Bush proposes easing rules for forest-thinning
Date: 13-Dec-02
Country: USA
Author: Randall Mikkelsen
"With these tools we will leave the future generations a legacy of healthy forests, safer communities, and a quality environment," U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman said in announcing the proposals at the White House.
Environmental groups and a pro-environment Democrat called the proposals a setback, and said logging companies would exploit the relaxed measures to commercially harvest timber under the guise of forest-thinning projects.
They said the proposals came from an administration bolstered by Republican mid-term election victories and determined to push through an anti-environment agenda.
"By shutting the public out and promoting more logging, the Bush administration is leaving communities at risk from forest fires," said Carl Pope, Sierra Club executive director.
Under the proposal, projects for cutting down small trees and underbrush to reduce fire risk could bypass requirements for environmental impact statements, if they are similar to hundreds of previous projects found environmentally benign.
The primary purpose of the projects must be to reduce fuel rather than commercially harvest timber, and all projects in wilderness areas would still be required to have impact statements, the administration proposal said.
Administration officials said impact statements were time consuming and sometimes counter-productive if fires broke out while thinning plans were being considered.
The new rules would eliminate an automatic delay granted in the case of challenged forest projects - thus allowing logging to go ahead while appeals are considered unless a challenger wins a stay. It would require appeals to be heard quickly and decided within 60 days.
The measures are based on a Bush administration initiative begun after this year's devastating Western wildfires, which burned 7.1 million acres, killed 21 firefighters and destroyed more than 2,000 buildings.
The administration said the fires were made worse by an "unnatural" buildup of fuels - small trees, brush and fallen timber - stemming from a century of efforts to quickly extinguish all forest fires. It said some 190 million acres of public lands and nearby communities face an increased risk of extreme fires.
"We want a healthy, strong, environmentally friendly forest with good habitat for our species," Veneman said.
Bush in August proposed legislation also aimed at revising forest management practices, but that stalled in Congress.
The Sierra Club said it favored a more focused approach to expediting thinning projects, limiting the relaxed rules to areas near communities threatened by potential wildfires.
U.S. Rep. George Miller, a California Democrat, said Bush was ignoring efforts to form a bipartisan consensus on forest regulations.
He said the proposal was only the latest in a number of post-election administration moves this year to weaken air quality rules and increase logging in public forests.
"Obviously President Bush has interpreted the recent elections as a mandate to pollute, cut and drill," he said.
