Our forest system is broken - Daschles Black Hills rider is bad policy

perspective Our forest system is broken Daschle's Black Hills rider is bad policy By Daniel Kemmis

Sunday, August 25, 2002 - Just days before Congress adjourned for its August recess, Democratic Senate majority leader Tom Daschle quietly added a little something to a counter-terrorism bill. It had nothing to do with terrorism; it was a provision exempting some logging projects in the Black Hills National Forest from environmental regulations and lawsuits. Loggers, two environmental groups and the Forest Service had worked out the deal, which included no chance for public involvement or appeal.

Daschle's maneuver was understandable because the existing public-land management system has become so dysfunctional that often the only way to get anything done is to short-circuit the system. But the Black Hills rider is bad public policy, not only because it was subject to no public scrutiny, but also because it does not address the root of the problem, only the symptoms in one national forest. The Western and overwhelmingly Republican response to the Black Hills rider was equally understandable and equally bad policy. Western senators and representatives immediately began preparing legislation that would apply Sen. Daschle's exemption to environmental review to the entire national forest system. Daschle had, of course, invited that response. His maneuver calls to mind the story of the emperor's new clothes, except that here we have the youth exclaiming, 'When the emperor comes to South Dakota, he has no clothes.'

The Western delegation's rejoinder is essentially, 'No, Tommy, the emperor hasn't had any clothes for a long time.' This is fair enough, but Daschle's fix is bad policy because it would open the door to vast amounts of environmental damage. And, like Daschle's maneuver itself, it fails to address the roots of the problem now so deeply afflicting public-land management. While wildfire is clearly a major problem for the West, it is only a symptom of a much deeper problem. Even if all forest health issues were magically resolved tomorrow, nothing would have been done to restore our public-land management system to health. That system is deeply diseased, and it cannot be cured by treating symptoms.

Some of the most brutally honest assessments of those problems have come from people with deep experience within the system. Former Secretary of the Interior Cecil Andrus, for example, has referred to 'the tangled web of overlapping and often contradictory laws and regulations under which our federal public lands are managed.' Former Forest Service Chief Jack Ward Thomas simply calls this legal complex 'the blob.' Current Chief Dale Bosworth refers to the resulting gridlock as 'analysis paralysis.' Many environmentalists vehemently deny that anything like analysis paralysis afflicts the agency. The credibility of the environmental movement is seriously undermined by such denials, especially now that Daschle has confirmed that procedural gridlock is very real indeed.

But timber interests also weaken their credibility with the disingenuousness of some of their rhetoric. Since the raging fires of the summer of 2000, the timber industry has relied increasingly on the argument that it only wants to log in national forests because of its concern for the 'health' of the forests. Such rhetoric is no more plausible than denials by environmentalists of procedural gridlock.

Both sides can offer better arguments. Strongly protective environmental policies serve the public interest, plain and simple. Environmentalists should not have to rely on gridlock as a conservation tool while pretending it does not exist. It is equally plain that our society uses wood extensively, which means we have to harvest trees somewhere. While only a modest percentage of those trees should come from national forests, certainly some timber harvest ought to come from the millions of acres of national forest lands. We should not have to justify environmentally sound logging under the guise of 'fuel reduction.'

Countless local collaborations around the West have proven that both sound environmental protection and a sustainable level of timber harvest can be achieved on much of the public domain when both sides approach local management issues fairly, honestly and openly. That same kind of honesty and openness now needs to be applied to the restructuring of the public-land system itself.

Sen. Daschle has done us the favor of recognizing that the existing system simply does not work. The problem isn't confined by party lines any more than it stops at the South Dakota state line. And it cannot be contained by a fire line either. This is not a fire issue. Fire is only the presenting symptom. Daniel Kemmis is director of the Center for the Rocky Mountain West at the Universtiy of Montana. He is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High County News in Paonia.

On 25 Aug 2002 (Donald L Ferrt) wrote:

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When in doubt, 'follow the money.'

'The Blob' is depicted here as the root cause of the fire-fuel symptom, among other symptoms of poor forest management. Yet I can't help but wonder if 'The Blob' is not merely a disguise, or perhaps a symptom for the real root cause: bad economics.

As I've argued here recently, logging on steep, remote National Forest lands, with the sensible, yet expensive maintenance it requires may not be doable. Congress refuses to fund sensible maintenance, (subsidize the loggers,) and the loggers can't or won't do it as part of the cost of doing business, as the private flatland treefarmers do.

For example, it is reasonable to imagine the USNFS being directed to have the loggers say, clear the brush, but loggers can't afford to without massive logging, which is forbidden for sustainability reasons, and yada yada, this whole Catch-22 (grossly oversimplified here) being perceived as the regulatory 'Blob.'

The simple solution is no more logging, and in the short term (next 50 years), either find a way to treat and maintain (fund) the forests, or...I guess...just let them burn as they may. If indeed bad economics is the problem here, then any other course will be throwing good money after bad, as well as worsening and prolonging the problems.