5/18/2003
KUFM / KGPR
T. M. Power
Are Appeals and
Litigation Stalling Fuel Reduction Efforts on National Forests?
Under the guise of protecting communities adjacent to our National Forests from catastrophic wildfire, Congress is considering legislation aimed at accelerating logging in the National Forests, subsidizing that logging to the tune of $125 million on top of the subsidies the US Forest Service already provides, and setting most of that “forest treatment” off limits to citizen appeals. The justification for all of this is that people, their homes, and their communities are under imminent threat from wildfire and emergency measures are called for.
The sponsors of this legislation that would open most National Forest land to unsupervised logging in the name of fuel reduction asked Congresses’ investigative arm, the General Accounting Office or GAO, to review the Forest Service efforts at fuel reduction over the last two years and report on how much of that effort had been blocked or seriously stalled by appeals and litigation. The GAO’s report[1] dramatically contradicted the very assumptions on which the proposed legislation was based, namely that appeals and litigation were blocking the Forest Service’s fuel reduction efforts.
The GAO looked at every action the Forest Service had proposed over the last two years that was at least partially justified on fuel reduction grounds. Those Forest Service proposals covered 4.7 million acres in 762 different proposed actions.
Of those, only about a third of the acres were on the wildland-urban interface where peoples’ homes and communities are most at risk. The other two-thirds of the acres to be treated were far removed from where people were endangered by wildfire.
Of the acres on which the Forest Service wanted to reduce fuels, appeals were filed covering only about one fifth of the acreage. Almost all of those appeals, 80 percent of them, were settled within 90 days. There were not endless delays.
Of the 4.7 million acres on which the Forest Service wanted to reduce fuels, only about 100,000 acres or 2 percent were the subject of court challenges. That is, 98 percent of the acres that the Forest Service wanted to treat to reduce fuels were not challenged in court.
Of the Forest Service projects that were appealed, one in four were modified, reversed, or abandoned by the Forest Service. On review, the Forest Service found that there were things about their fuel reduction proposals that deserved being changed. In that sense the appeals process was working: It was not seriously delaying the vast majority of the fuel reduction plans and was facilitating the improvement of those proposals that were flawed. That is the whole point of the public appeals process.
Of those few Forest Service proposals that were taken to court, among those where decisions have already been reached, 40 percent were either reversed by the courts or settled by negotiation. Again it would appear that the legal process is working just fine in weeding out bad proposals and assisting in the development of better proposals without seriously delaying the vast majority of fuel reduction plans.
Depending on where the Forest Service focused its fuel reduction efforts, it faced more or less opposition. When it wanted to enter inventoried roadless areas far removed from homes and communities, 1 in 3 of its proposals were appealed. When it focused on the wildland-urban interface where the real danger to people and property are, only 1 in 6 of the Forest Service proposals were appealed.
Given the GAO’s documentation of the success that the Forest Service has had over the last two years in implementing its fuel reduction proposals in a timely fashion, one has to ask why new legislation is required to further weaken environmental laws and further exclude citizens from actively monitoring a government agencies adherence to its own rules and the nation’s laws.
What is going on here has nothing to do with protecting people and their homes. If that were the focus, the legislation would be mandating that the fuel reduction efforts give highest priority to the lands around people’s homes and communities rather than supporting disguised commercial logging in the wild backcountry. The legislation would also provide funds not to subsidize commercial logging in roadless areas but to allow communities and homeowners to reduce the risks associated with the forested land immediately adjacent to them. The proposed legislation does neither of these.
A legitimate fear about the dangers of wildfires to our western communities is being used to justify actions that have nothing to do with protecting those communities. Instead those fears and dangers are being used to pursue a quite separate agenda aimed at systematically weakening our environmental laws, systematically excluding citizens from holding their government accountable for its actions, and once again turning the natural treasures of our National Forests over to commercial interests to be used to pursue their private profits rather than the public interest. The ultimate outcome will be to leave forest communities significantly worse off, not better off.