[House Hearing, 107 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
H.R. 2119, ``NATIONAL HISTORIC FORESTS ACT OF 2001''
=======================================================================
LEGISLATIVE HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON FORESTS AND
FOREST HEALTH
of the
COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
June 19, 2001
__________
Serial No. 107-41
__________
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COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES
JAMES V. HANSEN, Utah, Chairman
NICK J. RAHALL II, West Virginia, Ranking Democrat Member
Don Young, Alaska, George Miller, California
Vice Chairman Edward J. Markey, Massachusetts
W.J. ``Billy'' Tauzin, Louisiana Dale E. Kildee, Michigan
Jim Saxton, New Jersey Peter A. DeFazio, Oregon
Elton Gallegly, California Eni F.H. Faleomavaega, American
John J. Duncan, Jr., Tennessee Samoa
Joel Hefley, Colorado Neil Abercrombie, Hawaii
Wayne T. Gilchrest, Maryland Solomon P. Ortiz, Texas
Ken Calvert, California Frank Pallone, Jr., New Jersey
Scott McInnis, Colorado Calvin M. Dooley, California
Richard W. Pombo, California Robert A. Underwood, Guam
Barbara Cubin, Wyoming Adam Smith, Washington
George Radanovich, California Donna M. Christensen, Virgin
Walter B. Jones, Jr., North Islands
Carolina Ron Kind, Wisconsin
Mac Thornberry, Texas Jay Inslee, Washington
Chris Cannon, Utah Grace F. Napolitano, California
John E. Peterson, Pennsylvania Tom Udall, New Mexico
Bob Schaffer, Colorado Mark Udall, Colorado
Jim Gibbons, Nevada Rush D. Holt, New Jersey
Mark E. Souder, Indiana James P. McGovern, Massachusetts
Greg Walden, Oregon Anibal Acevedo-Vila, Puerto Rico
Michael K. Simpson, Idaho Hilda L. Solis, California
Thomas G. Tancredo, Colorado Brad Carson, Oklahoma
J.D. Hayworth, Arizona Betty McCollum, Minnesota
C.L. ``Butch'' Otter, Idaho
Tom Osborne, Nebraska
Jeff Flake, Arizona
Dennis R. Rehberg, Montana
Allen D. Freemyer, Chief of Staff
Lisa Pittman, Chief Counsel
Michael S. Twinchek, Chief Clerk
James H. Zoia, Democrat Staff Director
Jeff Petrich, Democrat Chief Counsel
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SUBCOMMITTEE ON FORESTS AND FOREST HEALTH
SCOTT McINNIS, Colorado, Chairman
JAY INSLEE, Washington, Ranking Democrat Member
John J. Duncan, Jr., Tennessee Dale E. Kildee, Michigan
John E. Peterson, Pennsylvania, Tom Udall, New Mexico
Vice Chairman Mark Udall, Colorado
Mark E. Souder, Indiana Rush D. Holt, New Jersey
Michael K. Simpson, Idaho Anibal Acevedo-Vila, Puerto Rico
Thomas G. Tancredo, Colorado Betty McCollum, Minnesota
J.D. Hayworth, Arizona
C.L. ``Butch'' Otter, Idaho
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C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on June 19, 2001.................................... 1
Statement of Members:
McInnis, Hon. Scott, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Colorado, Prepared statement of................... 1
Simpson, Hon. Michael, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Idaho............................................. 2
Prepared statement of.................................... 3
Statement of Witnesses:
Barnett, John, Chairman, Cowlitz Indian Tribe, State of
Washington, CEO & Owner of Cowlitz Timber Inc.............. 18
Prepared statement of.................................... 19
Bonnicksen, Thomas M., Ph.D., Professor, Department of Forest
Science, Texas A&M University.............................. 5
Prepared statement of.................................... 6
Collins, Sally, Associate Deputy Chief, Forest Service, U.S.
Department of Agriculture.................................. 35
Prepared statement of.................................... 36
Holmer, Steve, Campaign Coordinator, American Lands Alliance. 21
Prepared statement of.................................... 23
Additional materials supplied:
Bird, Bryan, Executive Director, Forest Conservation Council,
Letter submitted for the record............................ 42
Chapman, Mary, Executive Director, Forest Stewards Guild,
Letter submitted for the record............................ 43
H.R. 2119, ``NATIONAL HISTORIC FORESTS ACT OF 2001''
----------
Tuesday, June 19, 2001
U.S. House of Representatives
Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health
Committee on Resources
Washington, DC
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The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 3 p.m., in
room 1334, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Scott McInnis
[Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.H.R. 2119
Mr. McInnis. The Committee will come to order. I would like
to thank my friend and colleague, Congressman Simpson.
Congressman, we are going to proceed rather quickly into your
statement, which means I will go ahead and just submit my
statement for the record, because I want to allow you plenty of
time for your opening statement and introduction of your bill.
So, Congressman, as you know, Mr. Inslee is not here yet.
When he is here, I will give him an opportunity to make an
opening statement. I will go ahead and submit mine for the
record, but waive it and yield the time to you.
Mr. Simpson?
[The prepared statement of Mr. McInnis follows:]
Statement of The Honorable Scott McInnis, Chairman, Subcommittee on
Forests and Forest Health
I would like to thank my friend and colleague Congressman Simpson,
for his work on the National Historic Forests Act of 2001. My opening
remarks will be very brief to allow Mr. Simpson more time for his
statement.
Our native forests are in peril. The historic forests that greeted
the Spanish conquistadors, the American colonists, the Lewis and Clark
expedition, and the many trappers, traders and other early explorers of
our country are fast disappearing. As arguments, appeals and lawsuits
over how to manage federal forests drag on, these forests change
without waiting for us to act. As we've heard in other hearings before
this Subcommittee this year, one hundred years of wildfire
suppression--necessary as it has been--has had unintended negative
consequences across the American landscape.
In my opinion, there are two compelling reasons to support this
legislation. One is that without a focused, deliberate effort to
restore and maintain these historic forests, we will lose them forever.
The other is that everyone I've talked to on both sides of the aisle
supports the goal of keeping some parts of our National Forests looking
like they did for thousands of years. Who would not want our children,
grandchildren and descendants over the coming centuries to be able to
walk among native forests and know the story of how those forests came
to be? As a parent, I find it outrageous that anyone would oppose this
goal.
I'm pleased to welcome our witnesses today. I'm especially glad
that Dr. Thomas Bonnicksen from Texas A&M University could be here. Dr.
Bonnicksen's research for more than 30 years on restoring and
sustaining America's native forests, documented in his book [HOLD BOOK
UP] ``America's Ancient Forests'', provides a strong foundation for
this legislation. I'm also very pleased to have Mr. John Barnett,
Chairman of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe, here today from the State of
Washington. We also welcome Mr. Steve Holmer of the American Lands
Alliance and Ms. Sally Collins of the Forest Service and look forward
to their testimony.
______
STATEMENT OF THE HON. MICHAEL SIMPSON, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF IDAHO
Mr. Simpson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and thank you for
scheduling this important hearing on H.R. 2119, The National
Historic Forests Act. This legislation is intended to initiate
a dialogue, and I repeat, initiate a dialogue concerning the
importance of restoring and protecting our native forests.
Recent catastrophic wildfire forest health concerns and native
forests that are being lost or substantially altered provide
ample evidence for the need to have this discussion and begin
restoring and protecting our historic forests.
I am willing to work with all who have an interest in
saving our native forests. This bill is not written in stone.
For all intents and purposes, it is a discussion draft, and I
look forward to hearing the comments, suggestions or concerns
of the panel and of my colleagues relative to this issue.
This common-sense legislation allows for the creation of a
National Register of Historic Forests for the purpose of
restoring and protecting native forests. Local communities will
nominate national forest lands for inclusion in the National
Register of Historic Forests. Once the forest lands are placed
on the national register, a Committee comprised of State and
local officials, forest restoration experts and other
stakeholders who have an interest in protecting and restoring
the National Historic Forests, will be responsible for drafting
a management plan and guiding the restoration and maintenance
of the National Historic Forests.
More importantly, H.R. 2119 allows local communities to
reclaim and preserve their ecological and cultural heritage
while embracing and utilizing local knowledge and talent. These
are people who lived and worked in and around our national
forests and they have a vested interest in restoring and
maintaining native forest conditions.
People may say we need to study the issue more. We need
more information. We do not know enough to act. However, the
reality is that not doing anything poses considerable risk. For
instance, the U.S. Forest Service and the General Accounting
Office estimate that more than 72 million acres of our national
forest lands are at risk of uncharacteristic wildfires. That is
unacceptable. We must restore our native forests to a more
healthy and natural state.
Before coming to Congress, I was a dentist. If I had a
patient with tooth decay and I were to say let's wait a few
years to fix your tooth when we have more information and more
knowledge than we have today concerning the possible treatments
in tooth decay--I would not do that. I would treat my patient
immediately. If I did not, my patient would surely lose his or
her tooth and I would lose my license. Forestry, like
dentistry, is an ever evolving and growing science. We know a
lot more now than we did in the past. Sure, we still have more
to learn. There is always more research to be done and more
data to collect and analyze. However, forestry, in its present
state, is a sophisticated science. Our foresters have a
scientific knowledge and the tools they need to begin restoring
our native forests now.
In the West, we are losing our pine forests. Our national
forest lands experience high tree density and abnormally high
levels of vegetation. Our forests are choked full of trees and
brush that will ultimately lead to irreparable harm and forced
mortality. In addition, our forests suffer from invasive non-
native species and profound structural changes, which result in
a lack of forest diversity. These unnatural conditions lead to
loss of nutrients, susceptibility to disease and insect
infestation and catastrophic fire. In turn, loss of native
forest conditions leads to loss of critical habitat for
threatened and endangered species.
By not acting, we will lose our native forests. This is not
a proposition I willing to accept. Mr. Chairman, I believe this
is one of the potentially most important bills to come before
Congress in a number of years, that will allow us to address
this issue of our native forests and how we can restore them to
a healthy condition. I look forward to working with the
Committee, and as I emphasized in my testimony, this is a
working draft in which I hope members from both sides of the
isle and all stakeholders are willing to sit down and talk
about the goal of restoring our historic forests and how we
might achieve that. I thank the Chairman for holding this
hearing.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Simpson follows:]
Statement of The Honorable Mike Simpson, a Representative in Congress
from the State of Idaho
Mr. Chairman:
Thank you for scheduling this important hearing on H.R. 2119, the
National Historic Forests Act.
This legislation is intended to initiate a dialogue concerning the
importance of restoring and protecting our native forests. Recent
catastrophic wildfires, forest health concerns, and native forests that
are being lost or substantially altered provide ample evidence for the
need to have this discussion and begin restoring and protecting our
historic forests. I am willing to work with all who have an interest in
saving our native forests. This bill is not written in stone. For all
intents and purposes it is a discussion draft, and I look forward to
hearing the comments, suggestions, and concerns of the panel and of my
colleagues.
This common sense legislation allows for the creation of a national
register of historic forests for the purpose of restoring and
protecting native forests. Local communities will nominate national
forest lands for inclusion in the national register of historic
forests. Once the forest lands are placed on the national register, a
committee comprised of state and local officials, forest restoration
experts, and other stakeholders who have an interest in protecting and
restoring national historic forests will be responsible for drafting a
management plan and guiding the restoration and maintenance of the
national historic forest.
More importantly, H.R. 2119 allows local communities to reclaim and
preserve their ecological and cultural heritage, while embracing and
utilizing local knowledge and talent. These are people who have lived
and worked in and around our national forests, and they have a vested
interest in restoring and maintaining native forest conditions.
People will say: we need to study the issue more; we need more
information; we do not know enough to act. However, the reality is that
not doing anything poses considerable risks. For instance, the U.S.
Forest Service and the General Accounting Office estimate that more
than 72 million acres of national forest land are at risk of
uncharacteristic wildfire. That is unacceptable. We must restore our
native forests to a more healthy and natural state.
Before coming to Congress I was a dentist. If I had a patient with
tooth decay, would I say ``let's wait a few years to fix your tooth
when we have more information and knowledge, and we will, concerning
tooth decay and possible treatments?'' No. I would treat my patient
immediately. If I did not, my patient would surely lose his or her
tooth, and I would lose my license.
Forestry, like dentistry, is an ever evolving and growing science.
We know a lot more now, than we knew in the past. Sure, we still have
more to learn. There is always more research to be done, more data to
collect and analyze. However, forestry in its present state is a
sophisticated science. Our foresters have the scientific knowledge and
tools they need to begin restoring our native forests, now.
In the west, we are losing our pine forests. Our national forest
lands experience high tree density and abnormally high levels of
vegetation. Our forests are choked full of trees and brush that will
ultimately lead to irreparable harm and forest mortality. In addition,
our forests suffer from invasive non-native species and profound
structural changes, which result in a lack of forest diversity. These
unnatural conditions lead to loss of nutrients, susceptibility to
disease and insect infestation, and catastrophic fire. In turn, loss of
native forest conditions leads to loss of critical habitat for
threatened and endangered species.
By not acting, we will lose our native forests. This is not a
proposition I am willing to accept.
______
Mr. McInnis. Okay, Mr. Simpson, I appreciate your
statement. The hearing record will be open for 10 days for
additional responses. Let's move on to our panels. I would like
to now introduce our first panel, I am getting a little
confusion here. Just a moment. My apologies to the first panel.
I would like to introduce the first panel. First, we have Dr.
