Smith Lighting Legislative Fire To Log At-Risk Areas Oregon Congressman Doesn’t Want To Wait For Forest Service Any Longer

Oregon Rep. Bob Smith says he’s losing patience with the Forest Service and is pursuing legislation to accelerate logging of some fire-prone national forests in the West.

Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck is sticking to the Clinton administration line, contending that regulatory changes, not new laws, will improve forest health.

But his predecessor, Jack Ward Thomas, has told Congress in his new role as private citizen that some changes are needed to more effectively manage the 191 million-acre national-forest system.

Smith began the year praising the administration’s efforts to work with Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber, a Democrat, on a forest health-restoration effort in Eastern Oregon that includes some salvage logging operations to reduce the buildup of fire fuels.

“But so far as I can tell, we haven’t put anything on the ground since we all agreed in January to throw our arms around one another and walk out with an agreement,” Smith said.

“We are going to continue to work with them but at the same time we are going to chart another course,” he said.

Smith won’t discuss details except to say “we are looking at a kind of regional pilot-type program” to implement forest-restoration techniques outlined in the recent report by a scientific panel led by University of Washington ecology professor Chad Oliver. Environmentalists criticized the report.

Smith said it is unlikely any legislation would include so-called “sufficiency language,” like the salvage timber rider Congress approved two years ago that exempted salvage harvests from fish and wildlife protections.

Smith criticized Dombeck during an Ag Committee hearing earlier this month, citing a recent report by the General Accounting Office.

“The increasing emphasis on sustaining wildlife and fish conflicts with the older emphasis on producing timber and underlies the Forest Service’s inability to achieve the goals and objectives for timber production set forth in many of the first forest plans,” the GAO said in May.

The identity crisis isn’t entirely the Forest Service’s fault, Dombeck said.

The public’s view of national forests has evolved dramatically over the past decade, he said.

“I don’t believe you legislate public opinion,” Dombeck said, rejecting the call for a new law that would intensify efforts to remove dead and dying timber from forests.

Smith’s legislative effort is separate from a proposal being drafted by Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources subcommittee on forests.

Craig’s draft proposal would rewrite the National Forest Management Act over the objections of most environmental groups. It would place new restrictions on citizen appeals and lawsuits intended to block logging. It also would scale back some requirements for environmental reviews and consultation with officials at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service.

The senator’s staff is reviewing public comments and redrafting a bill expected to be formally introduced in the Senate later this year and voted on next year.

“We are looking at upwards of 80 changes to the bill,” said staffer Mark Rey.

Thomas, who resigned as chief last fall and teaches at the University of Montana, testified on Craig’s draft proposal at a workshop the senator sponsored in March.

“Whether right or wrong, the situation surrounding the management of the public’s lands has become inexorably more politicized over the past decade or so,” Thomas told the gathering in Coeur d’Alene.

“In my opinion, the position that there are no problems with the legislation that governs management of the public’s lands, and that whatever problems there are can be solved through better administration, is incorrect,” he said.

Thomas, the first wildlife biologist to head the agency, said the laws under which the Forest Service operates - and court interpretations of those laws - have created a bureaucratic nightmare that has hamstrung efforts to produce timber while protecting the ecological integrity of the forests.

On the other hand, Thomas said some critics of the administration’s forest-protection efforts have failed to accept the reality that “the overriding objective of the management of the public’s lands has become the preservation of bio-diversity.”

It is difficult for land managers to achieve that objective and at the same time “meet the expectations of many Western members of Congress for ‘community stability’ and higher levels of resource extraction,” he said.

Thomas criticized those like Craig whose goal is to maintain a stable and predictable flow of timber from national forests. That is “wishful thinking,” he said.