legislation also provides the first legal protection for old-growth trees.

Red Tape

Don Wesson of McGehee said he’s waited nearly 10 years for this type of legislation.

Since the late 1980s, Wesson, chairman of the Pulp and Paperworkers’ Resource Council, which represents 1.5 million workers nationwide, said he has seen 100 paper mills close as environmental groups prevented federal lands from being harvested.

“They would keep the land tied up in litigation so that no one would be able to touch it,” said Wesson. “It was so easy to stop a sale.”

Meanwhile the forests were getting thick with overgrowth and infested with bugs.

Wesson also blamed the closing in 2001 of International Paper Co.’s mill in Camden on the tight environmental regulations. The mill shut down after nearly 75 years and left 580 workers out of a job.

The new legislation could put some pulp and paper workers back to work. The industry has lost more than 100,000 jobs in the past three years, he said.

“Some of those jobs may never come back, but at the same time (wildfires) have burned up over 20 million acres in the last three years with a cost anywhere from $3 billion-$6 billion, let alone firefighters getting killed and people’s homes getting destroyed.”

Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., said the biggest problems in managing the forest are the “illogical” rules, laws and endless lawsuits.

“Too often foresters are required to propose as many as six to eight alternatives to simple forest treatment projects under the National Environmental Policy Act,” Walden said in a letter to the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry on June 26.

He said that approach wastes taxpayers’ money and prevents foresters from doing their job.

In Arkansas, in the Ozark-St. Francis National Forest, the red oak borer beetle has wreaked havoc on the trees, said J. Kelly Robbins, executive vice president of the Arkansas Forestry Association.

The adult female red oak borers lay eggs on the bark, and when the larvae hatch, they chew through the bark. In its first year, the borer eats cavities in the wood.

The damage comes in the second year when the borers dig deeper into the wood.

Some reports indicate that across northern Arkansas and southern Missouri up to 1 million acres have been damaged by insect infestation, Robbins said.

Robbins said the legislation will allow the local forest personnel to make decisions on what’s best for the forest “instead of keeping their hands tied and having the appeals process abused by those who don’t accept nor appreciate good, sound, solid forest management principals.”

Legislation

Ross, who was a co-sponsor of the House version of the bill which passed 256-170, said the bill is “common-sense legislation.”

“Our forests are not that much different from any other agriculture crop,” he said.

Trees have to be selectively cut and replanted, or insects will take over.

Snyder said he also voted against the bill because there wasn’t any more money appropriated to the Forest Service.

“The Senate bill does a much better a job of that, but we’ll have to see what version comes out of the conference,” Snyder said.

In the Senate, Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., said she got involved in trying to get some legislation after the ice storms in late 2000.

“We had so much down timber that the following summer … it was like kindling,” she said.

It didn’t help the forest either that a number of the trees were dying too.

“We realized quickly that being able to get in and get out the diseased tree was essential,” Lincoln said.

Lincoln and Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, co-wrote the bipartisan compromise that led to the final Senate legislation.

“We tried to address all the issues in terms of our forest and the need to restore the health of our forest in this country,” Lincoln said. “I think many of us have felt that access is the key to maintain it.”

Environmental Groups

But some groups weren’t happy with the legislation, saying it favors timber companies.

“Timber companies really don’t have an in-centive to go in and take out brush and dead debris out because there’s no money in it,” said the Sierra Club’s Emrich. “So what they really want to do is go in and log.”

She said it’s disturbing that logging companies can remove trees under the guise of fire prevention.

“So that allows them to skip out of the whole public participation process,” Emrich said. “They don’t have to file an environmental impact statement. They don’t have to let communities know what they are going to do.”

Lincoln said the public will still have an opportunity to use the judicial review under the legislation.

“But there’s no doubt that forest managers have got to be able to in somewhat of an expeditious way respond to problems that exist,” she said.

Robbins said there still will be rules on what could be cut.

“It’s not like it’s going to open the gates and all of a sudden chain saws and log trucks are going to be running rampant across the national forest here in Arkansas,” he said.

Still, Emrich said she fears the legislation isn’t going to help prevent wildfires from spreading.

She said the Forest Service’s own scientific research has shown that clearing 500 yards around homes and communities should stop the spread of wildfires.

Those who support the legislation have waived off the criticisms of the bill.

“We have environmentalists, and then we have extremists,” Ross said. “I’m an environmentalist, and environmentalists like myself believe that we must properly manage our national forests in order to protect and preserve them.

“This is not about clear-cutting our national forest; it’s about managing our national forest and cutting down on insects and wildfires,” Ross said.

Robbins said environmentalists don’t want any trees cut in national forests.

“We certainly disagree with that approach,” Robbins said. “It’s not a good, common-sense approach to managing timberlands, and disease and insects in this case and certainly wildfires don’t appreciate political boundaries.”

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