January/February 2000. FSEEE celebrates it’s tenth anniversary. Why national forests may soon be called “county forests.” A long road.

FSEEE’S New Millennium

A decade ago, an employee of Oregon’s Willamette National Forest decided he’d had enough. His job was to plan and prepare timber sales—a task that had given him a firsthand view of the destruction that a decade of unsustainable logging had wrought on national forests. He watched with growing repulsion as the pro-timber policies of the Reagan and Bush administrations reduced the lush forests of the Northwest to a tattered patchwork.

In those days, the pro-logging juggernaut known as the U.S. Forest Service was only too willing to execute those administrations’ agenda. To fight back, Jeff DeBonis decided to work from within. He founded a group, one designed to bring together the many dedicated Forest Service employees who favored sound stewardship of national forests over exploitation.

That group is Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics.

The year 2000 marks FSEEE’s ten-year anniversary, making this a good time to take note of the tremendous progress that has been made. Back in 1990, the Forest Service was still delivering 12 billion board feet of timber from our national forests to its patrons every year. Today, that figure has been slashed to 3 billion board feet annually. The agency has shifted its attention from cutting timber to protecting some 50 million acres of roadless forests—something that would have been unthinkable a decade ago.

We can’t take all the credit, of course. But it’s fair to say that FSEEE has played a key role in bringing meaningful change to the Forest Service, pushing it toward a mission more in keeping with the pro-conservation desires of most Americans. A powerful partnership is behind FSEEE’s success. Forming one end of that partnership are hundreds of principled Forest Service employees. On the other end are thousands of citizens who share the stewardship priorities of those federal employees.

Through the strength of our employee-citizen partnership, our finest Forest Service employees are now able to speak out against unethical management. Policymakers take notice when FSEEE weighs in on an issue. And the Forest Service is changing.

But there’s much yet to do. Reactionary- forces lurk in the shadows of the Forest Service, awaiting their chance to steer the agency back to its pro-logging past. There is still too much timbering, mining and grazing on sensitive national forest lands. The exploding popularity of national forests as recreation destinations carries a whole new set of challenges.

And then there are roadless areas. Over the next year, FSEEE will work tirelessly to see that the Forest Service stays true to President Clinton’s directive to protect these precious wildlands. We have to act quickly, because a final decision on the fate of these lands is due at the end of 2000.

Just think㬮 million acres of pristine national forests granted lasting, meaningful protection. What a great way to launch a new FSEEE millennium.

A Pyramid Scheme Inside a Trojan Horse

A colleague calls it “the most revolutionary public land law since the creation of the U.S. Forest Service in 1905.” The National Education Association calls it “a critical step in guaranteeing adequate education funding for rural forest communities.” The Sierra Club calls it “Clear-cuts for Kids.” Undersecretary of Agriculture Jim Lyons has threatened a presidential veto.

It is the artfully named Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act of 1999, which passed the House of Representatives late in 1999. HR2389 now goes to the Senate where it promises to be the top public lands item on the Senate’s new millennium agenda.

HR2389, like its Senate counterpart, S1608, is a good example of how bad law is made. The problem it purports to address is simple enough. Since 1908, counties that contain national forests have received compensation from the federal government because they cannot tax those public forestlands. That compensation has come in the form of direct payments of 25 percent of receipts gained from timber sales in those counties. In the early years, those dollars didn’t amount to much. But beginning in the 1960s, and accelerating during the rip-roaring logging days of the 1980s, a couple of dozen western counties raked in huge sums of money.

Like the forests, the timber payments proved unsustainable. As national forest logging levels dropped in the West, the revenues to counties dropped, too. Some counties did a good job of anticipating the decline, economizing where they could and finding alternative sources of revenue. Other counties did not, or could not. The solution seems simple. Like other property owners, the federal government benefits from county services, such as police protection and search and rescue efforts, on national forests. The federal government should fairly compensate local governments for their foregone property tax revenues.

In Oregon, private forest owners pay property taxes to help cover these local government expenses. Oregon’s private forest tax rate is $5.40 per productive forest acre. The state has about 10 million productive national forest acres, which if taxed at the private forest rate, would return to Oregon $54 million. That seems like the fair payment Oregon ought to receive from the federal government. But Oregon has been getting much more from the feds. In 1998, the state received $85 million, and in the 1980s, the federal timber payments to Oregon were twice as much—more than $160 million a year. Oregon has profited handsomely from its national forest tenant.