Thomas Bonnicksen, and apparently, Doctor, this is your book
and it is well-acknowledged in the field out there. You have
researched restoring and sustaining America's native forests
for more than 30 years, and you have documented your findings
in this book. The book is widely read by the staffs up here in
regard to forest and forest management. Apparently, it is well-
done document. As I understand, it provides a strong foundation
for your bill, Mr. Simpson--Mr. John Barnett, Chairman of the
Cowlitz Indian Tribe, State of Washington, CEO and owner of
Cowlitz Timber, Inc.; and Mr. Steve Holmer, Campaign
Coordinator for the American Lands Alliance.
I want to remind our witnesses, under the rules of this
specific Committee, you are allotted 5 minutes. You will have a
timer that you see, that sits in front of you, that will give a
warning when you are in the yellow zone. As a courtesy to other
witnesses, I would expect you to stop when the red light comes
on. I would now like to recognize my colleague, Congressman
Baird, who every time I see his designation as Democrat from
Washington, I have to remind him he used to be a Republican
from Colorado. I know the Colorado part is right. I am not sure
the Republican part is. Anyway, Mr. Baird, I know that you
would like to make the introduction. You have asked for a
special request and the chair recognizes you for that
introduction.
Mr. Baird. I thank the chair very much. It is a real
privilege to be here. I thank you for the invitation. John
Barnett is, as you mentioned, the chair of the Cowlitz Tribe
and CEO and owner of Cowlitz Timber. John has a long interest
in forest management and the forest products industry in
Washington State and elsewhere. He has been a strong leader of
his tribe and active in timber issues, and I am pleased to
welcome John back here. The Cowlitz people are very, very close
to the final step of tribal recognition. I wish them all the
success in that effort and look forward to John's testimony, as
well.
I happen to also know Steve Holmer, and I am glad to see
him here today, and look forward to his commentary. He has been
very active in forest issues, as well.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. McInnis. Mr. Holmer, are you going to take the table
and testify? That is where you have to testify from. Dr.
Bonnicksen, I am going to go ahead and proceed with you. You
may proceed as you wish.
STATEMENT OF THOMAS BONNICKSEN, PH.D, PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF
FOREST SCIENCE, TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY
Mr. Bonnicksen. Well, I would like to say in the beginning
that we should all be grateful to Congressman Simpson for
introducing the National Historic Forest Act. I think this will
be among the most important land use laws that we have ever
enacted, since the beginning of the public domain in 1781. That
is, of course, if Congress has the wisdom and foresight to
actually carry out Congressman Simpson's vision for America's
forest, which is to restore our heritage for this and future
generations.
There is an urgent need to restore our native forests. What
European explorers originally saw were forests of amazing
diversity, immense trees, and awe-inspiring vastness. If I can
just quote briefly from Verrazano, an Italian navigator who
sailed along the East Coast in 1524, he summarized what most
explorers saw. He reported, ``the spacious land, full of the
largest forests, some thin and some dense, clothed with various
sorts of trees, with as much beauty and delectable appearance
as it would be possible to express.''
These were truly magnificent forests that we inherited when
we came to this land. They occupied about 45 percent of the
lower 48 States, but since that time we have lost 12 percent of
our native forests to cities and farms. The remaining forests
are in a serious state of decline--crumbling, battered, and
burnt. To give you some examples, in the East, the White Pine
forests that so impressed the colonists with their gigantic
trees that they saw as possible sources of masts--in fact, they
called them Mast Pine--occupied terraces along rivers for
miles; magnificent forests that no longer exist, and the
recovery of forests in the Northeast is not recovering these
white pine forests. On the contrary, what we are getting is
primarily maple forests. Oak-chestnut is all but extinct as a
forest-type because of the chestnut blight, but we think
genetically that in a very few years, we will bring it back.
That will give us an opportunity to recover the oak-chestnut
forests of the East.
In the Southeast, we had 90 million acres of Long-leaf
Pine. The conquistadors, William Barrett and others have waxed
philosophical about the beauty and diversity of this forest. In
fact, it was the most diverse forest, in terms of plant life,
of any forest in North America when we found it. It is all but
gone, almost all 90 million acres. White and Red Pine are in
the same situation in the Lake States. In the Midwest, we know
how little of the oak-savanna is left, a place so beautiful
that even hardened soldiers waxed philosophical in their
journals when they saw it.
Can you imagine oaks in an immense grassland, with bison
and elk and deer, and all the other wildlife in abundance--long
gone, but not forgotten and not beyond restoration? The Inland
West--we know Ponderosa Pine is in a very sorry state. In
particular, in the Bitterroot Valley, last year, we lost over
100,000 acres of Ponderosa Pine forests. This was the forest,
historically, that was first seen by Lewis and Clark and
described for the first time in a written account as a historic
forest. Ponderosa Pine, in that area, could have been restored
quickly and easily, because most of the trees were in a state
that would easily make that possible.
Aspen--we are losing it throughout the West. On the Pacific
Coast, the oak woodlands and the valley of California, the
Great Central Valley, are almost gone, the valley-oak
woodlands. The ones on the hillsides are disappearing quickly
as they are converted into brush fields or decimated by
disease. The mixed conifer forests in the Sierra Nevadas are in
a similar plight, their densities are astronomical, and now we
have a plan by the Forest Service for the Sierra Nevadas that
would take what was 22 percent of that original native forest,
that was very diverse and all age classes were represented--22
percent of it was an old forest, historically. The plan the
Forest Service has for that forest is to increase that to 64
percent in 10 decades. The diagram illustrating that is in my
written testimony.
That is unsustainable. That means fires will be of immense
size in the future. It is a forest that never existed in the
past and could never exist in the future, if it had not been
created by that plan. The douglas fir forests in the Pacific
Northwest are gradually disappearing as each tree falls and is
replaced by western hemlock, as you will hear from John
Barnett.
What should we restore? That is always the question. Well,
we should restore forests that resemble those that were first
seen by the first explorers; the conquistadors in the South,
the trappers in the West, the fur traders and Jesuit priests in
the North, the colonists in the East. They were the ones who
first saw these forests. They were the ones who first described
them, and the descriptions are marvelous to read. Why should we
choose that period? Well, that represents 18,000 years of
adaptation, since the Ice Age. No forest in North America could
be more diverse and beautiful than the ones that existed at
that time. Of course, that was also a period when the climate
was similar to that of today, and ultimately, it is the only
forest we can restore because it is the only forest we can
document.
Mr. McInnis. Doctor, I am going to have to ask you to wrap-
up. I let you go a minute over time, but as a courtesy to the
others--
Mr. Bonnicksen. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Bonnicksen follows:]
Statement of Dr. Thomas M. Bonnicksen, Professor of Forest Science,
Texas A&M University
INTRODUCTION
My name is Dr. Thomas M. Bonnicksen. I am a professor in the
Department of Forest Science at Texas A&M University specializing in
restoration forestry. I have conducted research on restoring and
sustaining America's native forests for more than thirty years. I have
written over one hundred publications and I authored the book titled
America's Ancient Forests: from the Ice Age to the Age of Discovery
(Copyright January 2000, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 594 pages). The book
documents the history of North America's native forests. It gives
special emphasis to the way our native forests appeared at the time of
European settlement and the role Native American's played in their
development. Additional biographical information is available in the
biographical summary at the end of this document.
CONTENTS
1. The need to restore America's historic native forests
2. The need for a new law
3. The need for a reference forest
4. The need for restoration standards
5. The need to include native peoples
6. The need for cost-effective management
7. The need for local participation
8. Conclusion
9. Biographical summary
THE NEED TO RESTORE AMERICA'S HISTORIC NATIVE FORESTS
What the first European explorers saw were forests of amazing
diversity and awe-inspiring vastness. They felt especially drawn to
trees of immense size and great age that no longer existed in Europe.
Such trees grew everywhere in North America. Giovanni da Verrazzano, an
Italian navigator who sailed along the East Coast in 1524, summarized
what European explorers reported when they saw America's native
forests. ``The spacious land,'' he noted in his journal, ``full of the
largest forests, some thin and some dense, clothed with various sorts
of trees, with as much beauty and delectable appearance as it would be
possible to express.'' When Verrazzano wrote these words, native
forests covered 45% of the lower 48 states. Since that time, about 12%
of our native forests have been scraped away for cities and farms.
Today, few of our remaining native forests still resemble their former
glory and most of these are crumbling, battered, and burnt.
The Density Problem
In the Southwest, ponderosa pine forests like those that burned at
Los Alamos are 31 times denser than the original forests. A comparable
change occurred in mixed-conifer forests in the
San Bernardino Mountains of southern California where density
increased by 74 percent in 60 years. Pockets of dense second-growth
forest also cover nearly one half of Redwood National Park. Some of
these forests have reached the astronomically high densities of 2,000
to 20,000 trees per acre. Under such crowded conditions, a forest will
stagnate for many decades or even centuries. This has detrimental
effects on wildlife and other plants, and it makes a forest more
susceptible to wildfire, insects, and disease.
The Wildfire Problem
Frequent fires set by Native Americans and lightning used to keep
native forests open, but now they are so thick that any fire has the
potential for turning a forest into a colossal furnace. Unlike the
original native forests, fires also can spread freely across vast areas
because trees have grown to similar sizes, and there are fewer patches
of young trees, meadows, and clearings to slow the flames.
The mammoth wildfires that scorched nearly half of Yellowstone
National Park during the summer of 1988 were significantly larger than
any fire that occurred there in the past 350 years. One reason the
fires were so large is that multilayered older forest covered nearly
65% of the landscape. Historically, such older forests only covered 30%
of the landscape. Furthermore, wildfires blackened 1.5 million acres
and cost nearly $1 billion in eastern Oregon, eastern Washington,
Idaho, Montana, and portions of Utah and Nevada during the summer of
1994. Nationwide, more than 9,000 homes were destroyed by wildfires in
the previous decade. The fires of 2000 also burned over 6.9 million
acres, which is three times the ten-year average. These fires also
destroyed over 200,000 acres of ponderosa pine forest in the Bitterroot
Mountains of Montana that still had some of the characteristics of a
historic forest. Lewis and Clark wrote the first description of a
native ponderosa pine forest in the Bitterroots, which further
magnified the loss. In addition, damages caused by the Los Alamos fire
in New Mexico exceeded $1 billion. That fire also destroyed 260 homes
and 1500 archaeological sites. Most of these fires burned hotter than
would have been the case in the original native forests.
Native Forests in Decline
In the East, even though trees are becoming denser, stately forests
of white pine no longer cover large areas, and few trees reach the
great size of those that existed at the time of settlement. The oak-
chestnut forest is nearly extinct. Sugar maple and red maple also are
taking over northern and eastern hardwood forests and replacing oak -
our national tree. The vast longleaf pine savannas that spread over
much of the South are nearly gone as well. This loss is especially
tragic because the historic longleaf pine forest was not only beautiful
but it also had the highest number of plant species of any forest in
North America. In the Midwest, we have lost most of the oak-hickory
savanna that once fringed the Great Plains and held early travelers
spellbound because of its beauty and richness of wildlife.
In the Inland West, juniper is spreading within pinon juniper
woodlands and replacing grasslands. Similarly, once open stately groves
of ponderosa pine are becoming so thick with small trees that grass and
wildflowers can no longer grow within the forest. Because of increases
in the density of pine and other conifers, aspen forests are rapidly
disappearing as a distinct forest type throughout their range. In
addition, white fir is replacing Douglas-fir forests in the Southwest,
and spruce and fir are replacing lodgepole pine and western larch
forests in the northern Rocky Mountains.
In California and Oregon, thick forests of short lived and small
white fir are replacing what were once open and patchy forests of
ponderosa pine, giant sequoia, and other conifers that stood like
towers on the mountainsides. This invasion of white fir was
unanticipated when Native Americans were removed from these forests in
the 19th century and fires were put out. However, the U. S. Forest
Service Region 5 plan for Sierra Nevada forests adopted in 2001
actually intends to accelerate this invasion. The Forest Service plan
calls for increasing old multilayered forests that covered 12% of the
landscape in historic native forests to the unnaturally high level of
nearly 64%. Fires will also become less frequent but more severe in
these old forests. This will increase the size of patches in the mosaic
and reduce the amount of edge and diversity of habitats for wildlife.
As a result, many species of plants and animals that live in younger
forests will decline in numbers while species that live in dense old
forests, such as the California spotted owl, will increase to
unnaturally high numbers. Illustrations showing the difference between
the historic native forest mosaic and the forest mosaic that is planned
for the Sierra Nevada are shown in Figures 1 and 2. Regrettably, these
artificially dense old forests will no longer represent the beauty and
diversity of the historic native forests. This is a tragic and
unnecessary loss of our Nation's natural and cultural heritage.
Brush and conifers are also replacing open oak woodlands that used
to spread over vast areas on lower slopes and in valleys in California
and Oregon. In California and the Pacific Northwest, some cathedral
groves of Douglas-fir are reaching the end of their life expectancy and
being replaced by less stately forests of shade tolerant species such
as western hemlock. Even the coast redwood forest is likely to dwindle
in area as a more shade tolerant forest of hemlock, fir, and bay
replaces it.
THE NEED FOR A NEW LAW
There is an urgent need for action. Fire, insects, disease, decay,
invasive non-native species, the replacement of pioneer species by
shade-tolerant species, and urban development are rapidly destroying
America's historic native forests. The physical evidence needed to
understand and restore these native forests is being lost as well. We
must act now or a vital part of our nation's natural and cultural
heritage will be gone forever.
