[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 17 (Friday, January 27, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1688-S1690]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
WESTERN FOREST HEALTH INITIATIVE
Mr. BURNS. Mr. President, I want to bring up a situation that caught
my eye.
Day before yesterday I received a copy of an Associated Press article
that exposed a previously unreleased
[[Page S1689]] Forest Service document, now being referred to as
``Phase I of The Western Forest Health Initiative.''
This report was internally submitted September 30, 1994, about the
time the agency said it would release its final report to the public.
The final report, however, was not released until December, and it was
watered down considerably. It is called phase 2.
The difference between the two documents is remarkable and it appears
to demonstrate the difference between how Forest Service scientists--in
other words, the professional land managers, especially in the Forest
Service--view forest health and how this administration sees it.
The phase I report in every way was more aggressive and emphasizes a
much greater sense of urgency than the report that was finally released
to the public. Phase I contains about 70 different recommendations on
overcoming impediments and barriers to achieving good forest health
goals and lists scores of specific actions needed to address those
concerns. It identified work to be done on almost 5 million acres of
U.S. Forest Service lands. The new document, phase II, is more of a
discussion document than a policy document. It recommended projects
covering only half a million acres of land--projects that were already
planned for and would have been done regardless of this initiative. So
phase II proposes to remove barriers without clearly stating what they
are and it disregards some very significant problems that the forests
have completely.
So, Mr. President, I think this action is flagrant. It undermines the
honest and serious attempts of the land managers to deal with forest
health problems by the Forest Service. It is of extreme concern to the
people of my State and others in the West, who fought the 67,000
wildfires last summer--that burned 4 million acres, and it cost 26
lives. If we trail those back as to what caused the fires and how we
could have controlled them, it goes back almost entirely to dealing
with forest health issues.
I ask unanimous consent that a summary of the original Western Forest
Health Initiative, dated September 30, 1994, along with an Associated
Press article, dated January 25, 1995, be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Executive Summary
Healthy resilient forests are important for sustaining
ecosystems, including the needs and values of humans.
Currently, many of our national forested ecosystems are
under stress and are unhealthy, meaning they cannot sustain
their inherent complexity while providing for human needs.
The problem with forest health is not confined to any single
region of the country. Some eastern and southern forested
ecosystems are challenged with considerable and complex
forest health problems. However, the nation's attention is
focused on western forested ecosystems, where the scale and
magnitude of the problems are greatest, and where the loss of
life, property, and resources from catastrophic wildfires
have heightened the public's awareness.
To address the western forest health problem, the Chief of
the Forest Service chartered an interdisciplinary team of 14
members from all organizational levels to identify Forest
Service priority activities that can move towards restoring
western forested ecosystem health across National Forest
System and contiguous other land ownerships. The Team was
asked to identify and recommend solutions to barriers and
impediments that block or impede the accomplishment of
restoration activities. The focus was on assessing the
problems in our western forests, and then charting an
ecosystem approach, emphasizing projects that restore,
protect, or enhance ecosystem health. The Team's task did not
include addressing burned area recovery and restoration.
Rather it looked at actions that would work towards restoring
forested systems, to reduce the risks of future catastrophic
losses.
As part of this process, the Team did extensive outreach
and shareholder sensing, personally contacting over 40
members of Congress, 30 non-governmental organizations, other
federal agencies, tribes, the Western Council of State
Foresters, Washington, Regional, and Northeast Area staffs,
Forest Service Research Stations, and 92 western Forest
Supervisors.
The data gathered in this intensive effort was compiled
into two automated electronic data bases: one for projects
and program level data from the National Forests and State
Foresters; the other containing over 1,100 comments on
barriers, impediments and proposed changes in management
direction, policy, or law. Content analysis and synthesis was
conducted by the Team. It resulted in an identification of
the magnitude of planned and needed work. Over 70
recommendations were developed for changes that are needed to
overcome impediments.
Key findings estimate that over the next two years, there
are approximately 5 million acres of treatment opportunities
that restore forested ecosystem health. In addition, there is
a significant amount of ecosystem analysis needed in support
of future forest health projects.
Not all forests are unhealthy, nor can we treat or restore
all forests that are unhealthy. To facilitate management
decisions and move towards implementation, the team developed
a framework for prioritizing projects and budget needs that
contains biological, physical and human components. In using
it, managers will both be able to identify high priorities
for management, as well as get a sense for the level of
public acceptance and likelihood for successful
implementation.
Recommendations for changes that are needed centered into
the following key areas: changes to improve the effectiveness
and efficiency of the National Environmental Protection Act;
appeals, and consultation processes; increased budget and
funding flexibility, with a focus on increasing carryover and
multi-funding approaches to support multiple resource
projects; comprehensive review of legislation, regulations,
and policies to remove inconsistencies and conflicting
direction, new ways to get the job done on the ground, such
as land management services contracts and competitive inter-
agency grants; a greater commitment to truly working in
partnerships with other federal agencies, States, tribes, and
neighboring landowners in addressing forest health problems
that cross our boundaries; and better frameworks, protocols
and education and training for tying integrated inventories,
assessments and planning into more holistic and integrated
systems.
