Posted by Jane Clark Wall Street Journal Thursday, August 23, 2001 EDITORIAL - Review & Outlook ------------------------------------------ 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. 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