HR2389 would guarantee Oregon $130 million annually (the average of its three highest years’ payments)—two-and-a-half times what Oregon would receive if its national forests were subject to property taxes. Where’s that money to come from? You. Taxpayers in other states will pick up the tab and subsidize the property tax rates of private landowners in Oregon. (Speaking as an Oregonian, “thanks” for your generosity!)

HR2389’s sponsors don’t just want to take money out of your pocket. They also want to water down your say in how national forests in Oregon and elsewhere are managed. A provision in the bill would create about 100 committees in counties containing national forests, each comprised of fifteen people representing local special interests. The committees would receive an annual grant from the federal government totaling $110 million, divided among the various committees. The committees would use this money to finance projects on national forests, from bicycle trails (often cited by the bill’s proponents) to less talked about, but more likely projects: logging, mining and livestock grazing.

All money earned from these projects would be siphoned into regional special accounts controlled by the local committees. Regional special account dollars could be spent only on Forest Service activities approved by the local committees. If committees invested strategically, the bill would allow the committees to gain control of about $1 billion a year in Forest Service receipts—about half of the entire budget of the national forest system.

HR2389 is a pyramid scheme inside a Trojan horse. The pyramid scheme allows special-interest committees to use a small amount of federal seed money to gain control over a huge portion of the Forest Service’s budget. The Trojan horse is the children on whose behalf this bill is being promoted. HR2389 is not about school kids and is only peripherally about compensating counties for lost property taxes. What’s truly at issue is our 100-year experiment called “national forests.” If HR2389 becomes law, you can rename these lands “county forests,” because that is who will be in the driver’s seat. —Andy Stahl

A Long Road

It was a beautiful, crisp fall morning when a group of forest activists met in downtown Washington, D.C. They were bound for Reddish Knob, a remarkable vista in Virginia’s George Washington National Forest. President Clinton had chosen that spot to make a surprise announcement on national forest policy.

Reddish Knob is part of the largest unprotected roadless area in the southern Appalachian Mountains. From its 4,400-foot crest, you can see parts of the Monongahela, Jefferson and George Washington national forests. The scenery was beautiful, but Clinton’s words were what mattered most.

Since the passage of the Wilderness Act in 1964, conservationists have understood the importance of roadless areas—an importance that recent scientific inquiry has confirmed. On this October day, after years of appeals, lawsuits, protests and teeth-grinding confrontations, the president announced that protecting roadless areas should be the priority of the U.S. Forest Service. Standing at a small podium with the sun to his back and a breeze chasing autumn leaves, Clinton said, “We will protect more than 40 million acres, 20 percent of the total forest land in America in the national forests, from activities such as new road construction which would degrade the land.”

Clinton’s announcement was the culmination of years of hard work by dedicated conservationists across the country. From Forest Service whistleblowers to wilderness activists to bright attorneys to tireless grassroots volunteers, thousands of people played critical roles in helping to create a political climate in which the president’s announcement was possible.

These grassroots efforts were key in bringing national stature to issues of roads and roadless areas. In early 1999, the Forest Service finally relented to pressure and issued a temporary moratorium on road construction. Then the Pew Charitable Trusts funded an effort called the Heritage Forests Campaign, which in turn created an avenue for the average citizen to get involved. Through creative use of the Internet and dirt-under-the-fingernails grassroots organizing, the Heritage Forests Campaign generated more than a quarter of a million comments in support of forest protection. In addition, more than 100 newspapers around the country published editorials in favor of protecting national forest roadless areas. The president had to pay attention.

It is vitally important to remember how far we have come in the long debate about the fate of our national forests. Logging levels are at an all-time low and the timber industry is in retreat. Not long ago, when asked why more of the national forests should be open to logging, the timber industry would point to jobs and housing prices, making no mention of environmental concerns. Now the head of the American Forest and Paper Association rails against Clinton’s announcement, saying that “the main reason roads are built is to keep the forests healthy.” You don’t have to have a degree in forestry to know that is wrong.

This is not a time to be complacent. As the Forest Service develops its plan to protect roadless areas according to the president’s directive, we must ensure the best possible final document. Much is at stake. The president said it well at Reddish Knob: “We can never replace what we might destroy if we don’t protect these 40 million acres.”

Forest Magazine | FSEEE