Congressional Hearing Draws Protests, 
Pleas in Flagstaff

By JOANNA DODDER
The Daily Courier

FLAGSTAFF – A familiar Washington, D.C., scene made its way to Flagstaff Friday: People carrying signs protesting Republican federal forest proposals while standing outside a congressional hearing.

But alongside them was a more unusual sight: even more people carrying signs to show support for those proposals.

They were people from the mountains of Arizona who have seen firsthand the devastation of ponderosa pine forests from catastrophic wildfire – residents of the White Mountains, where the 467,000-acre Rodeo-Chediski Fire ran rampant this past summer.

They said they are rising up against environmental groups that are trying to stop efforts to thin out forests that are dangerously overgrown after decades of wildfire suppression.

When overstocked forests burn today, the resulting fires are so hot they kill too many trees and cause so much damage to some soils that experts say it could take the ground thousands of years to recover.

“Join the Sierra Club and make a real ash of yourself,” read the T-shirts that Jason Ellis of Snowflake was selling outside the hearing.

The Arizona residents said they are especially angry that one environmental group, the Forest Conservation Council, is appealing the Forest Service’s plan to salvage trees that the Rodeo-Chediski Fire burned near homes, roads and utility lines.

Inside the hearing room, Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey told the House Subcommittee on Forests and Forests Health that the court delay could effectively kill the logging operation because the trees no longer will be salvageable.

Prescott-area residents Brad Veek and Bob Hennkens brought along petitions that oppose the lawsuit.

The two opinions outside the Flagstaff City Hall clashed when one protester told a White Mountain resident that he shouldn’t be living in the forest anyway.

“Then they shouldn’t worry about getting robbed or raped in the city,” John Halliwill countered.

Inside at the congressional field hearing, forest health scientists, federal administrators and an environmental leader testified that it’s not enough to thin out trees and overgrown brush near homes alone, because that wouldn’t help the animals that depend on healthy forests.

The scientists advocated starting on landscape-scale logging, crushing and burning projects immediately.

Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore cited two primary causes of the Western forest conditions: that Eastern federal politicians control lands in the West, and “many powerful environmental groups are basically anti-forestry.

“The anti-forestry activists are telling us that the way to save forests is to let them burn to the ground,” Moore> said.

Bush administration officials said that right now, the federal government is thinning an average of 2.2 million acres each year.

But at least 190 million acres of federal forestlands are at risk of catastrophic wildfire because they are so dense, Department of Interior Undersecretary Rebecca Watson said.

While some congressmen and panelists wondered how the work could ever catch up, Rey said it could be done with 20 years of aggressive action.

“It took us 100 years to get into this situation, and it’s going to take more than a couple years to get out,” Rey said.

However, right now “the procedures are too cumbersome,” he said.

No matter what the federal government does to try to help restore the forests, it gets sued, said Congressman Greg Walden of Oregon.

“This system is out of control right now,” he said.
Congressmen Scott McInnis of Colorado and J.D. Hayworth of Arizona agreed.

“Who is the extremist in this instance when you ignore forest health and the safety of the population?”

Hayworth said. “There is no reasoning with those who will not reason.”

Local government officials whose region was affected by Arizona’s largest wildfire, Show Low Mayor Gene Kelley and White Mountain Apache Chair Dallas Massey, also got a chance to testify before the subcommittee.

“Stop forest management by lawsuit,” Kelley asked the congressional members.

“Planning for forest health must also recognize that people are part of this forest,” Massey said. “Loosen up some of those environmental laws and we can manage the forests the right way.”

The subcommittee promised to help.
“Congress has an obligation to help,” agreed House Resources Committee Chair Richard Pombo.

“The time to act is now,” Arizona Congressman John Shadegg said.

“We can work together to find a holistic approach,” said Congressman Rick Renzi, a member of the subcommittee whose district includes Flagstaff> and much of Arizona.

Wally Covington, director of the Ecological Restoration Institute at Northern Arizona University, painted a dire picture of what could happen without quick action.

He presented a map showing a fire spreading from Oak Creek Canyon to Flagstaff>, Williams, three wilderness areas and three national monuments.

“This is absolutely going to happen unless we do something about it, and we don’t have much time,” Covington> warned.

Pombo said after the hearing that he wasn’t surprised that so many people were telling him the same thing indoors and outdoors, because he’s seeing it all across the West.