Posterity will include The National Historic Forests Act of 2001
(H.R. 2119) among the most important land use laws that Congress has
enacted since the origin of the Public Domain when the original
thirteen colonies began ceding their western lands to the central
government in 1781. Congress has passed many land use laws since that
time. However, none of these laws has addressed restoring the
magnificent native forests that European explorers found and described
when they arrived in North America. Nor have we used the knowledge of
native peoples who helped sustain our native forests. The National
Historic Forests Act will help to recover America's forest heritage
because it addresses both issues.
Our national parks, which began with Yellowstone in 1872, protect
spectacular scenery, natural wonders, historic objects, and wildlife
rather than historic landscapes. The Park Service also emphasizes
leaving forests and wildlife untouched rather than restoring and
sustaining their history. The National Forest System, which began with
the Forest Reserve Act of 1891, addresses our society's contemporary
need for wood, water, wildlife, recreation, and other goods and
services that forests produce. The Forest Service protects historical
sites, but they are not the primary goal of management. Bureau of Land
Management lands serve similar purposes. The purpose of the National
Wildlife Refuge System is narrower, concentrating on wildlife and
fisheries, and their habitat. Even the Wilderness Act of 1964 serves
current social needs rather than historical purposes by providing
relatively untouched landscapes where people can find solitude.
Some laws concentrate on our nation's pre-history and history, but
they focus primarily on fossils, archaeological sites, historic
buildings, and artifacts rather than historic native landscapes. These
include the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 and the American
Antiquities Act of 1906. The latter act even specifies that national
monuments must be ``confined to the smallest area compatible with
proper care and management of the objects to be protected.'' What is
missing from existing laws is an act that restores and sustains the
magnificent native forests that European explorers found and described
when they arrived in North America.
THE NEED FOR A REFERENCE FOREST
The original native forests that European explorers found in North
America provide excellent models for present and future forests because
of their beauty, diversity, sustainability, productivity, and abundance
of wildlife. Pre-European settlement forests also provide the most
scientifically sound references for forest restoration. They were the
product of thousands of years of development and adaptation, and they
existed during a period when the climate fluctuated in a manner similar
to what occurs today. In addition, they can be easily documented using
archaeological materials, historical accounts, old photographs, early
land surveys, and existing vegetation. These methods can also be used
to document the processes that created and sustained native forests. On
the other hand, forests from an earlier time cannot be restored because
they can only be described in vague terms from pollen and fossils. Even
so, we cannot duplicate a historic native forest, but we can
approximate it based on a reference forest that provides an achievable
goal for restoration.
The first step in restoring a forest is selecting the historical
period for the reference forest. A reference forest does not represent
a particular point in time. It represents a period of time and the
variations in forest structure that were characteristic of that period.
The historic period for a reference forest will vary by region because
the age of exploration lasted several centuries.
The Spanish conquistadors became the first Europeans to wander deep
into America's native forests. Spanish soldiers marched through the
vast pine forests of the Southeast and the pinon-juniper woodlands of
the Southwest in the 16th century, but they did not see the oak
woodlands and towering coast redwoods of California until the 18th
century.
English and Dutch and other explorers and colonists stayed close to
the eastern seaboard. They only glimpsed the oak-chestnut, eastern
white pine, beech-maple, and red spruce-fir forests that graced the
colonial landscape in the 15th century. It was not until the 17th and
18th centuries that they documented these historic forests.
French soldiers of fortune, fur traders, and Jesuit priests
followed closely behind the colonists. They paddled and trudged their
way into the white spruce forest of Canada and Alaska, the Great Lakes
pine forests, and the oak-hickory forests and savannas filled with
wildlife on the edge of the Great Plains. Exploration began in the 16th
century, but like the colonists in the East, most observations of these
native forests were recorded in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery, the fur traders that preceded
them and the waves of trappers, scientists, and settlers that followed
them, came last. They had a chance to marvel at America's majestic
ponderosa pine, lodgepole pine, Pacific Douglas-fir, and giant sequoia
forests in the West primarily in the 18th and 19th centuries.
THE NEED FOR RESTORATION STANDARDS
Standards are essential for documenting the reference forest,
setting objectives, and judging the success or failure of a forest
restoration project. General standards should guide the restoration of
native forests at the national level. This is necessary because all
native forests share a few timeless qualities. First among these is the
patch, which is a relatively uniform group of plants. Second is
succession, or the way a patch of forest advances from one stage of
development to another after recovering from a disturbance. Third is
the shifting mosaic, or the proportions of different stages of
development that make up the forest mosaic and the way they shift from
place to place in the mosaic as each patch of forest ages. Therefore,
the character of the reference forest mosaic is the key to forest
restoration.
The general standards should include the relative proportions of
patches of vegetation in various stages of development that formed the
reference native forest mosaic, and the sizes, shapes, and orientation
of patches that reflect the forces that created them. The composition,
ages, sizes, and density of plants and standing and fallen dead trees
within patches should also be documented. Finally, the composition of
native wildlife that depended on the diversity of habitats in the
reference native forest mosaic should be incorporated into the restored
forest. Some of the information needed to describe a reference forest
is shown in Figure 3.
The details that fit within these general forest restoration
standards will depend on what is feasible, desirable, and historically
appropriate in particular forests. They must be tailored to an
individual forest to provide an ecologically and economically
sustainable target for restoration. Ultimately, the goal should be to
restore a forest to a condition that resembles the original native
forest, simulates the range in proportions of successional stages that
characterized the native forest mosaic during the historic period, and
that serves society's social and economic needs.
THE NEED TO INCLUDE NATIVE PEOPLES
Europeans seemed surprised to find that most of America's native
forests were open rather than dark and dense. They soon realized that
Indians used fire to help keep them that way. So, they had little
trouble traveling within forests unless they followed streams or
crossed marshes where thickets grew, or wandered into piles of trees
blown down by strong winds. Even here, travel was sometimes easy
because Indians burned trails in the forest, and cleared trees from
many floodplains for cornfields and hunting grounds.
The plants and game upon which American Indians depended thrived in
patchy forests that included young trees, old trees, meadows, and
various other stages of growth. Indians knew this from experience, so
they burned forests to keep them patchy. This provided them with an
abundance and variety of game and plant foods, as well as many other
benefits.
Native Americans were an integral part of America's native forests.
The structure of a forest and the forces that shape it work together;
they are inseparable and mutually dependent parts of a single whole.
Change one part and the other changes. It becomes a different forest.
Therefore, the restoration of native forests should ensure that future
generations have enduring and living examples of the historic bond that
existed between America's native forests and her peoples.
THE NEED FOR COST-EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT
A forest cannot be preserved because it is alive and continually
changes. It must be managed. Therefore, the only way to restore and
sustain our native forests is through active or hands-on management at
a cost that taxpayers are willing to pay. Reintroduction or control of
plant and animal species, planting, precommercial and commercial
thinning, grazing, prescribed burning, control or suppression of fire,
timber harvesting or, where appropriate and effective, temporary or
permanent protection should all be available to a manager who is
restoring a historic native forest. Placing restrictions on tools and
methods could seriously compromise a restoration project or make the
restoration of a native forest impossible. The nature of the tools and
techniques used to restore a forest are unimportant. The only thing
that matters is providing this and future generations with an enduring
legacy of dynamic and sustainable historic native forests.
Prescribed fire would come closer than any tool toward mimicking
the effects of the historic Indian and lightning fires that shaped most
of America's native forests. However, there are good reasons why it is
declining in use rather than expanding. Air quality restrictions are
playing an increasing role in restricting prescribed fire. High cost is
also a major barrier to its use. Prescribed fire can cost from $75 to
$1000 or more an acre. This would be prohibitively expensive for
restoring historic native forests throughout the nation, especially
since prescribed fire does not generate revenue that could help offset
the cost of management. In addition, there are limited periods and
opportunities when conditions are appropriate to burn. Prescribed fire
is also inherently dangerous. Escaped fire poses a serious hazard to
the safety and property of people living near forests. Finally, many of
today's forests are much thicker and filled with more dead trees than
historic forests. Prescribed fire is ineffective and unsafe in such
forests. Moreover, dense piles of fitter now surround large trees in
many forests. Even a light prescribed fire produces so much heat in
such fuel that it can kill the largest trees by cooking their roots.
Such losses would be unacceptable when restoring forests that lack
enough old trees to properly represent the historic native forest.
Fortunately, we do not have to rely on prescribed fire to restore
America's historic native forests. We have other tools available,
although prescribed fire is still an essential tool in many situations.
Over several centuries, foresters in Europe and the United States
developed a wide range of regeneration techniques that can effectively
restore and sustain our native forests. They can be used in ways that
do not damage streams and soils, unlike wildfires, and they can even
enhance fisheries. Likewise, they can provide openings for shade-
intolerant trees, such as Douglas-fir and pine, and make the openings
look like fire created them (Figures 4 and 5 show some of the
differences in regeneration methods used in restoration forestry and
traditional forestry in a Pacific Douglas-fir forest). These techniques
can also restore forests composed of trees that grow in the shade that
were sustained by windstorms, such as native beech-maple, and maple-
basswood forests. In addition, they can furnish adequate amounts of
standing and fallen dead trees to replenish soil nutrients and provide
homes for wildlife. They can even help endangered species by restoring
the variety of habitats that existed in native forests where they
thrived. They can perform these tasks while also reducing visible signs
of management to a minimum. In short, we can use a chainsaw or
mechanical harvester to sculpt a historic forest from today's forest in
the same way that Michelangelo used a hammer and chisel to create
beauty from stone.
Whenever it is safe, effective, and ecologically and economically
acceptable, management to sustain a restored forest should accommodate
the effects of natural disturbances such as wind, lightning fires, and
insect and disease infestations. Similarly, Indian tribes should be
permitted to conduct traditional land use and management activities
that help to restore and sustain a native forest so long as they were
part of its history.
Every effort must also be made to reduce the cost of restoration
and maintenance. Otherwise, we will not be able to restore enough
native forests to fully represent America's unique natural and cultural
history. Unlike Michelangelo who sold his art to pay the cost of
creating it, we cannot sell a restored historic native forest. However,
we can sell wood and other products harvested from the forest when
restoring and sustaining it. This would minimize the use of
appropriated funds so that we can restore forests on a large scale. It
would also provide society with essential goods and services and create
much needed jobs in rural communities.
THE NEED FOR LOCAL PARTICIPATION
Local participation in planning and managing historic native
forests is essential because no one person or group can fully
understand and manage all types of native forests. Each native forest
is unique, even though all forests share the mosaic structure. Each
native forest developed in a particular place in response to local
influences. Even native forests of a particular type can differ enough
to warrant a separate plan for their restoration and maintenance. To
illustrate, the northern Pacific Douglas-fir forest grows in a wetter
climate than the warmer and drier southern part of the forest.
Consequently, fires are less frequent and more severe, and patches are
larger, in the north than in the south. This is just one among many
differences that exist between these two parts of the same forest.
The restoration and maintenance of each historic native forest can
only be effective if a panel of local citizens who are familiar with
the forest develop the restoration plan and monitor its implementation.
The local panel should consist of scientists and public and private
forest managers who work in that forest, as well as other knowledgeable
citizens; including a representative of local Indian tribes. Existing
literature and the experience of those involved should form the basis
for most decisions. Research should be limited to only the most crucial
questions and performed quickly. Long-term research should not delay
the development and execution of a restoration plan because the problem
of restoring America's historic native forests is too urgent.
CONCLUSION
America's original native forests are as much a part of the
nation's history as any building, ruin, or artifact. Native forests
influenced the development of our culture just as our culture
influenced native forests. They are inseparable parts of the same
heritage. We cannot understand or portray one without the other. In
addition, this relationship can only be appreciated at a scale the fits
the scale of our historic landscapes. Restoring historic native forests
will improve the health and diversity of the Nation's forests, reduce
threats to local communities from wildfires, and assist economic growth
and development. More importantly, it will fulfill the need for our
citizens to see and experience the native forests that influenced our
country's development and helped to mold our spirit of enterprise and
freedom. Restoring and sustaining examples of historic native forests
is a worthy goal for America.
BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY
Dr. Thomas M. Bonnicksen is a professor in the Department of Forest
Science at Texas A&M University specializing in restoration forestry.
He earned a B. S. in forestry (with minors in wildlife and range), a M.
S. degree in forest ecology, and a Ph.D. degree in forest policy from
the University of California-Berkeley.
Dr. Bonnicksen has conducted research on restoring and sustaining
America's native forests for more than thirty years. He has written
over one hundred publications and he authored the book titled America's
Ancient Forests: from the Ice Age to the Age of Discovery (Copyright
January 2000, John Wiley &' Sons, Inc., 594 pages). The book documents
the history of North America's native forests. It gives special
emphasis to the way America's native forests appeared at the time of
European settlement and the role Native American's played in their
development. He is also cofounder of the International Society for
Ecological Restoration and a former member of its board of directors.
He served on many federal and state advisory committees, most recently
as a member of the U. S. Senate and House of Representative's
California Forest EIS Review Committee and the U.S. House of
Representatives' Forest Health Science Panel. He is a 33-year member of
the Society of American Foresters, and a former university Department
Head, California state park commissioner appointed by Governor Reagan,
and National Park ranger.
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Mr. McInnis. Thank you, Doctor.
Next, Mr. Barnett, you may proceed.
