To: Sierra Club leaders Fr: Carl Pope Re: Fighting for our our forests In the wake of the recent epidemic of forest fires in the West caused by a combination of drought, overlogging, overgrazing, and fire suppression, the Forest Service, Western Governors like Hull of Arizona, Congressmembers like McInnis of Colorado and Senator Kyle of Arizona, the Washington TIMES and the Wall Street Journal, have been using the fires to attack environmental groups and the Sierra Club in particular. The ferocity of these attacks is unprecedented, and it is producing enormous stress on our staff and volunteers to keep up with and respond. This memo doesn't answer all questions, and it couldn't. New charges are being made daily. Many of you are emailing and calling for more information. We won't be physically able to get back to all of you. First, on the merits, as many of you know, the current epidemic of fires is the result of several factors. First, there is an extreme drought, which has caused many standing, green trees in the West to have moisture contents far below normal, in fact below the level of kiln dried lumber. Second, a century of fire suppression on the National Forests and private lands have disrupted natural fire cycles and set the stage for high intensity crown fires fed by accumulate brush and small trees. Third, excessive logging has exacerbated this problem by removing large, relatively fire resistant trees, and leaving behind slash, brush and smaller trees which grow up in logged openings and created the "ladders" which lift low intensity ground fires up into the canopy where they become high intensity crown fires. Fourth, overgrazing of the National Forests has removed grasses which fed low intensity, frequent fires in many ecosystems, thus encouraging hotter less frequent fires. The Sierra Club, and other environmental groups, for years have advocated greater use of natural fire regimes, allowing low intensity fires to burn, protecting old growth and other fire resistant large tree standards and supplementing these with much more intense use of controlled, intentional burning of brush, slash and small trees. We have supported so called "pre-commercial" thinning in which small trees, less than 6"-12" in diameter depending on the forest type, are removed to reduce fuel loads. We supported funding for the National Fire Plan which was intended to encourage the clearing of brush and other fire risks from around communities and homes, fund controlled burning, and prioritize other activities to reduce fire risks created on the National Forests by mismanagement and drought. These activities have been repeatedly obstructed or blocked by the Forest Service and local government. In Arizona The Governor opposed controlled burning that would have helped block the devastating Rodeo-Chideski fire. In the Bitterroot, the Sierra Club found the Forest Service diverting funds from implementation of the National Fire Plan to subsidizing commercial logging of large trees that will actually increase fire risks. In the Black Hills National Forest, the Forest Service has simultaneously been conducted a campaign designed to generate enormous public anxiety about fire risks while admitting that its own timber sale program has not been designed with an eye to reducing those risks. But in the wake of the fires, instead of reexamining its management practices, the Forest Service has continued to focus on using the fire crisis as a cover for accelerating precisely those kinds of commercial timber sales that increase fire risk. Instead of beginning the job of educating public opinion in the West that controlled burning and intensive clearing of brush and fuel away from homes and communities is part of the price of living securely in the arid, forested West, local government has chosen to scapegoat environmentalists, claiming that we have obstructed fire prevention activities. This malicious claim should have been put to rest by a General Accounting Office Study showing that of 1671 fire prevention proposals by the Forest Service, less than 1% had been appealed by anyone and none subjected to litigation. Instead, our opponents in Congress demonstrated their reckless confusion of commercial logging and fire prevention by asking the Forest Service to report on what percentage of its timber sales-- not fire prevention activities -- had been appealed. They then pronounced themselves, in Humphrey Bogart's phrase, "shocked, simply shocked" to discover that almost half of these timber sales proposals had been challenged -- many precisely because they would increase, not decrease, fire risk. Worse, they dismissed the GAO report by saying, "well, most of these fire prevention activities GAO studied were small, uncontroversial controlled burns, so of course they weren't appealed." Exactly, and precisely. Small, uncontroversial, controlled burns, are what the West needs more of to reduce its fire risk, and no one is getting in their way, except the Forest Service and local government. The fallacy of blaming environmental appeals of timber sales for this summer's fire