Posted by Jane Clark
Wall Street Journal
Thursday, August 23, 2001
EDITORIAL - Review & Outlook
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Playing With Fire
Finally, an Administration that can see the forest for the trees.
Burning timber makes for good TV, and with a half-million acres blazing
across America the networks have had a field day. Yet despite almost nonstop
coverage, the big forest news of last week went largely unnoticed: namely, a
meeting between Western governors and members of George W. Bush's Cabinet
that resulted in the release of new forest policy. A stark reversal of
nearly a decade of mismanagement, the new plan signals that the Bush
Administration is determined to get the government back to managing and
caring for our national forests.
All this comes in sharp contrast to the Clinton years, characterized by a
defiant refusal to minister to our national resources. In thrall to
environmental groups, the Clinton-Gore Administration cast aside decades of
forestry experience in favor of an untested philosophy known as "ecosystem
management." Translated into plain English, that meant shunning care of the
land by humans and leaving the forest to exist "naturally." Thus did the
previous Administration decrease logging by 80%, ram through regulations
banning roads, and use federal and state species protection acts to declare
off-limits large swaths of land.
Today, we are reaping the results. According to the Forest Service,
two-thirds of its trees -- close to 110 million acres -- are in
deteriorating health or very unhealthy. Because loggers have not been
allowed to come in and aggressively clean up these areas, the forests are
choked with deadwood and underbrush. Such "fuel" buildups were the cause of
last year's fires, the worst the country had seen in 50 years, burning down
7.4 million acres and 800 structures. The General Accounting Office
estimates that it will take $12 billion to perform the necessary cleanup to
restore our forests to health.
The underlying problem, of course, is that forests are not "natural." We
hike and camp in them, live in and near them, and decide where they begin
and end. Hundreds of years ago, millions of acres could burn with little
consequence; today, lives and livelihoods are lost in blazes. In short,
because we intrude on nature, and because we have limited amounts of it, we
must take it upon ourselves to manage it.
Interior Secretary Gale Norton and Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, whose
departments took a lead in the just-released plan, fully understand this.
Their belief in good stewardship comes as a relief to the many beleaguered
Western governors who have borne -- through hundreds of raging fires -- the
brunt of Mr. Clinton's dalliances with quack environmental theories. Even
those governors complicit in Mr. Clinton's anti-logging schemes (Oregon's
John Kitzhaber comes to mind) are now backpedaling to embrace the plan; for
public criticism of their inaction is high, especially in wake of the July
deaths of four young firefighters in Washington.
As for the plan itself, most important is the part that calls for
"thinning": allowing loggers to remove sick trees and hazardous fuels.
Another part involves low-intensity prescribed burns; though not as
desirable -- especially given the government's track record in controlling
them -- if done sparingly and correctly, they have their uses. The plan also
recognized the need to cut back on squabbling between agencies, and to
increase federal coordination with the states. Most encouraging was a
suggestion at the meeting that the Beltway give local entities more control
over the management of the forests in their area.
Not that the plan is without its flaws. Last week's meeting would have been
an excellent opportunity to reassert the need for real logging, which, as
private forestland companies (and many states) have aptly demonstrated, is
the most profitable and healthy way to manage forests. Private forestland
companies do not, by and large, suffer their own raging forest fires, and
because of smart logging, they have the necessary funds to keep their
forests in good health. But the Bush Administration is shy of saying so, for
fear of arousing the ire of green extremists.
So instead of logging, the Administration was careful to use the politically
correct term "thinning," which implies that cutting must be tolerated only
as a cleanup measure. Environmental groups are already gearing up to argue
that "thinning" be defined in its narrowest sense. That's because for almost
theological reasons these groups refuse to acknowledge that having small
sections of our forests logged off in rotation is far preferable to having
no forest at all because of fire. Our forests once did, and still should,
fulfill practical needs such as supplying wood -- rather than sitting as
giant and expensive environmental theme parks.
Still, the big news remains that it's no longer business as usual. Up to
now, the fight over our forests has been portrayed as a battle between those
who are "for" nature and those who are somehow "against" it. In truth,
however, the real divide is between those who understand that our forests
need to be managed to be preserved and those who would see them burned to
the ground before they'd let anyone build a road or chop down a dead tree.
As acres of national forests are consumed before our very eyes, surely it's
welcome news at last to have an Administration that treats fire as the
enemy, not man.
Copyright (c) 2001 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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