STOP Bush's Bad Forestry Bill

Dear Biodiversity Activist,

Please call your Senators again to help defeat Bush's "Repackaged" "Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003." We need to keep the pressure on our Senators so that they continue to oppose Bush’s HR 1904, or to change their minds if they are currently a supporter of Bush’s plan.

You can call your Senator toll-free to DC at: 1-800-648-3516 OR 1-800-839-5276

Many of you have helped fight Bush's misnamed "Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003" HR 1904, and have asked for updates. Republican Senators Domenici (NM), Craig (ID) and Kyl (AZ) have regretfully persuaded leading Senate Democrats Wyden (OR), Feinstein (CA), Baucus (MT) and Lincoln (AR) to cave in on Bush's ill-conceived plan for our National Forests. At this point, the Senate has negotiated a bad deal with the Administration, and a vote is likely to happen as soon as October 14th.

We know you've received a lot of these action alerts, and most of you have responded. We thank you and want to urge you to take action once again, as the bill heads to a Senate vote. Without your help, the Bush administration will succeed in allowing corporations to rewrite the laws that protect our forests from aggressive commercial logging in the name of fire prevention. Your calls count!!!

A fact sheet with an analysis of the compromise language is at the end of this email. As you'll find out, even with the compromise language, the Bush administration's Healthy Forest Initiative still does little to safeguard communities from the risk of forest fires. Instead, it would increase logging under the guise of fuels reduction and limit public involvement in forest planning and community protection. We need to continue to challenge this destructive proposal and to promote alternatives that will focus on thinning and burning small diameter trees near communities at risk.

Again, many thanks for your numerous actions.

A.J. Schneller
Education and Outreach Coordinator
Center for Biological Diversity

SUMMARY:
The following is a brief analysis of the recent Senate compromise language for HR1904, which highlights some of the more important provisions and will show that the Bush administration’s hard-fought effort fails when it comes to providing meaningful protection for communities and responsible management for America’s public forests. This summary does not address the very significant cumulative effects of the legislation together with other elements of the Bush Administration's "Healthy Forests Initiative" and related regulatory actions (such as changes to the National Forest Management Act regulations).

This negotiated Senate version is largely the same Bush administration “Healthy Forests Initiative” package the House passed in HR1904. The negotiated deal still fails to guarantee community protection, responsible fuel reduction, restricting funding to the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI), judicial independence and public involvement. Especially problematic are the purported old growth protections, which may actually invite further logging in old growth and a conspicuous lack of protection for wild roadless areas. If signed into law this bill will leave communities unprotected from threat of wildfire and will increase the amount of damaging logging projects on federal public land. Also, while much is made of the negotiated “compromise” by Senate champions of the bill, the majority of the bill remains unchanged from the industry-sponsored legislation that passed the House in May. In the final package only the first Title is replaced from the previous Senate version of HR1904. Titles II through VIII remain unchanged from HR1904 as it passed the House.

Geographic Scope: The negotiated deal greatly expands the definition of WUI to not only include the ½ mile area around an at-risk community but also “an area within or adjacent to” an at-risk community. Federal lands upon which hazardous fuels reduction projects can be administered are also expanded to include the WUI and any federal land on which windthrow or blowdown, ice storm damage or the existence of disease or insect infestation poses a significant threat to other federal lands and non-federal lands. This creates a loophole allowing logging projects in roadless areas, ancient forests and other areas where commercial timber sales would be most lucrative, regardless of the need for fuel reduction elsewhere. While limited to areas posing a "significant" threat, the Forest
Service is expert at abusing this sort of discretionary language.

Funding: The negotiated Senate deal provides $760 million in annual funding for the hazardous fuel reduction program. The bill outlines a 50 percent split of these funds to be spent inside the WUI and 50% outside of the WUI on a national-level. However, the bill gives the Secretaries of Interior and Agriculture complete discretion to alter that allocation on any management unit or National Forest. In effect, this requirement is not much different than standard practice. Much of the funding will effectively serve to subsidize further logging and logging road construction on remote forest lands.