should also have been exposed by the reality that worst blaze so far, the Rodeo-Chideski in Arizona, began on the Apache Reservation, and raged almost entirely outside of the National Forests, on private and reservation land where environmentalists have no standing to challenge timber sales or fire prevention activities. Indeed, the Apaches had practiced the most "active" management of their timber lands imaginable -- timber sales, controlled burning, thinning -- exactly what the Forest Service claims it needs to do. In the face of this summer's drought, lands that had been logged were simply going to burn. But this attack on environmentalists continues. The lastest episode was this week, when first the Washington TIMES, and then the Wall Street Journal, launched a double barrelled attack against the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society, and South Dakota Senator Tom Daschle, for allegedly hypocritically agreeing to suspend all environmental laws and judicial standards on National Forests in South Dakota to allow fire prevention activities to proceed. These attacks, the latest in a round from both of these publications over the last month, were made without any attempt to check the facts with the Club or Senator Daschle. Here is what we could have told them, had they really been interested in the truth: We and the Wilderness Society entered into an agreement with the Forest Service which allowed certain fire prevention work (not salvage logging) in the Black Hills, in exchange for expansion of the wilderness areas. The agreement was necessary to modify an earlier settlement of a lawsuit which had been brought against the Forest Service by a number of environmental plaintiffs. The fire danger was very real, and if we had not found a solution, we faced the danger that Congressman John Thune might use this real danger to pass legislation that would suspend environmental laws all over the Black Hills National Forest, a 2002 version of the Salvage Rider. Brian Brademeyer, an individual plaintiff in the original settlement , and Biodiversity Associations, another plaintiff, refused to sign the settlement. The Justice Department also refused to sign off on this modification of the original settlement, and the Administration in effect walked away from the table. This left us only the option of Congressional action as means of implementing the agreement. We didn't like this, but the the unwillingness of Justice to sign and the disagreement among the plaintiffs forced us to the Congressional route, to avoid giving Thune a window to pass his rider. As part of the Congressional package, to protect the new agreement from legal challenges that might slow down the fire prevention work further, Congress inserted sufficiency language. We objected. We didn't think it was necessary. We thought it was a bad precedent, and we opposed this provision. Both the Washington TIMES and the Wall Street Journal imply that the Daschle amendment, which incorporated our agreed upon fire prevention measures and wilderness expansion, was somehow equivalent to the Thune amendment. They claim it supports demands by other Senators and members of Congress that somehow environmental laws and reviews must be suspended to allow fire prevention work to go forward. This is bunk. This language takes a very specific set of fire prevention activities, defined down to the road segment or quarter section, involving several thousand acres, activities which had been agreed to by a unique stakeholder process, and insulates them from additional judicial review. The Thune amendment simply gave the Forest Service carte blanche to do whatever it wanted to, over the entire state. It is clear that our opponents will use this amendment to argue that they need equivalents of the Thune amendment in their state -- that's one reason we didn't want to go the legislative route in the first place. It is also clear that our opponents have a huge political agenda -- to assist Thune to win his Senate campaign to replace Senator tim Johnson. And they are using this as a tool to attack the Sierra Club. They couldn't care less about reducing fire risk, or protecting our forests, watersheds and wildlife. Overall, in spite of the fact that on the merits we have the high ground on the fire issue, we have been playing defense on this issue all summer. We are working to devise strategies to convey our message more effectively to the public. You are the key to these strategies. We need your assistance in writing letters to the editor, calling local radio talk shows, sending letters to your Senators and members of Congress, and generally joining the growing outcry against the cynical effort to use the genuine threat of fire in many Western communities to turn loose on our National Forests exactly the kind of logging at any cost that created the threat. Attached to this memo is the letter we are sending the Washington TIMES and the Wall Street Journal. We don't expect the Journal, in particular, to publish it. They have attacked us in their editorial pages repeatedly in the last month on the fire