George W. Bush signs the Healthy Forests Restoration Act in 2003. Photo courtesy U.S. Department of Interior.
In the 1980s and 1990s, environmental groups were remarkably successful at setting the agenda for the nation’s public forest policy. Thanks to environmental pressure, national forest timber sale offerings declined from 11 billion board feet in 1990 to 1.7 billion board feet in 2000.
With passage of the Healthy Forests Restoration Act in 2003, however, the players in federal forest debates experienced a reversal of fortunes as timber advocates seemingly won out over environmentalists. In George W. Bush’s Healthy Forests: Reframing the Environmental Debate (University Press of Colorado, 2005), authors Jacqueline Vaughn and Hanna J. Cortner attribute this reversal to President Bush and western Republican members of Congress who joined the issues of administrative appeals and wildfires, effectively blaming environmental appeals of hazard-reduction projects for the size and scope of fires since 2000.
George W. Bush’s Healthy Forests reads like a textbook for political activists, arguing that the most important part of any political strategy is to craft a simple, persuasive message that demonizes opponents while it points to your preferred policy as the only solution to major problems. Vaughn and Cortner note that, having won this battle over forest policy, congressional Republicans have attempted to use the same strategy of blaming environmentalists to promote their agendas on grazing, energy, mining and other issues.
The authors analyze the appeals issue in excruciating detail and present evidence that environmental appeals did not contribute to large fires. But, as usual in politics, rhetoric won out over reality as western Republicans blamed those appeals as a part of their strategy for exempting future hazard-reduction projects from such appeals.
Although this book is interesting, its authors leave out or barely mention many important factors specific to the healthy forests debate that may not be replicated in other areas of controversy. First was the issue of timing: Bush took office just as a major drought gripped the West. It was this drought, as much as anything, that led to the large fires of 2000 and 2002. By ignoring the drought, western Republicans were able to pin the blame on their enemies, the environmentalists. But this coincidence of timing may not be transferable to energy, mineral, grazing or other issues.
A second point is that the environmental movement in 2003 was very different from the one that dominated U.S. Forest Service policy in the early 1990s. During the 1980s, major environmental groups received most of their funds from members of the public, and therefore had to stay in touch with the opinions of the masses. In the 1990s, however, foundation grants became the major source of funding for many groups, meaning those groups were crafting their messages for foundation directors, not the general public. As a result, the environmental movement eventually forgot how to respond to its critics with persuasive thirty-second sound bites.
Partly because they were out of touch, environmentalists were never able to settle on a consistent theme during the debate. Some wanted to say that fire suppression was the culprit behind recent large fires, but that seemed to invite support for the Bush view that hazardous fuels reduction was needed. Others blamed timber cutting that left forests more vulnerable to fire. Still others tried to say fires were simply the result of drought.
As a result, environmentalists ended up with a mixed message: Fire was good because it was natural, but fire suppression was bad because it led to too much fire. Too much fire was bad because it burned down homes. But the solution was more fire, which reduced forest fuels. Anyone not confused by this point would be totally bewildered by the final conclusion that it was acceptable to reduce fuels by natural fire but not by deliberate programs to remove fuels from the forest.
Those who support sound ecosystem management can hope that environmentalists will learn the lesson Vaughn and Cortner are trying to teach. But another issue they fail to examine is whether the Healthy Forests Act really accomplished the goals its proponents sought. Did it lead to any increase in commercial timber sales? Were the funds it authorized used to reduce fire hazards and protect homes and other structures? Did appeal exemptions really hamper environmentalists’ ability to stop development of roadless and other controversial areas?
I suspect the answer to all three of these questions is “no.” Supporters of the Healthy Forests program may have won a legislative battle, but in the end they cannot reverse the broad social trends that led to an 85 percent reduction in national forest timber sales. In short, the reversal in fortunes that Vaughn and Cortner examine was more illusion than reality.
Randal O’Toole is an economist with the Thoreau Institute and author of Reforming the Forest Service.