I posted this back in July, but I've received requests to re-post it, since
it is an important issue and helpful when responding to questions about
Sierra Club policy on forest fires. I have also included a more recent
message from Carl on forest policy.
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]
7/25/02
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
8/24/02
To: Sierra Club leaders
Fr: Carl Pope
Congratulations, thank you, please keep it up!
We have just finished an intense, exhausting week of lighting our own
back-fire to President Bush's non-plan to deal with the threat of wildfire
to rural communities near National Forests. Environmentalists knew they
would face a major assault from Senator Larry Craig and other timber
industry allies after Labor Day. But thanks to a conversation Club staff
member Julia Reitan had on an airplane with an Interior Department staff
member, we learned last Friday that Bush himself was going to launch an all
out assault on our Forests in Oregon this Thursday.
Club volunteers and staff worked ceaselessly and managed in five days to
pull together and obtain agreement from a variety of other environmental
groups on the first pro-active environmental plan to protect communities at
risk from fire while enhancing ecological health on our forests. At the
heart of the plan is a recognization of a few key realities:
o we need to restore fire to wild forestscapes, but after 100 years of
fire suppression and at least fifty of dramatic overlogging, this is
complex, slow, and uncertain. We know enough to begin the process, but not
enough to finish it. We need to start, but humbly.
o this kind of an approach doesn't accomodate communities. Whatever
the original fire cycle of American forests was, it didn't include
communities in the woods. Now that we have such communities, they require
special attention. The fire ecology of a wild forest in many, perhaps most,
conceivably all cases, can't be restored in the immediate vicinity of
communities. BUT, while he community safety problem cannot be solved with
fire policies that may work for the rest of the forest, it is equally
absurb to apply to t he rest of the forest solutions designed for
communities.
o after 40 years of Smokey the Bear, Americans perceive fire as a
problem to be solved, and in the fire debate, finding fault with bad
solutions is a sure fire strategy for defeat. We must offer better
solutions, those solutions must fit the activist culture of the issue, and
if we allow ourselves to be put in the posture of critics of the ideas of
others, we will most likely lose.
Based on these realities, the Club and other groups have put forward a
Community Protection Fire Plan, which is, fundamentally, the National Fire
Plan agreed to by Western governors a year ago -- but on steroids.
The plan has seven major elements:
· Do the most important work first. Make protection of communities from
firs the Forest Service's Number One Priority.
· Provide meaningful funding. This program should be a minimum of five
years and funded at $2 billion a year to go directly to fireproofing homes
and removing hazardous fuels in the Community Protection Zones.
· Match personnel to work. Shift Forest Service personnel skilled in
preparing brush clearing and thinning projects from backcountry, low
priority areas to the Community Protection Zones.
· Carry out immediately the vast majority of fuel reduction projects in
the Community Protection Zones that raise no significant environmental
issues.
· Restore natural fires to have natural forests. Prescribed burns can
help to reduce fuel buildup and restore healthy forest habitats.
· Protect our ancient and wild forest from logging and logging roads.
· Stop the attack on forest protection safeguards
The plan was simultaneously released Wednesday in Portlan, Oregon, Phoenix
Arizona, Denver Colorado and Washington, DC. It forced the White House to
leak their own plan -- which will do nothing protect rural communities and
everything to fatten the pocketbooks fo the timber industry -- a day early,
and ensured that the media, in covering Bush's initiative, gave prominent,
extensive coverage of the environmental opposition.
So, through extraordinary effort, we have kept ourselves in the game, and
gotten out the fact that there is a controversy here about what to do. But
what we have not yet done is to convince the American people that we have a
plan, and the President does not. His approach, if you are worried about a
forest fire destroying your town, is not a plan, but a prayer. And a
prayer that ignores the concept that God helps those who help themselves.
Bush's plan doesn't make community protection a priority; it doesn't fund
it; it doesn't allocate Forest Service personnel to do the work. In fact,
by making it easier to do "fuels management" in the back country, Bush
actually ensures that communities at risk will get even less protection
than under present policies. It's a formula to burn down dozens of
communities around the country. We need to make that clear.
The media would like to ignore the fact that we have a plan,. They woudl
like to jump straight to our point seven, and say, "environmentalists say
the President is attacking forest protection laws and standards." Well he
is, and we do need to say that. But we also need to educate the public
about the first six points of our plan. The public needs to know that they
can have more fire protection and more envrionmental protection, that in
fact attacking forest protections will make the fire problem worse, not
better.
We all need to talk to our neighbors, We need to write letters to the
editor, We need to talk to city councils and members of Congress. We need
to show up at public hearings. And when we do, we need, before we blast
the President, and the timber industry, and the Forest Service, TO LAY OUT
OUR POSITIVE VISION. The details are on our web site. The temptation will
be to jump immediately to point seven, and blast the President. That
misses the educational opportunity offered by the first six points .... and
again, after 40 years of Smoky the Bear, the public needs education, and if
we don't provide, the Administratiom most certainly won't step up to the
plate.