STATEMENT OF JOHN BARNETT, CHAIRMAN, COWLITZ INDIAN TRIBE,
STATE OF WASHINGTON, CEO AND OWNER OF COWLITZ TIMBER, INC.
Mr. Barnett. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to thank
you and the Committee and Mr. Simpson for inviting me here
today. I think this bill is something that I personally have
looked forward to for a long, long time, wondering when in the
world is it ever going to happen. Who is John Barnett? John
Barnett is a son of a Finn lady and a Cowlitz Indian. I am
sometimes referred to by my colleagues as the big Finndian. I
am from a little wide spot in the road called Naselle,
Washington, which is just about 10 miles from where Doug
Crandall was raised, across the Columbia River.
I have had 50 years of experience, actual hands-on
experience in our forests. I have been involved in all phases
of forestry, from logger, timber cutter, to presently manager,
CEO and owner of 5,000 acres of timberland and a company, along
with my son, Cowlitz Timber, Inc. Over the years, I have
observed all of the changes that man has made to our forest,
some good and a lot of bad. What do forests mean to Native
Americans? Our view of the forest is much, much different than
the average citizen of the United States. Forests are one of
the cornerstones of our culture, along with salmon.
Tribal uses, historically, were different than those of
white society. We use the forests for ceremonial purposes,
spiritual purposes. We use them for vision quests, which I have
been on many times, to seek my Tamanawas, which allows me to
learn from my spirit master, what to do, and when to do it. We
also realize that the forest was put there for our use and our
survival. Hunting and fishing and the other resources of the
forests are used to live as Indian people. This has been going
on since time immemorial.
I am going to tell you briefly what is happening to our
forests in the Pacific Northwest through the eyes of the
Cowlitz people. We are deeply saddened by the loss of our
national forests from what they once were in aboriginal times
to the preservation forestry that is the myth that we are
living under today. What is really happening to the forests of
the Pacific Northwest? They are gradually evolving from the
mixed stand timber; Douglas Fir, Sitka Spruce, Western Red
Cedar, Hemlock, White Pine, to a monoculture of Western
Hemlock.
Here is the Western Hemlock story. Western Hemlock is the
only conifer species that will grow in the shade and thrive. As
our old-growth forest rapidly disappears, it is being replaced
by a monoculture of Western Hemlock. Under our present rules
and regulations in the United States, we do not have the
advantages of fire to cleanse the earth. As a result, we are
looking for some monumental forests fires that will make the
ones in Montana a year ago look like bonfires. I can foresee
the day when a fire will burn from Seattle completely through
the Olympic National Forests. As the fuel builds up on the
ground, this is going to happen.
I have specifically done a lot of my work in the Quinault
Natural Area. This is an area that was established in 1931 for
study and education of the American people in forestry. At that
time, it was a stand of mixed, old-growth trees. Today, over 50
percent of that stand of timber, 1000 acres, has turned to
Western Hemlock, because every time one of those big trees hits
the ground, for whatever reason; dying a natural death, blown
over by the wind or whatever, it is not replaced by another
Douglas Fir, another cedar, another spruce. It is replaced by
Western Hemlock, which is the monoculture I was telling you
about taking over. What is going to happen over time, is
eventually that whole forest that we knew once is going to be
replaced by this monoculture of Western Hemlock which, in turn,
will provide us with an over and over and over forest of
nothing but Western Hemlock. In walking through these
monocultures of Western Hemlock, it is my estimation that we
are losing and have lost at this point in time over 50 percent
of the species that are in the forests and were in there when
it was considered a mixed stand of timber, a very important
thing to consider, especially when we look at the Endangered
Species Act.
Let me say in closing that I think, for the first time in
all of my years, I have really seen some common sense come
before Congress for the benefit of the American people. I thank
you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Barnett follows:]
Statement of John Barnett, Chairman, Cowlitz Indian Tribe, State of
Washington, CEO and Owner, Cowlitz Timber, Inc.
Let me begin by saying that I have some very serious concerns with
the health of our national forests in the Pacific Northwest now and for
future generations of Americans yet to come. Since the introduction of
the spotted own as an endangered species and the environmental movement
that followed, I have spent considerable time in both the Olympic and
Gifford Pinchot National Forests to observe first hand the result of
forest management changes. I have specifically concentrated my efforts
in the Quinault Research Natural Area located between Neilton and
Amanda Park in the state of Washington. This area, of some 1,000 acres,
was set aside in 1931 as a research study area where Mother Nature is
allowed to take its course. In 1931, this Natural Area consisted of
what we now call a late successional or old growth forest consisting of
varied tree species including Douglas fir, Sitka spruce, western red
cedar, western hemlock, and red alder. The forest canopy was almost
completely closed with a ground story of sword fern, salmon berry, and
Devil's club. Early cruise figures show virtually 100% of old growth
volumes.
To back up in history to 1993, it is quite evident to me that the
Clinton Administration's Northwest Forest Plan placed our national
forests in the middle of a collision course between politics and
standard forest science. So far, politics is winning and the truth will
only come out through a concerted effort nationally of all the people
who have the fortitude to build enough ground swell to change a flawed
national policy. It is also evident to me that the Clinton
Administration's team of scientists headed by Jack Ward Thomas was
instructed to present a series of ``Forest Management Options'' from
which the Clinton Administration could choose one that would supposedly
balance forests and humans. In the big court scene that will eventually
come, the main characters will tell what went on behind closed doors,
where science turned into politics and politics turned into special
interest advocacy.
To prove the point of collusion between the Administration and the
``Gang of Four,'' one must only turn to a book bearing an unassuming
title: Annual Report of the Department of Interior for the Fiscal Year
Ended June 30, 1900, Twenty-first Annual Report, U.S. Geological
Service. The book includes hundreds of pages of detailed forest
inventory data gathered on the ground in Oregon and Washington, and a
large collection of color maps showing the distribution, size, and age
of tree species then present. What is most unsettling about this huge
body of information is the fact that the government's scientists make
no mention of its existence in the proposal they wrote for the
President, and in fact they say in words that it does not exist. The
fact that the government scientists ignored historical forest patterns
and science, contradicts their own personal biases about forests and
forestry and led to the historical gap in complete information that
would have changed through actual proof that our forests in the Pacific
Northwest are in a continuing state of disturbance and fluctuation.
Change and turmoil, more than constancy and balance, are the rule. What
forest science reveals is that natural disturbances, including weather
patterns, wind, fire and disease, prevent ecosystems from ever settling
into a steady state. The idea that the Pacific Northwest was once a
vast sea of old growth timber is a myth. It has been one of the main
components expounded by the environmental movement to sway the thinking
of the general public in the United States that old growth trees as
they now exist will be here forever and will be available for
generations to hug into infinity. Trees, as well as humans, have a
measurable life expectancy. They, as humans, will eventually have an
obituary.
For further information, please turn to pages 7 through 16 in the
Evergreen magazine (March-April, 1994 edition). This interview with Bob
Zyback, ``Voices in the Forest,'' contains valuable information on the
historical overview of our forests in the Pacific Northwest and points
out some very serious flaws in the formation of the Clinton
Administration's ``Northwest Forest Plan.'' I concur with his analysis.
It is very ironic that past Secretary of the Interior, Bruce
Babbitt, made the following direct quotes during his observation of
damages incurred recently by the Cerro Grande fire.
``It was a systematic failure in the Park Service. I think we are
going to have to go back as a result of this investigation and revamp
the fire program from A to Z . . . . We owe that to the American
people,'' Babbitt said. ``These forests are too thick,'' he said.
``They're explosive, they're dangerous, and the reason is because fire
has been excluded for 100 years and there's too much fuel in the
forests, too many trees.''
Sometimes the actual truth does slip out and seriously undermines
the myth being fed to the American people.
With the above remarks being said, let me turn back to some
observations and conclusions that I have reached. First, from the
Cascade Mountain Range to the Pacific Ocean and from the Canadian
border through Oregon and Washington and into northern California, our
national forests are gradually changing from the mixed species of the
past with its vast biodiversity to a monoculture of western hemlock.
Western hemlock is the climax species of our so-called late
successional forest that included trees of many species that were there
prior to the coming of white settlers to North America. The term late
successional is also a myth as it infers that the national forests will
continue with replacement stands of mixed species as in the past.
Western hemlock is the only conifer specie that will grow and thrive in
the shade. When holes are created in the forest canopy due to wind or
other disturbances or with the natural death of trees, the opening will
naturally reseed with virtually exclusive stands of western hemlock
regeneration. Over time, as the late successional forest eventually
dies out and is replaced by the western hemlock monoculture and by the
elimination of one of Mother Nature's tools--fire--the hemlock will
repeat itself over and over until humans realize their mistake. Through
preservation of our forests in their natural state, we are inviting an
extremely heavy buildup of fuel content on the forest floor that will
eventually climax with massive forest fires with the potential of
burning millions of acres of our national forests.
Under the preservation mode presently in place, the magnificent
Douglas fir is entering the downward spiral to extinction because it
needs total sunlight to grow and thrive. The towering Sitka spruce,
which will grow to a height of 250 feet with a diameter of more than 14
feet, is rapidly moving into extinction due to infestation of tip
weevils in young trees of 10-15 years of age. The weevil eats the
growth leader, which in turn causes a new growth of multiple leaders
which diminish the height of the tree. Instead of 200 feet mature
spruce, we are saddled with a multiple topped bush in the form of a
snowball 20 to 40 feet tall at maturity. The Sitka spruce also needs
total sunlight for survival.
Perhaps the worst feature of the Northwest Forest Plan is that tree
species 80 years or older are now considered to have ``old growth
characteristics.'' The maximum age of our second growth tree
plantations in the Pacific Northwest is 70 years. Once these
plantations reach 80 years of age, they will automatically be ``off
limits'' forever due to the old growth classification. The vast
majority of Forest Service timber sales now consist of commercial
thinning sales in these second growth stands. As the window is closed
due to the 80-year tree age distinction, the true agenda of the
Northwest Forest Plan becomes a reality--total preservation.
As the tribal chairman of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe for the past 20
years, I have a feel for their thoughts. My people look at the forest
as a cornerstone of our culture along with the salmon. We look at the
forest as a tool left us by the Creator--a tool not only to be used
spiritually but for our survival. The cedar tree is a very special tree
to my people. Since time immemorial we have used the cedar bark for
basket making, the trunk of the tree to make our canoes, and the
branches for ceremonial purposes. My people believe that we can live in
harmony with what was left for us by the Creator. We believe that it
was given for our survival--as Native Americans. We also know that we
must protect, preserve, and conserve what was given to us as a natural
resource to continue as a replica of the past.
I have spent 55 years of my life in and around the forests of the
Pacific Northwest. I fell the first tree in my life at the age of 12 on
one end of a crosscut saw with my dad on the other end. I have had,
during those years, extensive experience in all phases and use of the
forest. My forest experiences have been hands on. My degrees in
forestry are hanging in my garage in the form of 20 pairs of worn out
caulk boot--each with stories all their own.
I have been very honored to have been able to testify before you
today on subjects most dear to my heart. Change will only occur through
the will of the people speaking the truth.
I would like to leave you with the following thoughts. In my
opinion, drastic change in policy regarding use and management of our
national forests is needed immediately. We have altered the Master Plan
provided by the Creator. We must reverse this alteration and recreate
the forest landscape as was intended. This means sound forest
stewardship to revive our multiple species of trees that were here
prior to white settlement of the land. This must be based on the
landscape, soil type and climate. Without this biodiversity, all
creatures of the forest may face extinction.
As history unveils, I, for one, do not want my great grandchildren
to see our forests as they once were--only in pictures.
______
Mr. McInnis. Thank you, Mr. Barnett.
Mr. Holmer, you may proceed.
STATEMENT OF STEVE HOLMER, CAMPAIGN COORDINATOR, AMERICAN LANDS
ALLIANCE
Mr. Holmer. Thank you. On behalf of the American Lands
Alliance, I would like to urge the Committee to reject H.R.
2119. We do not feel that the bill addresses the priority needs
for our national forests. We would just like to specifically
say we strongly disagree with the restoration proposals here,
but we agree that restoration for the national forests is a
very critically important topic, and we are very interested in
continuing to work with the Committee on that.
We, fundamentally, think you need to look at the root
causes for the kinds of changes in the forests that have been
described to you. We see the root causes as being logging,
grazing, fire suppression, invasive species and excessive road
construction. So, we feel like, if you really want to restore
the forest, you have to start by addressing those specific
issues first.
I would just like to real quickly run through our concerns
about H.R. 2119, and then talk about some of our ideas for
restoration that we urge the Committee to consider. We do not
feel that new land management designation for historical
forests is necessary. In general, we feel, thematically, like
there has been a failure to recognize natural forest
succession. The fact is, you have a natural process where
forests will change over time. As described to you, you will
have shade-tolerant species ultimately take over for species
that favor the sunlight, but then sometime down the road you
will have a natural disturbance, a wind event or a fire, that
will remove the shade tolerant species and, again, the sun-
loving species will have a chance to regenerate in those areas.
It is a natural process. So, the idea of trying to freeze
things in time and keeping the forests at that exact place
forever simply shows no recognition of how forests really work.
We do need to recognize that forests are dynamic and we cannot
assume we can just freeze them in time. What we can do, though,
is we can preserve the fundamental ecological processes that
determine how forests are going to evolve over time, and
allowing these natural processes to work is really how we think
you are going to end up restoring the forests.
Another key point is that we are concerned about the need
to create new management plans for these historic forests.
