Forwarded by Jane Clark at [log in to unmask]  Jo Hudson sent this to me
and I thought it might be of interest to subscribers.


May 19, 2000

New York Times - Opinion

Commercial Logging Doesn't Prevent
Catastrophic Fires, It Causes Them

by Chad Hanson

Yesterday's release of the National Park Service plan for a "prescribed
burn" in New Mexico -- the fire that went awry and destroyed
homes and businesses in Los Alamos -- has added to calls for a
re-evaluation of the service's fire policies. But some of these
exhortations, coming from the timber industry's supporters in Congress,
look more like opportunism than considered criticism of what went wrong in
this fire.

For those who want more commercial logging of America's national
forests, the Los Alamos tragedy plays into a stance that is already well
rehearsed: that more logging can "reduce the risk of catastrophic
wildfires." It is an argument that doesn't hold up.

While Senator Larry Craig, an Idaho Republican, and his allies in the
timber industry talk about "thinning underbrush," the real interest of the
industry is in gaining access to the last remaining mature forests on
federal lands.

In April 1999, the General Accounting Office issued a report that raised
serious questions about the use of timber sales as a tool of fire
management. It noted that "most of the trees that need to be removed to
reduce accumulated fuels are small in diameter" -- the very trees that have
"little or no commercial value."

As it offers timber for sale to loggers, the Forest Service tends to "focus
on areas with high-value commercial timber rather than on areas with high
fire hazards," the report said. Its sales include "more large, commercially
valuable trees" than are necessary to reduce the so-called accumulated
fuels (in other words, the trees that are most likely to burn in a forest
fire).

The Forest Service typically keeps about 90 percent of the revenue from
these timber sales. The money has helped finance both the agency's budget
and its preparations for more commercial logging. Meanwhile, the logging
industry gets rich on cheap timber, and pro-timber members of Congress
receive millions in campaign contributions as an incentive to keep this
system going. Taxpayers take an enormous loss.

The truth is that timber sales are causing catastrophic wildfires on
national forests, not alleviating them. The Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project
Report, issued in 1996 by the federal government, found that "timber
harvest, through its effects on forest structure, local microclimate and
fuel accumulation, has increased fire severity more than any other recent
human activity." The reason goes back to the same conflict that the G.A.O.
found: loggers want the big trees, not the little ones that act as fuel in
forest fires.

After a "thinning" timber sale, a forest has far fewer of the large trees,
which are naturally fire-resistant because of their thick bark; indeed,
many of these trees are centuries old and have already survived many fires.
 Without them, there is less shade. The forest is drier and hotter, making
the remaining, smaller trees more susceptible to burning. After logging,
forests also have accumulations of flammable debris known as "slash piles"
-- unsalable branches and limbs left by logging crews.

In 1994, Jack Ward Thomas, then chief of the Forest Service, said in
congressional testimony that fires don't hurt the forest itself. Even fires
that kill many trees "in an area from which you do not expect to extract
timber" might be "perfectly acceptable," he said. He gave the example of
Yellowstone National Park. "It burns up; it burns hot, and the system
that's associated with it comes back," he said.

After several decades of federal management that suppressed fires -- with
timber sales in mind -- some forests on federal lands have actually become
more flammable, since they have been deprived of fire's important natural
role of clearing brush under the big trees and returning nutrients to the
soil.

Controlled burning has been used successfully for over a decade to
reintroduce fire into forest ecosystems. The National Park Service reports
that fewer than 1 percent of controlled burns result in "escapes" -- fires
that cross their predesigned boundaries. Even then, people and property are
almost never hurt.

This does not excuse any carelessness, of course, that may have led to the
New Mexico fire, which clearly did escape, and tragically so.

But it would be an even bigger tragedy if we allowed the timber industry's
allies in Congress to continue destroying our national forests under the
self-serving guise of fire management. Ultimately, our public forests will
be safe only when Congress passes legislation to end the timber sales
within them.

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

Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
For SC email list T-and-C, send: GET TERMS-AND-CONDITIONS.CURRENT
to [log in to unmask]