Forest Plan Means Less Mining, Logging Changes Unveiled On Same Day Audit Assails Agency

Less mining, far fewer roads and less old-growth logging will mark national forest management in the future, U.S. Forest Service chief Mike Dombeck announced Wednesday.

“The cleanest and largest amount of surface water runoff in the nation comes from federal landscapes,” Dombeck said. Clean, safe drinking water and restored watersheds will be top priorities as the agency updates management plans for 150 million acres of national forests, he said.

That means new road construction is going to be scaled way back, especially in roadless areas.

“We simply cannot afford our existing road system,” Dombeck said. “New information documents that we have a reconstruction and maintenance backlog of approximately $8.5 billion. … Only 18 percent of our road system is maintained to our own standards.”

Dombeck spoke at the University of Montana in Missoula on Wednesday, and his comments were later released by the Forest Service.

Forest management changes will lead to more prescribed fires and less off-road vehicle recreation that damages the landscape. The change also will result in another push to pay counties a flat rate for federal lands within their borders instead of giving them a percentage of logging sales.

Dombeck also announced he is asking the U.S. Department of Interior to suspend all new hard-rock mining claims on the 429,000 acres in Montana for two years, pending a comprehensive environmental review.

“Multiple use does not mean we should do everything on every acre simply because we can,” Dombeck explained.

The words about an environmentally friendlier Forest Service were delivered as federal auditors released a report harshly criticizing the agency’s dismal environmental performance.

Critics say the speech was timed to defuse the findings of the unfavorable report, prepared by the inspector general at the U.S. Department of Agriculture .

“It seems like damage control, fullspeed ahead,” said Timothy Coleman, executive director of the Kettle Range Conservation Group. “These guys just don’t get it - the office of the inspector general says get your act together and Dombeck says everything is all right.”

The Forest Service says there’s no connection between the inspector general’s report and the speech.

“I haven’t even seen the (inspector general’s) report,” said Chris Wood, top assistant to Dombeck. The speech is an annual State of the Union-style message on national forest management.

Still, “to the extent the office of the inspector general raises valid issues about the timber program, we will comply.”

The inspector general cites several cases where agency actions resulted in severe environmental damage from logging. Forest Service environmental studies are flawed and “consequently permitted timber sales and other activities without limiting the environmental damage associated with those activities,” the investigation found. “Taxpayers and the timber purchasers suffer when the errors and omissions come to light.”

In a letter to Dombeck, Inspector General Roger Viadera warned, “immediate, corrective action is needed to ensure that the interests of environmental, logging and other groups are safeguarded.”

Early indications show Dombeck’s speech isn’t playing well among conservation or industry groups.

American Lands, a national conservation group, says the inspector general’s report makes it difficult to believe Dombeck is serious.

“You start feeling this hope and then you realize they are cutting old growth on (Idaho’s) Clearwater National Forest,” said Steve Holmer, of American Lands. “There are a lot of things happening on the ground that are just completely inconsistent with that.”

Officials at the Intermountain Forest Industry Association in Coeur d’Alene could not be reached for comment Wednesday. But the Northwest Mining Association said it is calling on the region’s congressional delegation to stop the mining claim moratorium.

“What concerns us is the way they are going about doing it,” said Laura Skaer, association executive director. “By segregating it out for two years it becomes a de facto withdrawal” and that requires congressional approval.

The public is being excluded from the decision, Skaer said, and if it goes forward unchallenged, it could establish a precedent that affects Washington and Idaho, Skaer said.

The Forest Service says that’s way too much panic.

“We are going to have full public involvement, with all of the appropriate reviews,” Wood said. “And our attorneys are advising us that what we are doing is completely legitimate.”