Forest Health Bill A Good Prescription

Louder than a thousand chain saws, huffier than a herd of Birkenstocked eco-preachers, the debate over salvage logging is about to resume. And in an election year, no less.

Well, bring on the battle. For all of us who live in forest-fire and logging country, it’s needed.

To remember why, think about the wildfires of 1994 and about the loaded lumber trucks that keep rolling across the Canadian border, past quiet U.S. forests, closed U.S. mills and busy U.S. courthouses, on their way to pricey U.S. lumberyards.

Shortly before local forests burned in 1994, the National Commission on Wildfire Disasters published a prophetic report. It warned that decades of misguided management practices have set the stage for unprecedented firestorms. Nature designed some forest types to regenerate through fire, but fire suppression and other practices have left forests overstuffed with fuel. Political squabbling, meanwhile, is stymieing logging but can’t stop forests from dying and burning.

The remedy involves (eeek) chain saws and is, therefore, highly unpopular with Sierra Club types, who recently did us all a favor by admitting that their real objective is to stop all logging on public lands. That, of course, is ridiculous. Rational Americans appreciate the need for wood products and like them better if they’re locally produced. Rational Americans know that logging methods have improved and can coexist with hunting, fishing and other uses.

National forests must become a renewable resource again - not rotting fuel for firestorms, either the political kind or the kind that endangers people who live near the woods.

After the 1994 fires, Congress approved a temporary bill allowing quick removal of burned trees. Now, Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, wants a preventive, permanent solution. His forest health bill, S391, would address the crisis in dry inland forests. It would allow foresters to identify dying stands. Without waiving environmental requirements, it merely would expedite appeal processes so salvage logging could proceed before trees rot. Revenue from salvage logging would support a continuing program to restore damaged sections of forests - through thinning, removing brush, replanting, enhancing spawning habitat and so on.

Let the Sierra Clubbers shriek. Inland forests need to be restored, and Craig’s bill could be a good way to get the job done.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Webster/For the editorial board