Forest health problems are national in scope. Lasting
solutions that can only be achieved by shared conservation
leadership toward common goals and land conditions. This will
require cooperative efforts and shared vision by the
Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of the federal
government, as well as by our varied and many cooperators
from the private and public sectors. There are no easy or
short-term cures for forest health problems that have
developed over a span of the past century.
____
[From the Associated Press, Jan. 25, 1995]
Document Shows Clinton Forest-Health Plan addresses Only Part of
Problem
(By Scott Sonner)
Washington.--Agriculture Undersecretary Jim Lyons says the
administration's Western forest health plan tackles only a
portion of the acres needing treatment and will be fortified
with additional projects in coming years.
``This was not a one-shot deal,'' Lyons said in a telephone
interview Tuesday night.
``There is a lot of work to be done on the forests, a lot
of opportunities to improve on their health,'' he said.
Lyons responded to criticism from the timber industry after
a Forest Service document disclosed Tuesday indicated the
Clinton administration's plan to reduce wildfire threats
addresses only about one-fifth of the 5 million acres a
Forest Service team identified as needing treatment.
The Forest Service's Western Forest Health Initiative Team
advocated a broader, speedier effort to remove dead timber
and otherwise reduce the amount of fuel in national forests,
according to a copy of the team's report obtained by The
Associated Press.
``Based on field responses, work was identified for
completion over the two years covering approximately 5
million acres on national forests in the West,'' the team
wrote in its Sept. 30 report to Forest Service Chief Jack
Ward Thomas.
``In addition there is a significant amount of ecosystem
analysis needed in support of future forest health projects .
. . . Time is critical,'' the team said.
Critics in the timber industry said the team's report
indicates the administration watered down the scientists'
recommendations before launching the new strategy last month.
``The difference between them is what the Forest Service
wanted and what the administration wanted,'' said Doug
Crandall, vice president for public forestry at the American
Forest & Paper Association.
The team's report ``in every sense was more aggressive,
substantial, specific and urgent than the final report,'' he
said.
The Agriculture Department's plan calls for 330 health-
restoration projects on approximately 1 million acres of
national forests over the next two years.
The projects include plans to obliterate some old logging
roads and restore fish habitat as well as remove dead, burned
wood and thin bug-infested forests where fuel loads pose a
threat.
The salvage logging and thinning is controversial because
environmentalists and some forest scientists say the cutting
does more harm than good to a forest ecosystem.
Conservationists also point to past cases where the Forest
Service used salvage logging as a guise to cut large, live
trees without jumping through the hoops of as many
environmental regulations.
``The team gave us a wide range of projects,'' Lyons said
Tuesday.
[[Page S1690]] ``They instructed us in the first phase to
do those the team thought would have a high likelihood of
being implemented and that were less controversial and would
demonstrate we can get some of these projects done on the
ground,'' he said.
``There's nothing to hide. There was no scrubbing. It was
important to gain the confidence of both the industry and the
environmental community that our forest health initiative
was intended to improve the health of forest ecosystems
and not simply to generate timber,'' Lyons said.
Some lawmakers have proposed exempting some salvage logging
operations from the normal environmental requirements in an
effort to expedite the cutting before the dead wood loses its
market value.
Senator Larry Craig, R-Idaho, chairman of the Senate
Agriculture subcommittee on forestry, is preparing a forest
health bill that may adopt some of the team's
recommendations, his spokesman David Fish said Tuesday.
The 5 million acres identified by the Forest Service team
includes 1.3 million acres in need of fuel reduction and 1
million acres in need of ``vegetation treatments,'' including
``commercial harvest, salvage . . . commercial thinning,
commercial thinning . . . firewood.''
The team also identified 1 million acres for soil and
watershed work, 400,000 acres of ``combination treatments,''
which could include some prescribed burning, and another 1.1
million acres of other projects ranging from educational
projects to seeding and fertilization.
In addition, the team addressed two other controversial
areas that did not show up in the final initiative--reform of
U.S. environmental laws and below-cost timber sales.
In addition to coming up with ways to reform the National
Environmental Policy Act, the team recommended the Forest
Service return the agency's administrative appeals process to
exempt some salvage logging from the appeals that
environmentalists have used to block such harvests.
The team warned that efforts to do away with so-called
``below-cost timber sales''--logging operations that cost
more to offer than the revenue they return--could harm forest
health programs.
Ann Bartuska, the Forest Service's director of forest pest
management who led the forest health team, said the USDA plan
``was not intended to be a comprehensive look at forest
health; it was a snapshot.
``It was a subset of the total package,'' she said. ``We
thought it was important to get started on some of these.''
Bartuska said the 5 million-acre estimate was based on
1,900 project sites that regional and forest supervisors
``rapidly identified on the first go-round.'' The 330
projects in the USDA plan represent the supervisors' top
priorities and will cover an estimated 1 million acres, she
said.
Mr. BURNS. Mr. President, for the benefit of any interested Senators,
I have a copy of the entire Phase I initiative in my office. I would be
happy to let them read it.
I also thank the Senators and the managers of the unfunded mandates
bill. It is a terrific day. I think it is a victory for not only the
States but the people of America.
I yield the floor.
Mr. KERREY addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nebraska [Mr. Kerrey] is
recognized.
____________________