Changes in Public Participation: The Act significantly curtails public participation in hazardous fuels reduction projects on National Forest lands by altering the administrative review process and limiting alternatives considered in an Environmental Assessment (EA) or Environmental Impact Study (EIS) to only one preferred by the agency, the no-action alternative, and one other if raised in scoping and developed collaboratively. The Act specifies that the Secretary of Agriculture will establish a special, pre-decisional administrative review process for Forest Service lands, within 30 days of the Act’s passage. There is no data to show that limiting the number of alternatives will increase the effectiveness or efficiency of planning and implementing a project. This provision is contrary to the basic concepts of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which is to provide for meaningful public involvement and thorough analysis.

Roadless areas and old growth forests: Despite claims that this bill provides statutory protection for old growth forests, the provisions in the bill offer only guidelines for logging projects in rare old growth forests. Like H.R. 1904, the Amendment does not exempt roadless areas from expedited hazardous fuel reduction projects, nor does it restrict road building in any way.

Presently, the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) log old growth under current management plans ostensibly to protect or restore old growth. The Act calls for the Secretary to fully maintain, or contribute toward the restoration of, the structure and composition of old growth stands and retain large trees. The Act establishes timelines, processes, and opportunity for public comment and action for complying with current or establishing newer old growth “standards.” It is already a common practice in California, the Pacific Northwest as well as the Southwest for the Forest Service to log old growth while claiming that they are “restoring” or “protecting” old growth conditions. This provision is vague, providing no numerical standard and allows the Forest Service with discretion and further pretext to log in old growth stands. Many eastern old growth forests are also at risk under the bill’s allowance for logging in instances of blowdown, other natural storm damage, or natural insect epidemics.

In areas outside of old growth stands, the Secretaries shall “focus largely” on small diameter trees, thinning, strategic fuel breaks, and prescribed fire and “maximize” the retention of large trees. Again, this vague, discretionary language is ripe for abuse by the Forest Service. For example, the Tahoe National Forest has proposed logging trees over 40 inches in diameter and some are as large as 50 or 60 inches in diameter in an inventoried roadless area arguing that they are removing "generally small" trees, and thus complying with the Roadless Area Conservation Rule.

Changes in Judicial Review: The legislation requires that plaintiffs exhaust the new administrative remedies, can only bring lawsuits in the jurisdiction of the projects being challenged, may only bring claims consistent with issues raised in the administrative process and limits injunctions to 60 days, with updates allowed. The legislation encourages courts to expedite proceedings to the extent practicable. The Act further states that Congress encourages the federal courts to balance any environmental impacts of the short-and long-term effects of undertaking the action against the short and long term effects of not undertaking the action. No true data exists that back up the Bush Administration’s claims that appeals and litigation slow implementation of honest fuel reduction work. A recent GAO study found that 95 percent of all fuel reduction projects it reviewed (762 projects covering 4.7 million acres of federal forest lands) were available for implementation within the standard 90 day review period (GAO, May 14, 2003). The GAO has also determined that more than 99 percent of fuel reduction projects proposed by the USFS in 2000 and 2001 were approved without appeal and zero were litigated. (GAO, August 31, 2001).

Community Wildfire Protection Plan: The Act calls for collaborative “Community Wildfire Protection Plans” to be developed that identify and prioritize areas for hazardous fuel reduction treatments and recommends the types and methods of treatments on federal and non-federal lands as well as recommend measures to reduce structural ignitability. These Plans are not subject to NEPA, are exempt from the Federal Advisory Committee Act and have no new mechanism for citizen involvement. This greatly reduces opportunity for meaningful and fair citizen involvement.

Sunset: There is no sunset provision for Title I. Other Senate bills had included a sunset provision of five years, which is appropriate for “emergency” legislation.