Chenoweth Forest Bill Debated Supporters Say It’d Lessen Fire Danger, But Critics Say It’d Exclude The Public
Supporters say it would save the forest and private property. Critics call it a budget-buster and a new way to exclude the public from having a say in forest management.
The debate will be aired in Washington, D.C., as hearings open on U.S. Rep. Helen Chenoweth’s new forest bill.
It proposes to roll back environmental regulations so the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management can do more logging in the name of lessening fire danger. The proposal targets areas where urban expansion encroaches on the fringes of national forests.
“The basic thing to be kept in mind here is this is to protect the communities and to protect the forest ecosystem,” said Chad Hyslop, the Idaho Republican’s press secretary.
Jim Riley, of the Intermountain Forest Industry Association, calls it a thoughtful approach to a serious issue. But he says he would like to see the bill do more to help make sure wildfires in national forests don’t threaten private property.
“A private landowner ought to be able to insist the federal government act in a way that minimizes the risk to his property,” Riley said.
Critics say Chenoweth’s bill wouldn’t actually reduce fire danger but would open the door to forest abuse at great cost to taxpayers without letting them have a say in forest management.
“This is an expansion of logging without public input,” said Tim Coleman of the Kettle Range Conservation Group.
That would be accomplished by allowing the Forest Service and BLM to designate problem areas and to decide to log, thin or do other things without environmental reviews and public comment required under the National Environmental Policy Act, he said.
“You’ve got people living next to public lands dying in landslides because of things done on public lands” and suffering from floods because of things done on public lands, Coleman said. They deserve a voice, he said.
“It means if you and I hunt and fish on that land, we can’t comment on this,” he added.
Equally disturbing is that the bill would allow the Forest Service and BLM to trade so-called credits for work done in a high fire-risk zone, said Steve Holmer of the Western Ancient Forest Campaign. Those credits could be used by companies to purchase national forest timber.
That means taxpayers would receive no money for their trees. And that means even heavier losses in a timber sale program that already loses $200 million to $400 million a year, Holmer said.
Chenoweth’s bill specifically says no timber sale conducted under the provisions of her bill would be stopped if it loses money.
And because such sales would be conducted outside the Forest Service’s normal accounting system, “there’s a way to hide how much money they are losing,” Holmer said.
The Intermountain Forest Industry Association’s Riley says the bill does not contain a sweeping exemption that precludes environmental review or public comment. The exclusion only says federal forest agencies can designate an area in the urban-wildland problem zone without going through those hoops.
That would boil down to two new levels of planning just to identify a problem area, he said. “I wish she had done more to streamline some of the environmental analysis that has hamstrung us for so long,” Riley said.
Trading timber for some of the work is an innovative way to get the job done, whether it’s thinning trees or restoring streams. “My view of that is: If we are going to solve the problem, all of us are going to have to look at doing business in a new way,” Riley said.
Hyslop, Chenoweth’s aide, concurs. Instead of creating a new bureaucracy or tacking the expense onto the federal budget, this is a way to get private enterprise involved. “Not only do we remove the timber, which is their goal, but we also accomplish some of the environmental goals,” he said.
, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: FOREST REFORM Rep. Helen Chenoweth’s bill would ease regulations on logging in an effort to reduce fire danger.