Right now, we are already involved in an intensive forest-
planning process. This will basically duplicate that, increase
the amount of funding and bureaucracy needed to do forest
planning, and we think it is likely to create management
conflicts when you have two plans come out for the same piece
of ground that do not agree with each other. So, we see all the
management planning in there as completely unnecessary.
We are also concerned about the restoration goal found in
Section 103. It puts resource extraction on par with legitimate
restoration activities. Excessive resource extraction and
intensive management is the primary cause of forest
degradation. Continuing resource extraction as part of
restoration is likely to undermine the ecological objectives of
the program, and require additional ecological restoration in
the future. To go back to your analogy of being a dentist, if
you had a patient who just had three teeth knocked out and said
you are going to replace your three teeth, but we need to take
two more of your teeth out to pay for things, the patient is
going to realize that he is not quite getting all the way
restored. So, we are very concerned about an economic model for
restoration that requires continued extraction to pay for
everything. We think that you are just not going to get there
that way.
Another key concern has to do with the creation of a new
off-budget trust fund. We have seen serious problems with the
current trust fund, such as KV, salvage and brush disposal
funds, where they create an incentive for the agency to favor
resource extraction activities over other type of restoration
activities. So, we would be very concerned about the creation
of a new fund. We are even further concerned about taking money
from offshore oil drilling and using it for this purpose. We
think that those funds should be used for other purposes, such
as the acquisition of the threatened habitats. If we are going
to protect endangered species, that is probably the fastest way
you are going to get there, by acquiring these threatened
habitats.
We are also very concerned about both Title II and Title
III that would create new advisory Committees. Neither of these
Committees have to be under the Federal Advisory Committee Act.
They are both full of political appointees, so we do not see
them being fair or balanced. The local advisory Committee would
also be repeating the resource advisory Committees that were
just created under the county payments bill. So, we do not
think that that is necessary.
Just real quickly, I would just like to lay out a few of
the principles that we think should be considered. One is that
forest restoration requires an integrated, comprehensive
approach that includes preserving and protecting intact
landscapes and letting the land heal itself, and only where
necessary, helping it do so with active restoration efforts.
From a basis of ecological integrity, we can re-establish
sustainable human connections to the land through quality
restoration jobs and conservation-based economies, as well as
provide an economic framework to restore and sustain ecological
integrity and community viability.
We see a real opportunity to create jobs here, but the
program has to be set up in a way that the public can be
involved, that the science is listened to, where there is
environmental and economic justice for the workers doing these
projects. Right now we are in a low-bidder system that
encourages a system of migrant forest workers, very similar to
the system of migrant farm workers. These workers are being
abused; they are being paid less than minimum. We believe in
the end, the forests themselves will end up suffering under
this system, because economics, in the end, will be paramount.
Letting big companies come in and do big contracts that involve
a lot of logging will be paramount. We would much rather move
to a system that supports small businesses, that supports small
communities, but that does not encourage increased resource
extraction on the public lands.
My testimony is available for your reading. I would just
like to also mention the precautionary principle. There is a
great deal we do not know right now about what would happen if
we go out and do these activities. For example, people talk
about thinning to reduce fire risk, but the fact is, according
to Forest Trust, which just reviewed 400 papers on this
subject, there is no empirical data that shows that thinning
will reduce fire risk on our forests. So, we need to know what
we are doing before we start proposing changing the whole
landscape.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Holmer follows:]
Statement of Steve Holmer, Campaign Coordinator, American Lands
Alliance
On behalf of American Lands Alliance, representing grassroots
forest activists and organizations from around the nation, we urge the
Committee to reject H.R. 2119, because the bill does not address the
priority need for protecting and restoring the National Forests.
Intensive management is part of the problem, not the solution. While we
strongly disagree with the specific proposals found in H.R. 2119, we
agree that addressing the restoration of degraded forest landscapes is
an extremely important topic that merits further discussion and
ultimately, congressional action.
Concerns With H.R. 2119
1. The proposal to create a new land management designation of
``National Historic Forest'' in Sec. 101 is unnecessary. The proposed
process for designation will be expensive and time consuming for agency
officials and the concerned public while offering no discernible
benefits.
2. The preparation of management plans for historic forests as
required by Sec. 102 of the bill outside of the established forest
planning process will lead to duplication of work and require
considerable staff time and funding better spent on ecologically
beneficial restoration projects.
3. The ``special consideration'' of certain uses in these
management plans in Sec. 102 (b) (2) overemphasize economic
considerations while placing insufficient emphasis on protecting
ecosystem services such as water quality and maintaining the viability
of fish and endangered species across their natural ranges.
4. The ability for the Secretary to unilaterally revise or revoke a
management plan in Sec. 102 (c) undermines the public involvement
process. All decisions and management plans affecting plans should have
a mechanism for public involvement.
5. The restoration goal found in Sec. 103 puts resource extraction
on par with legitimate restoration activities. Excessive resource
extraction and intensive management is the primary cause of forest
degradation. Continuing resource extraction as part of restoration is
likely to undermine the ecological objectives of the program and
require additional ecological restoration in the future.
6. Overall, while the goal of restoration is needed and worthwhile,
there also needs to be specific scientific principles and management
criteria included in the bill to ensure that the resulting projects do
not do more harm than good.
7. The direction to use cost-effective restoration methods in Sec.
104 may lead to commodity extraction to pay for needed restoration
projects. Commercial logging is never the most cost effective method
when all factors are considered. In fact, it is one of the contributing
reasons why forests need to be ``restored'' today. Ecological
restoration will, in general, not generate significant revenue or by-
products of economic value. Restoration work will require an investment
by Congress--a very wise investment--that will create jobs and maintain
the fundamental ecosystem services such as clean water supplies upon
which human society and the entire economy is based.
8. Amending National Forest Management plans (Sec. 105) to make
them consistent with the approved management plans for historic forests
will require citizens to be involved with two separate planning
processes for the same area and create potential management conflicts.
9. The National Historic Forest Restoration Fund (Sec. 107) will
create a new incentive for resource extraction on the National Forests
and encourage revenue generating projects under the guise of
restoration. As is currently the case with the KV, Brush Disposal and
Salvage funds, off-budget funds create an incentive for the agency to
maximize revenue because it gets to keep 100% of the money.
10. Funds from the Land and Water Conservation Fund (Sec. 107)
should not be used to create and support the Historic Forest
Restoration Fund. The bill proposes to divert $675 million over the
life of the bill that could be better spent acquiring threatened
habitats.
11. Accepting donations (Sec. 108) and giving due consideration to
the expressed intentions of the donor could lead to undue influence
being exerted by donors on the Forest Service.
12. Title II of H.R. 2119 creates an unnecessary National Advisory
Council on Forest Restoration which duplicates responsibilities now
held by the Forest Service. All positions, with the exception of the
Chief of the Forest Service would be political appointees of the Bush
Administration. This does not ensure a fair or balanced participant
make up nor are their requirements to ensure that the scientific,
forest workers or environmentalists are represented. This complete lack
of fairness is perhaps why the bill exempts this Committee from the
Federal Advisory Committee Act.
13. Title III of the bill creates Local Management Advisory
Committees which fails to adequately allow representation of the full
range of scientific, worker and environmental interests concerned about
recreation issues. This would also duplicate similar Resource Advisory
Committees created by the county payments legislation. The emphasis on
foresters on the committee indicates a strong bias for certain types of
restoration (salvage and thinning) over others. A wildlife biologist
might be more interested in the reintroduction of endangered species,
while a hydrologist might be more focused on removing roads to restore
watersheds. Again, this committee would not have to comply with the
Federal Advisory Committee Act to ensure fair representation.
In conclusion, we are strongly opposed to H.R. 2119 and would urge
the Committee to reject it in its entirety. However, we are very
interested in the topic of restoration and are working to develop a
model that we hope can help benefit Congress and the land management
agencies as they move forward to address this critical issue.
A Vision and Principles for Forest Restoration
Fully functioning ecosystems are the Earth's life support. Forest
ecosystems provide clean drinking water, purify our air and regulate
our climate. These vital benefits are literally our stock of ``natural
capital'' that is necessary to sustain all life. Provided that the
forests' natural processes are functioning, they will supply a steady
flow of these ecological services.
In most cases natural capital is neither owned nor marketed. While
the values of these services are understood, clean water and air, for
example, are often considered ``free for the taking.'' Safeguarding
these services and the forests that provide them are not usually the
priority goal for land management decisions. Current economic
incentives and a focus on resource extraction often work at cross-
purposes with protecting these forest values and result in the rapid
depletion of natural capital. Consequently, these once enormously
productive natural systems are unraveling, degrading water quality,
compromising the health of rivers and streams, driving to extinction
the last wild fish populations and severely impairing the ability of
forests to regulate the climate.
Decades of industrial forest practices have taken their toll on
this country's forests and the communities and workforces that depend
on them for their livelihood. Intensive management restoration
prescriptions only perpetuate the further destruction of systems.
Society's approach has been one-sided, focusing on taking from what
seemed to be an endless supply of timber. Now it is time for society to
give something back and focus on restoring the ecological integrity of
our forests that will in turn secure our well being and that of future
generations.
There is a greater scientific understanding of the connections
between land management actions and their negative impacts on the
ability of a forest to provide vital ecological services. There are
also good ecological economic models that more fully account for the
costs and benefits of land management decisions. These models should be
used to guide appropriate policy, incentives and mechanisms for
investing in the landscape through ecological restoration.
Recently, decision-makers and the interested public have recognized
the need to restore our forests and federal agencies have developed
plans for restoration activities. Central to the debate is the question
of whether all proposed ``restoration'' activities are truly beneficial
to the land and the lives that depend on them. Most notable is the
National Fire Management Plan, which has raised many concerns about the
plan's approach to forest restoration as well as concerns with other
federal agency restoration efforts. Perhaps most important is the need
to proceed with extreme caution. Just because humans have caused the
current level of degradation, we should not assume that human
intervention can always necessarily solve these problems.
Several questions need to be answered in order develop a credible
science-based restoration agenda including: 1) defining ecological
forest restoration and the principals and criteria on which this work
should be carried out, 2) using these principles and criteria to guide
implementation of the National Fire Plan so that it is ecologically
sound, 3) identifying who will do the work, 4) identifying what skills
are needed and what processes will allow for equitable participation by
rural communities and mobile workforces, and 5) what is the transition
strategy by which these goals can be achieved.
The following restoration goals and principles are under
development to answer these questions and set forth a vision and
framework for addressing these issues. This policy statement is
national in scope and recognizes the need to develop supplemental
regional principals and criteria that would address differences in
forest ecosystems and further involve regional partners.
Forest Restoration Principle
Forest Restoration requires an integrated, comprehensive approach
which includes preserving and protecting intact landscapes; letting the
land heal itself, and, only where necessary, helping it to do so. From
a basis of ecological integrity we can reestablish sustainable human
connections to the land through quality restoration jobs and
conservation-based economies, as well as provide an economic framework
to restore and sustain ecological integrity and community viability.
Ecological Forest Restoration Principle
Ecological forest restoration is the process of assisting forest
ecosystem recovery so that ecosystem integrity is enhanced and natural
processes and disturbances can function unimpaired. Successful forest
restoration has the potential to re-establish fully functioning
ecosystems.
The goal of forest restoration is to enhance ecological integrity
by restoring natural processes and resilience. An ecological integrity
approach encompasses advantages of historical models while recognizing
that ecosystems are dynamic and change over time . Focusing on
enhancing ecological integrity allows us to be guided by the needs of
ecosystems rather than forcing our needs onto the landscape.
Because we do not fully understand the potential impacts of
restoration, all projects must be guided by the precautionary
principle: if a restoration activity has a high risk of ecological
damage and weak scientific support, then the activity should not go
forward. This will be considered before deciding which type of
restoration approach to use. Ecological restoration, based on a
restoration needs assessment, will be approached on a scale from least
invasive to more invasive.
Ecological Economics, Communities and Workforce Principle
Ecological restoration is an important component of an ecologically
sound, socially-just forest economy. It has the potential to support
the long-term viability of communities at an appropriate scale, while
fostering a culture of environmental sustainability. However, current
economic incentives drive land managers, companies and consumers to
rapidly deplete natural resources and social stability, imposing heavy
costs upon the public, taxpayers and future generations without our
consent. These incentives must be removed and replaced with positive
incentives to protect and restore ecological integrity, within a
framework that more fully accounts for the costs and benefits of land
management actions.
A highly-skilled, well-paid workforce is essential for restoration
to meet high ecological standards. This requires a commitment to
regional training capacity, skill certification, consistent funding
over decades and workers' rights to organize and bargain collectively.
The process of advancing ecological restoration must be open, inclusive
and transparent, and become a practical outlet for breaking down class,
culture, gender, language and religious barriers.
Ecological Forest Restoration
1) Precautionary Principle: Because ecological systems are
inherently complex and dynamic, it is impossible to accurately predict
all the consequences of our actions, even well- intentioned restoration
actions. Therefore, if an area proposed for restoration presents a risk
of being negatively impacted by restoration actions, or if a specific
restoration action poses a high risk of ecological damage or has weak
scientific support, then the proposed area or action will not go
forward, or the restoration activity will be implemented in incremental
steps on an experimental basis. Active restoration should be
implemented in situations where passive restoration might lead to the
destruction or loss of natural processes, a species, stream system or
rare representative ecosystem within a particular area.
