Hearings Sought On Forest Thinning Plan
Nearly 60 conservation groups are calling for congressional field hearings on a new proposal aimed at reducing wildfires on national forests.
The U.S. Forest Service wants to combat fire risk by combining logging and prescribed burning across up to 56 million acres of public forests.
In a letter mailed Tuesday to the members of Congress, the groups call the proposal a “transparent attempt” to boost logging that could actually increase fires.
The proposal, estimated to cost $12 billion, needs scrutiny before it is put into practice, 57 groups say.
“This is a purely political proposal. It bears no relationship to science whatsoever,” says Ron Mitchell, executive director of the Idaho Sporting Congress, based in Boise, one of the groups signing the letter.
A draft of the plan last April called for thinning, burning and other fire prevention efforts on 40 million acres of Forest Service land. The plan is expected to cost $825 million a year by 2015.
“Our single most important objec- tive aside from protecting lives is reducing unnaturally high levels of fuel,” Forest Service top aide Chris Wood told the Associated Press last week. “The whole idea that this is a timber issue is malarkey.”
The groups charge that this year’s wildfires are primarily the result of extended drought and more people living within forests, though nearly a century’s fire suppression and logging has increased the severity of the blazes.
“The issue is complex and we must proceed with due caution before exposing the taxpayers to another massive below-cost logging program on the National Forests,” the letter says.
This summer, many area sawmills have slowed production in a depressed market in part due to an over-supply of logs coming in from Canada.
Mills will “have to work out” how to handle the additional logs generated by the logging proposal, an industry spokeswoman said.
“There is a clear and present need to thin our forests,” said Stefany Bales, with the Intermountain Forest Association based in Coeur d’Alene. “That is not going to go away.”
Places like Salmon, where the massive Clear Creek fire is burning in the Salmon-Challis National Forest, don’t even have nearby mills, Bales said.
“In some places the infrastructure isn’t there,” she said. “That will become an issue as we move through this.”
Zaz Hollander can be reached at (208) 765-7129 or by e-mail at zazh@spokesman.com.