Providence (RI) Journal
June 26, 2002

Doing Loggers' Bidding: How Bush Policy Encourages Wildfires

By Chad Hanson
(Chad Hanson is the executive director of the John Muir Project and a
national director of the Sierra Club.)

As wildfires sweep across America's grasslands and forests, Bush
administration officials have tried to take political advantage by proposing
to gut environmental regulations to allow increased logging on national
forests. This, they opine, will prevent "analysis paralysis" and will allow
more "thinning" of flammable undergrowth.

The reality, though, is that environmental groups do not challenge Forest
Service projects that merely seek to reduce flammable undergrowth.

In fact, conservationists have been steadfastly urging the Forest Service to
conduct more of these projects. But the Forest Service generally refuses
because there's no money to be made from shrubs, saplings and weeds.

Despite the Bush administration's disingenuous rhetoric about thinning
underbrush," the Forest Service really focuses the vast majority of its
projects on the removal of economically valuable mature and old-growth
trees. The sale of such timber pads the agency's budget, creating a
bureaucratic incentive for mismanagement.

The problem with this is that while the removal of mature trees severely
degrades wildlife habitat, such logging also increases the risk of severe
fires by reducing the forest canopy, creating hotter, drier conditions on
the ground. Also, the increased sunlight reaching the forest floor causes
more rapid growth of flammable brush and shrubs.

Essentially, the Forest Service is removing the largest, most fire-resistant
structural elements of the forest -- the large trees with their thick
bark -- and leaving behind the smallest, most flammable material.

A century of intense logging in National Forests has not prevented severe
fire conditions -- it has created them.

And, instead of focusing projects adjacent to homes, the agency prefers to
propose large logging projects in remote areas where the biggest, most
valuable trees are. The result is that homes are being ignored while the
Bush administration spends millions of dollars of taxpayer money preparing
projects that make logging companies rich, but only worsen fire behavior.

The Bitterroot post-fire logging project on the Bitterroot National Forest,
in Montana, is a perfect example of the problem. On a recent site visit, it
was discovered that the Forest Service was almost exclusively targeting the
removal of large old-growth trees and leaving behind small fire-killed trees
and flammable slash debris.

A similar situation exists on the Gap fire salvage logging project in the
Tahoe National Forest, in the Sierra Nevada, where the Forest Service
proposes to sell all of the large burned trees to logging companies, but
leave most of the smallest, most flammable material.

The environmental assessment for this project requests that logging
companies remove some of the small, "nonmerchantable" material if they feel
like it, and only "to the extent that the economics of the salvage [logging]
operation are not threatened."

What's more, the Forest Service's own scientific study recommends leaving
large dead trees in the forest after a fire to prevent a future severe burn.
Large logs soak up and store huge amounts of water and become increasingly
moist as they decay.

The study, authored by Mike Amaranthus in 1989, noted that "when forest
managers are analyzing for fire risk, they should take into account the high
water content of fallen logs during the period in which wildfire potential
is greatest."

The Amaranthus report concludes that fallen trees provide "a significant
source of moisture in the event of prolonged drought or wildfire." Another
Forest Service report (McIver and Starr, 2000) "found no studies documenting
a reduction in the fire intensity in a stand that had previously burned and
then been logged."

The Bush administration's refusal to focus projects on reducing flammable
brush near homes, and its insistence on creating more severe fire conditions
by allowing logging companies to remove large trees on federal lands, raises
a disturbing question.

Does the administration care more about pleasing logging-industry campaign
contributors than protecting homes from fire?

One thing is certain. No changes are needed in environmental laws to allow
more brush-reduction projects near homes. The only ones that don't want to
focus funds on such projects are big logging companies and the politicians
whose campaigns they fund.

It's not a matter of law, it's a matter of political will or lack thereof.
And that's the biggest tragedy of all.

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