Precautionary Criteria:
a) LRestoration plans will take a conservative approach.
b) LRestoration projects that do not include money for
assessment, monitoring and evaluation will not proceed.
c) LRestoration plans must be open to revision based on
monitoring, evaluation, new ideas and new science.
d) LRestoration plans must minimize risks to ecosystem
integrity.
e) LThe precautionary principle will be applied in two stages:
i) LIn determining where to apply restoration activities
ii) LIn determining what type of restoration technique to
apply once an area is chosen for restoration
f) LIntensive management such as commercial logging should
never be viewed as a way to achieve restoration.
2) Prioritization Principle: There are three which define the range
of forest restoration methods:
1) Lpreservation, the protection of relatively intact natural
areas and core refugia as sources of biodiversity, for example
old growth forests and roadless areas, where restoration is
largely unnecessary, or reference landscapes needed as a source
of baseline information;
2) Lpassive restoration, the cessation of ecologically
degrading activities, such as intensive logging, grazing and
recreation, and excessive suppression of fire and forest
pathogens, to allow natural recovery processes to proceed
unhindered; and
3) Lactive restoration, direct human intervention to
reintroduce (or secure) natural processes or at risk species in
cases where a) ecosystem composition, structure and function
are degraded or suppressed by factors such as compacted soils,
channelized streams, exclusion of endemic pathogens etc., or b)
human-induced ecosystem changes pose imminent threats to intact
natural areas, including roads and trails, and exotic
invasives.
In determining restoration activities, priority must be given to
protection of intact areas, and restoring areas of highest ecological
integrity. In these areas, passive restoration will be encouraged, and
active restoration will be applied judiciously based on degree of
degradation and ecological need, emphasizing the least intensive
interventions which are likely to provide the greatest ecological
benefit, while minimizing management-induced ecological risks and
costs.
Active restoration will not be applied to intact areas and core
refugia, such as old-growth forests, roadless or wilderness areas.
Restoration of all kinds should proceed most rapidly in areas where,
and using methods for which there is a high degree of consensus among
key stakeholders that such restoration plans will enhance ecological
integrity. Key stakeholders include scientists, communities of interest
(environmental, worker, community), communities of place, and managers
of affected land ownerships.
Adaptive Management Principle: Ecological forest restoration of any
type, at any scale is a process of adaptive management. Because of high
levels of complexity, uncertainty and risk, any restoration requires an
approach that is cautious, flexible and able to respond to change and
new information. Acceptable restoration projects include a transparent
public process that provides for: assessment, implementation,
monitoring, evaluation and adaptation.
Economic Framework Principle: Incentives that are inconsistent with
achieving ecological integrity must be eliminated and replaced with
positive economic incentives to protect and restore ecological
integrity, within a framework that accounts for the costs and benefits
associated with natural capital.
Community/Workforce Sustainability Principle: Restoration must
foster a sustainable human relationship to the land that provides for
ecological integrity, social and economic justice for workers and
communities, and a culture of preservation and restoration. In turn,
effective restoration depends on strong, healthy and diverse
communities and a skilled, committed workforce.
Participatory Principle: Meaningful involvement for a diversity of
communities, interest groups and other participants (at local,
regional, and national levels) will be achieved through open, inclusive
and transparent decision-making processes with recognition of and
respect for differences.
Thank you for this opportunity to testify and I am happy to answer
any questions from the Committee.
______
Mr. McInnis. We will now move to questions for the panel. I
will begin the questions very briefly. First of all, Doctor, I
find your comments--I keep looking back to your book and I
appreciate you coming. I think that book is very helpful. Mr.
Barnett, I am afraid that sometimes the people on the ground,
such as yourself, with a long history and actually an
eyewitness to the forest history as we have known it for the
last 50 years. I think I see you as an expert. Unfortunately, I
think back here in the political circles, you are often pushed
aside for a more ideological philosophy of how these forests
ought to be run, instead of actual common sense, and I
appreciate your comments.
Mr. Holmer, I need a couple of clarifications on your
comments. First of all, you make a statement that the bill
calls for extraction to pay for everything. I think that is a
bit of an overstatement. I do not believe--maybe you are
correct. If you can show me the language where extraction is
required to pay for quote, ``everything.''
Mr. Holmer. Well, we are concerned about the provision in
the bill--
Mr. McInnis. My question, Mr. Holmer, is does the bill
contain that language or do you stand corrected?
Mr. Holmer. It contains that intent, I believe.
Mr. McInnis. Mr. Holmer, I am the Chairman of the
Committee. My purpose in asking you that is, I do not want you
to make a representation that the bill says something that, in
fact, it does not. That is exactly what you did with your
statement. I was looking. I could not find that language. You
have clarified for me--
Mr. Holmer. If I could clarify further--
Mr. McInnis. Let me move to the second point that I want to
ask you. You also cited that there are workers out there who
are being abused. I would like to--you do not have to provide
it today. You may not have it today. But, I take great interest
in workers, whether they are migrant workers or other workers,
who are suffering abuse and are working in violation of the law
in regards to minimum wage. If you have that evidence--you
stated that you do. If you have that, I request that you submit
it to the panel or to my personal attention, so that we can
then turn around and submit it to the proper authorities, so
that it can be investigated.
With that, I am now going to turn the microphone over to
Mr. Inslee. Mr. Inslee, I open the mike, not only for
questions, but also if you would like to give an opening
statement, you are welcome to do so.
Mr. Inslee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First, I would like to
welcome Mr. Barnett, a fellow traveler who knows what the
planes are like all across America. We appreciate you coming
from the State of Washington, Mr. Barnett.
Mr. Barnett. Thank you.
Mr. Inslee. Mr. Holmer, would you want to take some of my
time and elaborate on your answer to the chair's question about
this issue of intent and how to pay for the program and
extraction? Go ahead.
Mr. Holmer. Sure, well, I think my comment was colored by
what we are seeing happening on the ground right now, where
there are a large number of restoration projects that are being
billed as restoration, but, in fact, have a commercial-logging
component. When we talk to the agency about this, they say that
this is a way of trying to help recover some of our costs. We
are very concerned that the commercial aspects of these
projects undermine the projects.
Take thinning, for example--the idea of thinning is to go
out and remove the small diameter material and the brush. But
if it is done as a commercial timber sale, there is an
incentive to put some larger fire-resistant trees into these
projects in order to make them pay their way. So, we are just
very concerned about getting into a system where all
restoration is, in some form, tied to commodity extraction. We
would like to eliminate commodity extraction as part of any
legitimate restoration program.
Mr. Inslee. Mr. Barnett and Mr. Bonnicksen, let me ask you
each to address this general issue. If we are going to design a
system as--and what I understand the intent of the bill to be
is, to design a system to, obviously to try to restore forests
to their original condition, which could involve, at time,
harvesting of wood fiber for various reasons. But I think the
concern that has been addressed, that we do not create an
incentive for decisions to be based on the commodity value of
some of the timber being harvested, as opposed to the goal of
restoring forests. To me, that is sort of the $64,000 question.
How do you design a system that does not create incentives for
the decision makers to make decisions based on the market value
of the timber, as opposed to the real goal, which is restoring
the forest?
Now, let me just tell you about a couple of concerns I
have. Under the existing situation, I think there is an
incentive to make some wrong decisions, because the Forest
Service and the trust fund essentially keeps the money. So they
have some incentive, if you will, to maximize harvest.
Secondly, if we do make any intimation that we use these funds
to pay for the program, I think that there is an incentive for
people to make decisions on the wrong motivation.
How would you address those concerns? Maybe you can tell us
if the bill already does that and, if not, what should we be
thinking about to try to ensure that decision makers would make
decisions based on restoration of the forest as opposed to
maximization of the economic value?
Mr. Bonnicksen. I would share your concern. I would
certainly not want to see the extraction of timber and the
generation of revenue to take precedence over what the real
intent of this bill is, which is to fill a very important gap
in our laws that would provide our children and grandchildren
with some examples of the marvelous landscapes that they
inherited. That is our goal, and nothing should interfere with
that. It is our history, and we should take care of it. But the
fact is we cannot afford to do this on the scale necessary,
using public funds alone.
If you simply talk about the cost of using prescribed fire,
it ranges at the very best situation $60 an acre, and from
there, such as in the Tahoe Basin, it can go from $700 to $1000
an acre to do. That is not including pre-commercial thinning,
which can be several hundred dollars an acre on top of that.
Well, you take those costs and multiply them times, say, 90
million acres, which is about what we need to deal with, and
you can see that nobody is ever going to pay for that. And that
is for the first entry. After that, you have to enter the
forest every 10, 20, whatever the years would be required for a
particular forest, to sustain it, to maintain it.
You cannot do that either with public funds alone. That is
not possible. We are going to have to generate some revenue to
supplement the cost of management, otherwise we will have to
forego the idea of recovering our forest heritage. It will not
be financially possible, but we should, at the same time, avoid
making the generation of revenue the incentive that would
override the purpose of management. And that, I think, can
easily be done. Right now, we do not really have restoration
plans that are designed to recover what we have lost. There are
many variations and most of them really do not come close to
the historic forest.
If we have a plan that actually says this is specifically
the forest we want to re-create, then commercial incentives are
not going to have any effect on the way you manage it. It is
going to be revenue that is a byproduct of achieving the goal
that has been specified, and the local management Committees
are the most knowledgeable people to provide us with those
plans.
So, I think, by making the plan--crafting the plan more
carefully, we can control whatever incentive might be to use
timber harvesting excessively, which I would not want to see
any more than you would.
Mr. McInnis. Mr. Simpson?
Mr. Simpson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Some people are going
to suggest or be concerned that the goal behind this is to
increase timber harvest on public lands, and it is not. What we
have to do is keep in mind what the goal is. And the goal is
trying to restore our historic forests, and, I guess, Mr.
Holmer, you are not opposed to that; are you?
Mr. Holmer. No, I am not, but I think the issue here is
maybe we have different priorities. We would like to see a
scientific /landscape-wide analysis to figure out what are the
key priorities for each area. Actually, roads for our community
seems to be the biggest environmental hazard out there.
Invasive species in some parts of the country are clearly a
huge threat, and we would propose stronger measures on trade
agreements to keep these new critters from coming into the
country. We do see a need for restoration, but we might go
about it differently.
Mr. Simpson. Well, I guess we have some agreement then,
which is a beginning point, in that we do have a need to
restore these historic forests, and we can disagree on how to
get there, and maybe we can reach some agreement, but I want
you to understand that the goal is restoring the historic
forests. It is not commercial timber harvest, is not anything
like that. If there is another way to do it--if there is
another way that you can restore them and not cut trees, that
is fine with me. I do not care the method. I just want all
available tools to be able to restore the historic forests that
we have. And, just one correction, if someone comes into my
office with three missing teeth, and I tell them that I have
got to take two teeth out in order to pay to replace the three
missing teeth, the fact is, I charge them to take out those
other two, not get money from them. So, I mean, it costs them
more money. So, just a correction on that.
Anyway, let me ask Dr. Bonnicksen, why do we need the local
management Committees in this legislation?
Mr. Bonnicksen. As a scientist and having written a book
that covers 18,000 years of the history of our forests on an
entire continent, you might think that I could actually have
the knowledge to manage every forest on this continent. I would
be the first to tell you I do not, and no scientist does. Every
forest is unique, even within a type, because it is controlled
by local influences, and all of us in science really specialize
in a few forests, and have general knowledge of many. So, that
is also true in terms of the people that lived there.
It turns out that many people, and they do not have to have
degrees to be knowledgeable, have many years of experience with
a particular forest, that when we ignore it, we do so at our
peril. If, by showing respect for them and their knowledge, we
incorporate them into the search for the truth about the forest
history and what is feasible to do there, we will do a much
better and more successful job in management. So, we have to
tap into local knowledge, scientific and practical, to make it
possible to do this, because no one has enough knowledge to do
this everywhere. Local participation is essential.
Not only that, but really it has been studied all over the
world. When we tried, for example, in Africa, to manage
wildlife and restore wildlife--when you ignore those who live
there, you fail. This has been shown in Africa. It has been
shown in South America and Central America. Now ,everyone
agrees that local participation is essential. Otherwise, not
only do you lose the knowledge, but you lose the support of
those who live there, and we need both. However that is
structured administratively is of no importance, really. There
are many people who know better how to do that. But what is
important is that local people participate and share their
knowledge so that we can really be successful.
Mr. Simpson. There seems to be differences between those
people who view this, I guess, as a timber-cutting bill or
whatever, or have different ideas about how to manage a
historic forest, than what is in this legislation. How do we
resolve those differences between these two sides or can we
resolve those differences? Can you create a historic forest by
just doing nothing?
Mr. Bonnicksen. There are a few instances where that would
actually be feasible. The best example I could come up with--
well, actually two examples. One would be the Maple Basswood
Forests on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the Porcupine
Mountains State Wilderness Area. That is a forest that is
primarily influenced by wind. The Native Americans made very
little use of it. It has changed very little over the last
6,000 years, except for an excessive deer population eating
hemlock seedlings, by and large, you could leave it alone.
The High Mountain Balsam Fir Forests in the New England
States, likewise, could be left alone. But, by my calculations,
about 97 percent of the land area occupied by our forests could
not be left alone and successfully restored. The reason for
that is that most of these are fire forests, and since the
arrival of Native Americans in every corner of the lower 48,
12,000 years ago, they increased the fire frequency for a
variety of purposes by doubling it in most cases, and in the
Pacific Northwest, where John lives, they were the principal
source of fire.