issue, and have declined to publish our letters or offer us any opportunity to respond. But please make use of this material in your own community and to respond to attacks you may see on the Club in the media or on the internet, including those from other environmentalists who may take the claims in the TIMES or the Journal literally. This letter is in response to the Washington Times' recent coverage of Senator Daschle's amendment on Black Hills National Forest. Dear Editor: Let's set the record straight on Senator Daschle's amendment on the Black Hills National Forest. Years of poor management by the US Forest Service have left the Black Hills National Forest a mess. Local communities and homes face serious fire danger as the result of excessive logging and suppression of small fires. The same practices have severely damaged environmental quality and wildlife habitat. Faced with this problem the Sierra Club and The Wilderness Society sat down with the Forest Service, the Governor of South Dakota and other local stakeholders. Together we hammered out a deal that will both alleviate the fire danger to the communities around Sturgis, South Dakota, and improve environmental values by increasing protected wilderness areas in the Black Hills. This approach is utterly different than proposed by Representative John Thune, which would simply allow one party, the Forest Service, which created the problem, to exacerbate fire danger by removing still more of the fire resistant large trees and leave behind the logging slash and brush that increases fire risk. Our agreement, which was intended to be a revision to an existing court order, would have allowed fire prevention measures to begin immediately. However, the Bush administration walked away from the table and sent the issue to Congress. The majority of the Daschle amendment is based on our agreement. This is a unique solution to a very unique situation on the Black Hill National Forest that is strictly limited in size and magnitude. The amendment would help to reduce hazardous fuel loads in a manner that protects communities and the benefits of recreation, clean water and fish and wildlife habitat on the Black Hills National Forest. The Wilderness Society and The Sierra Club did not agree to and do not support exemptions from environmental laws and judicial review that were contained in the legislative language passed by the Congress. This language was not necessary to carry out the activities put forth in the revised settlement. However, we want to emphasize that this language only restricts environmental laws and judicial review of those specific fire prevention projects that all parties ? Forest Service, local government and environmental groups ? have agreed to. The Revised Settlement Agreement does the following: Strictly limits the amount of acreage that would be treated to no more than 8,000 acres of the Black Hills National Forest Allows for fuel breaks along existing roads surrounding the Beaver Park roadless area. Preserves the roadless character of the Beaver Park Roadless Area Keeps in place the goshawk protections from the original settlement agreement The Needles and Grizzly Timber Sales within the Norbeck Wildlife Preserve will proceed only after the Forest Service incorporates modifications recommended by the South Dakota Game Fish and Parks Department to benefit game birds and animals. Finally, the agreement and bill language immediately designates 3,600 acres of the Norbeck area as an addition to the existing 9,800-acre Black Elk Wilderness. We appreciate the work of Senators Daschle and Johnson to bring all the parties to the table to hammer out a deal that would ensure the safety of South Dakotans and continued protections for America's National Forests. This is how these matters should be addressed. It is unfortunate that a solid settlement agreement, worked out by local stakeholders, had to go to the Congress for resolution because the Bush Administration pulled out of the agreement. Claims by the Washington Times that it is somehow new or out of character for the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society to support fire prevention activities on the National Forests is a blatant falsehood. We have consistently urged more spending by the Forest Service to reduce brush, create firebreaks around homes and communities and expand controlled burning. We have opposed commercial logging practices which remove large, healthy, fire resistant stands of old growth and replace them with slash, brush, and overly crowded small trees. We favor appropriate thinning practices with a priority being near or around homes and communities. Protecting lives and communities by implementing fuel reduction projects around homes and communities should be the focus of Forest Service activities. Sincerely, William H. Meadows Carl Pope President Executive Director The Wilderness Society Sierra Club forwarded by Erin Jordahl Director, Iowa Chapter Sierra Club 3839 Merle Hay Road, Suite 280 Des Moines, IA 50310 515-277-8868 [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask]