7/15/2002

KUFM / KGPR

T. M. Power

Blaming Environmentalists for This Summer’s Fires

The US Forest Service has joined the timber industry in blaming environmentalists for this summer’s wildfires. That is not entirely surprising. Political direction for the Forest Service from the Bush administration is now being provided by Mark Rey, a long time executive of various timber industry trade groups. Rey is committed to turning the National Forests back to commercial timber companies to use as they see fit in the pursuit of their profits.

A year ago, the General Accounting Office, Congress’ non-partisan research organization, was asked by Colorado Republican Representative Scott McInnis to document how environmentalists had blocked efforts to reduce the threat of wildfire in National Forests. The GAO’s study frustrated timber interests by pointing out that of the almost 1,700 fuel-reduction projects proposed by the Forest Service only 20 or about 1 percent were under appeal. Environmentalists had not impeded the Forest Service’s fuel reduction efforts.

Not satisfied with a non-partisan, independent review of the issue, the timber executives now heading the Forest Service arranged their own study of the issue. They redefined “fuel reduction” to mean “timber sales” and proceeded to calculate that of their 326 proposals to reduce forest fuels by logging almost half were appealed. Thus, they concluded, environmentalists had blocked half of their efforts to control wildfires nationwide, but even worse, had blocked 73 percent of “fuel reducing timber sales” in Arizona and New Mexico where fires were recently raging and 100 percent of such timber sales in the Pacific Northwest.

Note the crude nature of this political jujitsu: First ignore 80 percent of the fuel reduction projects on the grounds that they do not involve the commercial sale of any trees to your business clients and therefore cannot really be considered serious fuel reduction efforts. Then proceed to count as blocked or delayed those projects that had already quickly moved through the appeals process and were being implemented. As one observer said, this in-house approach is about as solid as an Arthur Andersen’s audits of Enron or WorldCom.

This is not a debate over protecting people and homes from wildfire. It is a debate over how much of our National Forests should be committed to commercial timber harvest. These are two entirely separate questions that the timber industry is trying to run together so that it can enhance its commercial claims on our National Forests. The two questions can be separately considered and decided because they are largely unrelated.

We know how to protect people and homes from wildfire. To do that, we do not have to log hundreds of millions of acres of public land. In fact, doing so may well increase the fire danger. What we need to do is focus on two things: reducing the flammability of the homes built in forested areas and reducing forest fuels in the immediate area of the homes, a hundred feet or so. Absolutely no one objects to these highly effective and proven methods of protecting people and homes. None of these types of efforts have been appealed by environmental organizations.

However, as the GAO has pointed out, the Forest Service has not been focusing its wildfire control efforts in these human-dominated landscapes where human lives and homes are at risk. Instead it has used the threat of wildfire to propose timber sales far removed from any human habitation. It is these timber “thinning” sales that do not increase the safety of anyone’s home that have been appealed for what they are: barely disguised commercial timber sales.

Logically and scientifically it is very easy to see a clear path through this debate. When talking about protecting people and homes and re-establishing forest health after a hundred years of commercial distortion, strip all commercial timber interests away. Focus honestly on the safety of people and the health of the forest. Reject any manipulation of these concerns for commercial purposes.

Then, let us separately debate to what extent we want commercial timber interests to continue to dominate our National Forests. Some think this is a fine, legitimate, economic use of public forests. Others think that commercial harvest is fine and legitimate on the private timberlands that make up most of the nation’s forests, but that it is not a legitimate use of our public forests; they should be managed for an entirely different set of important forest values. Of course, we do not have to make an either-or decision on this issue, but we may want to. The point is that this can be debated separately from the home safety and forest health issues.

Those who honestly care about people’s lives and homes, about forest health, and about continued commercial timber harvests should be able to agree to not run these issue together in an unproductive and, ultimately, dangerous way. It is only by separating these issues that we can make progress on any of them.