So, it seems to me that to leave the forests alone is to
totally ignore its cultural history. I think we have to
recognize in restoring forests the importance of the native
peoples who lived here and who passed on to us the beautiful
forests that we thought were important enough, for example, to
put into the national parks. Their stewardship should be
recognized and their participation should be an essential part
of the process. So, leaving forests alone works in some places,
but in most places, no.
Mr. Simpson. Thank you.
Mr. McInnis. Mr. Otter?
Mr. Otter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Bonnicksen, I would
like to follow up on a couple things that you said earlier,
especially in response to Mr. Holmer's statement about the
economic incentive. The question that I have for you is, you
seem to be relatively familiar with natural resource
extraction, and its cost as national policy; is it usual for
us, when we are managing a natural resource, to see if we have
got a cost versus benefit ratio going, or even when we enjoy
one, let's say, like the Grand Canyon or the Yellowstone
National Park, or even in that matter some oil drilling that we
do or mining that we do--is it usual for us to look for a
revenue source to at least defray part of the cost or all of
the cost of our management?
Mr. Bonnicksen. No, it really is not. It is becoming pretty
expensive to go to a national park nowadays. It used to be a
lot cheaper. That is one thing we are doing. We are generating
revenue from our parks and it seems to be an acceptable thing
to do.
Mr. Otter. Let me expand just a little bit further on that.
If we were to, indeed, restore, as many of Mr. Holmer and his
constituents feel like perhaps we should, the natural process
and the natural size of the forest, do we have--you seem to be
pretty familiar with what the forests used to look like--do we
have a lot of cities to get rid of and a lot town to tear up
and a lot of roads to get rid of?
Mr. Bonnicksen. I certainly hope not. I care about my
fellow human being as much as I care about this forest, so I
certainly do not want to do that.
Mr. Otter. Pardon me for breaking in on you, but you have
come to the heart and to the essence of my point. Indeed, we
are looking for a historic example, and I think that is what I
got out of Mr. Barnett's statement, that a historic example
that we could go and look at and say this is the way it used to
be everywhere, but right now, we have been able to reflect for
ourselves, back on mother nature and the way she prepared for
us, on this small example of the way that it used to be. Isn't
that what we are talking about here?
Mr. Bonnicksen. If small serves the purpose, yes. In some
cases, on the landscape, really require a large area, but yes,
the goal is--I mean, one of my granddaughters looked at me and
said, ``Grandpa, you talk about these old forests,'' and they
sit around and listen to me talk about them, and that is nice
of them to do, ``But where can we go to see one?'' Really, if I
take them somewhere, what I am going to have to say, and
actually when I was a naturalist with the National Park
Service, this is what I did do for 4 years--``See this forest?
Isn't it magnificent? If you just take those trees away, and
these trees away and those trees away, you can kind of
visualize in your mind what it actually looked like.''
Well, that is what we do not want to have to do. We want to
be able to say, see, experience, feel, enjoy, feel the sense of
pride in our country's history. This is what it really looked
like. This is what inspired us to be the people we are.
Mr. Otter. Interestingly enough, we had another hearing
this morning, and it was on invasive and noxious weeds, and the
process that we have across the United States, on all of the
public lands, including the forest, but also the BLM, the
Department of Energy's lands, the Department of Reclamations,
U.S. Fish and Wildlife, and the list went on and on; and that
if we did not do something, we were going to lose the natural
lands and the natural inhabitants on those lands that we did
have, meaning the vegetation.
Mr. Barnett, let me ask you about the Pacific Northwest.
You seem to be the most familiar with that. What would it take
in the Pacific Northwest, in terms of having a natural forests
exhibition, and that is in terms of species and also in terms
of size?
Mr. Barnett. I think that people are going to have to
understand that certain things have to take place in the
landscape, in order to re-create what my ancestors were blessed
with. I will you give you an example of forest fires. Forest
fires are put out nowadays. They cleanse the ground, but what
happens after that takes place? They are automatically
replanted with a monoculture of Douglas Fir or whatever the
predominant commercial species is in the area, by the Forest
Service. We have a golden opportunity, whenever a forest fire
takes place and is put out, to take that piece of land and do
just exactly what this bill is intended to do, replant it the
way mother nature put it there, or, as we say as Native
Americans, the way the Creator put it there, for our use, not
only for beauty, but also for use and understanding.
It can be done. It has to be replanted anyway. I would
imagine that Mr. Holmer would say--what are you going to do?
Let mother nature take its place? When the seed source is gone,
what is going to happen? Are you ever going to have trees
again? I question that. But we do have that opportunity after
all forest fires from now on, to put this bill in place, to
begin building those ancient forests that we once had covering
the United States. I hope I have answered your question.
Mr. Otter. Thank you very much. You have, sir.
Mr. McInnis. Excuse me. I need to wrap this panel up. I do
have one other question, Doctor, that came across to me as we
were listening. There was a claim made in a previous statement
that restoration science is still in its infancy, and that we
really do not know enough to act yet. Tell me, and make your
comments succinct, if you would, at what stage do we have that
science and what is your response to that we should not act
until, I guess, we get to a more advanced stage?
Mr. Bonnicksen. The truth is we are talking about forests,
and forestry is a profession that is 400 years old, and it
originated in Europe. In that 400 years, forestry has developed
into a very sophisticated science, but throughout, the roots of
forestry are observations of nature and developing techniques
to manage forests that mimic the way forests work, naturally.
That is, all of our regeneration techniques, single-tree
harvesting, group-selection cutting--we have a whole list of
names for these techniques--all of them mimic natural forest
processes.
So, no, restoration is not new. We have been using the
forest as a model for management for four centuries and we have
gotten to the point where we can predict very well precisely
what the outcome of our management will be. I think what has
probably happened is that some people have seen the creation of
the Society for Ecological Restoration, of which I am one of
the founders, in the late 1980's, as the starting point of our
knowledge of restoration, which it was not. In fact, it was a
society that was created to bring together thousands of people
throughout the world, who have been doing this for a very long
time, in a professional society with two scientific journals.
So, the creation of that society, I think, has led people
to believe that this is a new science when, in fact, it was the
culmination of many, many years of work. We have a very
extensive literature on particular forests throughout the
Nation on what they look like and how best to manage them. So,
no, it is not in its infancy. We are at a point where we can
act and act with confidence. There are forests for which we
need more knowledge, that is one other reason for the local
Committee, but I think we are well-prepared to carry out what
this act intends.
Mr. Holmer. Mr. Chairman, can I comment?
Mr. McInnis. No. Thank you, Doctor. I find the statement
well informed.
Mr. Holmer, I am not going to make it a practice, as
Chairman, of bouncing back and forth. You have been given your
time allotment, and then we go around, as you know, to the
panel members to ask questions. However, I am going to grant a
waiver. It is my understanding, Mr. Barnett, that you have a
film clip. I have received a request from a member of the
Committee to allow you to show that clip, which I understand is
very short in time. We will not take questions following. Is
that correct, that you brought a clip?
Mr. Barnett. Yes, well, initially--well, it is a short
story, but let me tell you. Two years ago, I went on a vision
quest in the Olympic National Forest to seek answers to this
forest progress problem. I got answers from my Tamanawas. That
led me to Washington, D.C., in a meeting with Doug, and Lloyd
Jones, who incidentally was raised one-quarter mile from where
I was, and I decided my frustration, I could not hold any
longer.
Out of my own pocket, I hired a crew to go out and put on
tape the truth, the visual truth, of what is really happening
to our forests in the Pacific Northwest. I would challenge the
environmental community, and I would ask this Committee, at
some time this summer, come on out and I will show you. I will
show you exactly what I have said. The proof is in the pudding,
and I can prove every word that I told you people today.
Doug has put together just a couple of minutes on this
video. I think it will emphasize some of the things, and if you
do not mind, Mr. Chairman, I will kind of just ad lib as we go
along, so you can to get the visual look and hear exactly what
is going on.
Mr. McInnis. Mr. Barnett, let me tell you that in fairness
to the other people who have been limited to 5 minutes, I am
granting you this additional time because you have come clear
across the country to testify. I do not want this narration to
continue. I want to see the clip very briefly. You may make a
couple of comments and then we need to summarize. Otherwise, I
have to reopen it for every other witness, which I do not
intend to do.
Mr. Barnett. Understood.
Mr. McInnis. So, you may proceed with the tape.
Mr. Barnett. This is the remains of an eight-foot Douglas
Fir, 240 feet tall, that died a natural death. Its obituary was
in the Aberdeen World. It rotted from the inside out and hit
the ground. It was replaced by these Western Hemlock trees that
you see around the stump of another old-growth fir that also
died a natural death. These hemlocks are about 60 years of age.
The species that I was telling you that is taking over our
forests. Here is another example of those Western Hemlocks.
They are so thick that we refer to them in the Pacific
Northwest as the dog-hair stands, because there are a thousand
to the acre sometimes.
You will notice here that as you view the landscape, you
see one or two old-growth trees left. All the other ones are
the replacement by Western Hemlock of that one stand of mixed
species. I might add that this is something that did not start
10 or 15 years ago. Some of these Western Hemlocks that you see
are second-growth Hemlocks that were not planted. They came in
naturally and some of them are 60 or 70 years old.
Here are some of the old-growth that are still left there.
Many of the old-growth have the tops blown out of them during
wind storms. What happens--here is another example of a Douglas
Fir. If you look at this Douglas Fir that has naturally hit the
ground, you will notice that at the very end of it there is a
gentleman helping with the filming. You see him walking up that
tree. He is up there about 200 feet walking toward the stump.
But look at the stump. That is what is happening. It is
rotting. It is a cancer of the tree, just like humans have
cancer. Notice all around him the smaller trees. Those are all
Western Hemlock, part of this monoculture takeover that I was
telling you about. There is another view of it from a different
angle. This tree was about, I would say, almost seven feet in
diameter and it was about 250-to-260 feet tall. It did not have
the top blown out of it, like a lot of them. It just died a
natural death from the stump.
Mr. McInnis. I think we have reached the--is that the end
of it?
Mr. Barnett. Thank you.
Mr. McInnis. Thank you. I would like to thank the panel. I
know that you have traveled a great distance to present your
testimony. I appreciate the courtesy of you appearing in front
of the Committee. Thank you very much. The panel is dismissed.
Ms. Collins, our third panel, Associate Deputy Chief with
the National Forest System. Welcome back to the Committee. If
you would go ahead and take your place at the table. Ms.
Collins, you are aware of the rules of the Committee in regards
to your testimony. You may proceed.
STATEMENT OF SALLY COLLINS, ASSOCIATE DEPUTY CHIEF, NATIONAL
FOREST SYSTEM, USDA FOREST SERVICE
Ms. Collins. Thank you. I am delighted to be here. The
comments I offer today are the administration's comments on
H.R. 2119, and I can say right now that, Mr. Simpson, you are
going to get rich dialogue around this topic. The
administration supports the fundamental idea behind this bill;
that is, that there is a need to restore some forests to what
approximates their historic condition. We recognize that
significant components of the biodiversity that once existed in
pre-European forests have changed over time, even in forest
ecosystems that have never been subject to active management.
The intense wildfires last summer focused attention on the
fact that, in many parts of the West, open Ponderosa Pine
forests that once were subject to frequent, low-intensity fire,
have been replaced by dense forests now subject to intense,
stand-replacing forests. Another change is the substantial loss
of the aspen component in the higher elevation areas of the
West, perhaps exceeding a 50 percent loss since the 1930's.
Many other examples can be cited, such as expansion of forests
into grassland areas.
So, we recognize the importance of seeking to restore such
systems where it is both appropriate and possible to do this,
and we know, clearly, that no action, as Dr. Bonnicksen said,
is a decision in these dynamic ecosystems. There are costs and
there are consequences associated with every choice that we
make. In fact, much of the work that we are currently doing on
national forest lands could be categorized as ecosystem
restoration work, and let me just give you a few examples.
Under the National Fire Plan and the cohesive strategy, we
are seeking to reduce excessive fuel loadings in Western
Ponderosa Pine stands so that we can introduce controlled fire.
We are restoring open Longleaf Pine systems to the South to
sustain unique ecological communities that they support. Under
our national large-scale watershed project initiative, we are
seeking to preserve functioning riparian systems and other key
watershed values by working in cooperation with local
communities and other groups. Through a system of 88
experimental forests designated by the Chief of the Forest
Service, we are exploring a lot of ideas.
Real close to my home in Bend, Oregon, we created what we
call the turn-of-the-century forests in one of these
experimental forests, in partnership with our research
community, to re-create these open, park-like Ponderosa Pine
stands that where so prevalent in the late 1800's. These stands
stand in stark contrast to the second-growth, dense stands
adjacent to the project. Then there are the forest stewardship
pilot projects, created by the 1999 and 2001 Appropriations
Act. Most of those are restoration projects. We have researched
natural areas. We have adaptive management areas. We research
demonstration areas. We have a plethora of these kind of areas
where we are trying lots of different things across the
landscape on national forests.
Our involvement with communities and the public is more
active than ever, in large part due to the creation of advisory
Committees throughout the West. We know about Section 205 as
the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act
was created, and we are in the process of setting those
advisory Committees up. In some other parts of the country,
like the Pacific Northwest, we have advisory councils that are
part of managing the Northwest Forest Plan. Finally, a lot of
other special designations, like monuments, have advisory
Committees, as well.
So, all of these authorities taken together are bringing
people to focus on the restoration of our national forests. So,
in our brief review of this legislation, we have identified
several factors that we need to talk about as we move forward,
and these include three or four things. We have got to talk
about the scientific considerations for basing restoration on
pre-European conditions. These are choices we make. What year
do we manage for? Second, the level of review and oversight
needed to make decisions about the management of National
Forest System land; third, the inclusion of other specially-
designated areas for consideration. I talked about some of
those. Finally, the interplay between these land management
plans and the historic plans that are talked about in the bill.
So, in conclusion, H.R. 2119 appears to have very similar
objectives with our current management. I do want to emphasize,
however, the restoration activities, whether they take place
under this proposed bill, if it is enacted, are still subject
to detailed analyses, and those must withstand administrative
and judicial review. We support the goal of restoring our
forests to sustainable conditions and we look forward to
working with you further on this. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Collins follows:]
Statement of Sally Collins, Associate Deputy Chief, Forest Service,
U.S. Department of Agriculture
Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, thank you for the
opportunity to appear before you today. I am Sally Collins, Associate
Deputy Chief for the National Forest System, USDA Forest Service. My
comments today represent the views of the Department of Agriculture on
H.R. 2119, a bill to establish a program to designate, restore, and
sustain historic native forests on national forest system lands, and
for other purposes.
The Administration supports the worthwhile goal that H.R. 2119
embraces, but is still reviewing the bill. The Administration has
serious concerns regarding the bill's fiscal impact--- specifically,
the bill's use of Outer Continental Shelf revenues to fund the National
Historic Forest Restoration Fund--- and the development of additional
planning requirements. As soon as the Administration completes its
review of the bill, we will communicate those concerns to the
Committee. We welcome a discussion with the Committee and others on the
important concepts proposed in this legislation.
H.R. 2119, National Historic Forests Act of 2001
Title I of the National Historic Forests Act of 2001 directs the
Secretary of Agriculture to designate certain national forest system
lands as historic forests. These forests are to be, or after reasonable
restoration will be, representative of prehistoric or historic
landscapes significant in the history and culture of the United States.
These forests are to be restored and maintained over time through
methods including timber management activities, plant and animal
control, grazing, and prescribed fire.
Title II of the bill directs the Secretary to establish an Advisory
Council on Forest Restoration that would make recommendations to the
Secretary. These recommendations would include designation and
restoration of national historic forests; review and approval of
management plans; coordination needs with other Federal, state, and
local entities; and study needs. In addition, the council would prepare
an annual report to Congress, undertake forest restoration educational
efforts, and prepare and submit a budget concurrently to OMB, the
Department, and Congress as a related agency of the Department of
Agriculture. The council would appoint a Director, who would appoint a
General Counsel, and up to three additional staff that would report to
the council. In addition, the council may request administrative
support from the Department or contract with government or the private
sector for supplies and services.
Title III of the bill directs the Advisory Council on Forest
Restoration, in consultation with the Secretary, to establish local
management advisory committees for national historic forests. The
duties of the advisory committees are to recommend additional national
historic forests to the Secretary and council; document the relevant
reference forest; prepare management plans for the historic forests;
monitor and assess the effectiveness of restoration activities; conduct
studies; provide advice regarding forest restoration; encourage public
interest and participation in forest restoration; keep state and local
governments, Tribes, and private parties informed of the activities of
the committee; and prepare annual reports.
The bill provides that the Federal Advisory Committee Act would not
apply to the council or committee. The bill also provides for payment
of $200 per day for council members and reimbursement of travel
expenses for members of both the council and the local committees.
Existing Authorities
Authorities for the Forest Service to manage vegetation for a wide
variety of multiple uses currently exist. These authorities include the
Forest and Rangeland Renewable Resources Planning Act and the National
Forest Management Act. These statutes also require the Forest Service
to involve the public in defining desirable forest conditions that
integrate resources across the landscape.
We also have authority to try some new approaches in implementing
forest stewardship and restoration projects. Congress, in the fiscal
year 1999 Interior Appropriations Act as amended by the fiscal year
2001 Interior Appropriations Act, authorized 56 stewardship end result
contracts that allow private contractors to perform services to achieve
land management goals for national forests that meet local and rural
community needs. This pilot authority authorizes the exchange of goods
for services, retention of receipts, and awarding of contracts on a
``best value'' basis.
Last fall Congress passed the Secure Rural Schools and Community
Self-Determination Act of 2000. This important legislation recognized,
among other things, the need to improve cooperative relationships among
the people that use and care for Federal lands and the agencies that
manage these lands. Section 205 of this Act establishes resource
advisory committees to improve collaborative relationships and to
provide advice and recommendations to the land management agencies on
restoration and enhancement projects. We hope to have many of the
resource advisory committees established and functioning in their role
by October 1.
We feel these authorities will assist us in bringing people
together to focus on restoring the sustainable condition of our
forests.
Analysis
H.R. 2119 appears to have a similar objective of bringing people
together at the local level to focus on the stewardship needs of our
national forests. We appreciate this effort to explore new ways to
build support for restoration of our national forests. Forest
restoration activities are a priority in the Forest Service.
Restoration activities, whether taking place under existing authorities
or under H.R. 2119 if enacted, are subject to detailed analyses, and
those decisions must then withstand administrative and judicial review.
The Administration supports the goal of restoring our forests to a
sustainable condition. We would appreciate an opportunity to work with
the committee to discuss how H.R. 2119 might be improved to complement
the programs that the agency currently administers, while addressing
the Administration's concerns.
In our brief review of this legislation, we have identified several
factors to consider as we proceed forward. These include the following:
LScientific considerations for basing restoration on pre-
European settlement conditions;
LThe levels of review and oversight needed to make
decisions about management of national forest system land;
LThe inclusion or exclusion of other specially designated
areas from consideration; and
LThe interplay between land management plans and historic
forests restoration plans.
Forest Service Research and Development has designated 88
experimental forests across the country. In addition, over 450 research
natural areas have been established on national forest system lands.
Some of these areas might provide opportunities to work with the
scientific community to pilot-test some of the bill's concepts. We
would like to explore these and other opportunities with the Committee
as it considers this issue.
This concludes my testimony. I would be happy to answer any
questions that you may have.
______
Mr. McInnis. Thank you, Ms. Collins.
Mr. Simpson?
Mr. Simpson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Ms.
Collins, for your testimony. I appreciate it. As I said in my
opening statement, this is meant to be a working draft and I
look forward to working with the administration to try to
address the concerns that you have. I understand that you have
got to have a place to start, but as I understand from your
testimony, it appears that the administration is supportive of
the goals of restoring our historic forests.
You mentioned one of the concerns being the interplay
between different management plans and the management plan that
would occur here once a forest is designated as a historic
forest; can that work between current forest planning and
historic forests?
Ms. Collins. Sure, it can work. What we have got to do is
coincide planning timelines and review timelines so that we are
not creating more bureaucracy. We just need to be careful that
we do not do that. There are ways that we can wrap ideas, like
historic forests, into our land management planning process.
There are a lot of opportunities to talk about what we can do
here.
Mr. Simpson. Good. Does the administration have any problem
with the funding that is in this legislation?
Ms. Collins. I think that there are a whole lot of things
we have got to balance in terms of priorities. We support
restoration 100 percent, and we are trying to do it in a lot of
different ways, but there are a lot of concerns that we still
have to explore in the funding area.
Mr. Simpson. Well, I look forward to working with you and
the administration to try to address these concerns. Like I
say, we can look at all alternatives. One of my main concerns
when I came to this hearing today was that some people would
see this as legislation to somehow allow for cutting the
forests that would not otherwise occur; that this would be a
smoke screen for timber harvest and commercial harvests or
whatever. I do not know how you get around some people's
perception of that, but I will assure you that the goal of this
legislation is to restore our historic forests.
It was interesting, when I was out in Idaho just 2 weeks
ago, one of the forest supervisors out there showed me some
pictures that they had taken--that he found that were taken
around the turn-of-the-century, around 1900; and they had gone
back and taken some pictures from the same spot, and the
computer would line them up. We have a tendency to think that
everything pre-European was just thick timber all over the
place, and somehow that we have destroyed all of this. But the
reality was, if you compare these three or four pictures, the
forest was much thinner, with much more diversity, back in 1900
than it is today, and there are a lot more trees in that place
today than there was back then.
That is one of the reasons that we allow for harvesting
when necessary, in order to thin out the forest, so that we can
get the diversity of species and so forth, or whatever means we
can use to achieve that. Otherwise, as was mentioned by Mr.
Barnett, we are going to have a monoculture of trees in
different forests that overtake them. As I said, I look forward
to working with you on this. Thank you.
Ms. Collins. That is great.
Mr. McInnis. Mr. Otter?
Mr. Otter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much for
your testimony, Ms. Collins.
Ms. Collins. You are welcome.
Mr. Otter. I have got a question on this 88 experimental
forests; why 88? Why not 188 or 48?
Ms. Collins. They are continually being created, as
researchers are looking at the landscape of the kind of issues
that we need to explore and experiment. So, they just represent
a variety of problems and ecosystem types across the landscape.
Some of them involve grasslands.
Mr. Otter. How soon are we going to have some results on
these?
Ms. Collins. We have a lot of results from a lot of them.
All of them are doing things right now. I happen to have
managed one of them, so I am aware of the kinds of things that
are going on in our experimental force. It is just a variety of
things. We look at different ways to prescribe burn, different
intensities. We look at different ways to thin. It gives you a
lot of opportunities to explore different ways to manage for
wildlife species, habitat. And then the research, the
partnership with research, they continually write up their
findings. All of that is available. There is a lot of good
information there.
Mr. Otter. It has been suggested, and I think you were here
during the previous testimony, that it would be--as Mr. Simpson
has also suggested during his question and answering--that
perhaps this was seen as a smoke screen, in order to actually
commercialize the process of management, commercialize the
process, which does not frighten me. I have lived out West,
where we have to live with our environment, and our environment
includes people, and our environment includes a real economy
that we have to deal with.
But, I wonder why we could not establish, if, indeed, that
was a problem, why don't these funds just go directly into the
U.S. Treasury, and the U.S. Treasury, then, is the one that
gains by it? Otherwise, I guess we could just give it away to
the log mills and to the lumber mills, and to the paper mills,
but could we not establish a policy, if this was the big
holdup, that the money just went right straight into the
Treasury and bypassed the trust and bypassed the forestry
trust?
Ms. Collins. So, you are talking about an alternative to
the salvage fund? Is that what you are proposing?
Mr. Otter. Yes.
Ms. Collins. We could talk about that. I think the deeper
issue here is what we are really doing on the landscape. I
think that is the deeper issue, and what we have to do is be in
complete integrity on our goals and objectives for that
treatment on the land. Whether or not you pay somebody to
remove trees or they pay us to take them, or something in
between; volunteers, our own crews, whatever it is to
accomplish the objectives that we set out for treating that
landscape, to me, that is the key. I have said to this
Committee before, having a local advisory Committee has been a
wonderful thing for me as a manager, because there is built-in
oversight and review of people who really understand and care
about communities, part of that process that brings that
integrity and understanding. I think it is really important
that that is sort of the underpinning. It is not so much where
the money flows that is an incentive. It is what we are doing
on the land that matters.
Mr. Otter. I know, but that is what seems to be holding up
a broad-based support.
Ms. Collins. Right.
Mr. Otter. From one of the previous panelists and the folks
that reside in his community of thought--is where that money
goes. As far as I am concerned, I do not think it is that
important, because they want us on the welfare system anyway,
it appears. So let's get on the welfare system. In fact, I have
suggested in this Committee several times that maybe what we
ought to do, is we have got 35 million acres, 21.5 million
acres of forests in Idaho, and if these other citizens from
these other States would simply pay their tax bill, then we
would not have a problem with it.
But you see right now, the Forest Service only pays in the
State of Idaho 80 cents an acre, whereas Potlatch and
Weyerhauser, and all those profit-mongers, pay $8.80 an acre. I
would be satisfied with their management plan, if it is just
for the commercialization side of it, just have them pay their
tax bill, as well. Of course, I am not sure the Forest Service
would appreciate that.
Ms. Collins. Do you want me to comment on that?
Mr. Otter. I would only mention to you that the $16 million
that we get right now would turn into well over $127 million
just for our taxes that we should be receiving off of the
Federal ground. Thank you.
Ms. Collins. You bet.
Mr. McInnis. That concludes the testimony. Ms. Collins, I
appreciate very much your time. As usual, you are welcome to
the Committee.
Ms. Collins. Thank you.
Mr. McInnis. I also, once again, want to thank our
participants that still remain. Thank you for making the effort
to travel as you have to present testimony to the Committee.
To Mr. Simpson, Mr. Simpson, I ask that you continue to
plow ahead. I think this is an excellent bill. I thought
today's hearing was very informative, although I found myself
distracted at times, reading your book, Doctor. Perhaps I
should pay attention to what I am doing.
Mr. Simpson. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for holding
this hearing, and we will continue to work on it. Again, I want
to reemphasize with everyone that if they have ideas,
suggestions, from both the minority side, the majority side, or
from the general public, please come and give us your
suggestions and talk to us about what we need to do to make
this work, because I think the goal that we hopefully all want
to achieve is there.
Mr. McInnis. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Simpson. The
Committee now stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:15 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
The following items were submitted for the record:
1. LLetter from Bryan Bird, Executive Director, Forest
Conservation Council
2. LLetter from Mary Chapman, Executive Director,
Forest Stewards Guild
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