November/December 2000. Playing politics with fire. County payments compromise. K-V settlement.

Playing Politics with Fire

The timber industry’s friends in Congress are at it again. With this summer’s embers still glowing, Republican Senator Larry Craig of Idaho has helped his colleague from New Mexico, Pete Domenici, attach an amendment to the U.S. Forest Service’s appropriations bill designed to speed logging and shortcut environmental protections. In particular, Craig seeks to use the threat of forest fires to undercut Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck’s new policies that limit road building in roadless areas.

For Craig’s strategy to succeed, he is banking on the support of pro-timber staff members within the Forest Service who occupy key positions in the agency’s Fire and Aviation Management branch. These staffers are among the most senior of the agency’s old-school, pro-logging foresters. They have put themselves forward to lead the Forest Service’s fuel reduction strategy, for which Craig’s amendment would provide the funding.

This internal power play is significant. Never before have the Forest Service’s fire officials had direct control over forest management decisions. They performed one primary function—suppressing fires—and when they weren’t putting them out, they provided on-the-ground staff to set prescribed fires. But rarely were they even consulted about forest management decisions, such as where to log or thin the forests. Craig’s proposal would put the fire folks in the forest management driver’s seat.

The Fire and Aviation veterans have two mantras. First, more roads are needed in the forests to allow firefighters to get closer to fires. Second, intensive logging is necessary to make forests safe from catastrophic burning. Neither claim is true. In fact, roads are a major source of wildfires sparked by careless travelers and recreationists who, but for the forest roads, would not be throwing burning cigarettes into the woods.

Past logging is a major culprit in creating the hazardous fire conditions some dry western forests now face. Throughout most of the agency’s history, Forest Service managers logged the biggest, most fire-resistant trees (which were also the most commercially valuable) and left the smallest, most fire-prone species (which were the least commercially valuable). Combining logging with Smokey Bear’s war on forest fires, which sought to put out every fire regardless of fire’s natural role in forested ecosystems, the Forest Service created the conditions that produced some of this summer’s catastrophic burns.

The Fire and Aviation staff members are notorious for their quick and ready access to pro-timber members of Congress. They regard themselves as separate and apart from the chief’s office, if not in direct competition with the chief. Several years ago, FSEEE experienced firsthand the tactics used by old-guard fire staffers when they tried to torpedo our efforts to stop the infamous salvage rider. After FSEEE brought wildland firefighters to Washington to lobby against the rider, the fire staff choreographed an ambush. In concert with Craig’s staff, they tried to intimidate the firefighters so they wouldn’t tell members of Congress the environmental dangers of unrestrained salvage logging. (That the intimidation didn’t work testifies to the courage and craziness it takes to jump out of airplanes into forest fires, not to any lack of zeal on the part of our opponents.)

If Chief Dombeck doesn’t watch his back, he’ll quickly find himself outflanked by his own fire staff working together with his Senate opponents. It’s a formidable alliance that threatens to undo much of the progress Dombeck has made. —Andy Stahl

County Payments Bill Passes

As Forest Magazine went to press, the Senate passed by unanimous consent a compromise version of the timber county payments bill, S1608. If it becomes law, the bill would guarantee payments to counties that have national forests within their borders.

Under the current system, payments to the counties are based on the amount of timber logged from national forests in each county. The amount of money each county would receive would be equal to the average of the highest three years of payments in previous years. Oregon would receive 55 percent of the total payout, and the other twenty-nine states with national forests would split the remainder.

Earlier versions of the bill would have required counties to forfeit 15 percent of their payment to local advisory committees to “invest” in national forest projects, such as timber sales. The money earned from these projects would have gone into a special slush fund that could have been spent by the U.S. Forest Service only with the approval of the local special-interest committees.

The compromise S1608 would retain the advisory committees but eliminate the slush fund. Money earned from projects would instead go directly to the U.S. Treasury.

The committees may not have much money to play with. Another change from the original bill would allow counties to spend the 15 percent to cover specific county expenses. Those expenses include search-and-rescue costs on national forests, purchases of easements to allow nonmotorized access across private lands to reach national forests, and county planning and educational efforts to minimize wildfire dangers to homes near fire-prone forests. These options would give counties a choice of how to spend the 15 percent that earlier versions of the bill had mandated must go to the local committees.

The local advisory committees would be made up of three five-person subcommittees representing business, environmental and local government interests. Approval by the committee of a national forest project would require majority support from each subcommittee. That means all projects would require approval by at least three members of each subcommittee. Projects approved for funding by the committees would also have to be approved by the Forest Service and comply with all environmental laws and forest plans.

FSEEE members’ phone calls and post cards made this bill better than it otherwise would have been. If the House passes the Senate version, President Clinton will likely sign it.

FSEEE Settles K-V Case

Two years ago, FSEEE filed suit against the U.S. Forest Service’s use of Knutson-Vandenberg reforestation trust funds to finance agency overhead expenses. Our analysis showed many national forests were siphoning sixty to seventy cents of every dollar earmarked for reforestation and using those funds to pay for rent, lights, new computers and other overhead expenses. The agency was diverting about $74 million a year that should have been used for tree planting.

Congress passed the Knutson-Vandenberg Act in 1930, during the Great Depression, to ensure that funds would be available for replanting after logging. The K-V Act allows the Forest Service to use a portion of the money earned from selling timber “to cover the cost to the United States” of tree planting. Since the 1950s, the Forest Service has inflated its reforestation costs by including overhead costs, thereby obtaining more money than it otherwise would.

As timber sale receipts grew in the 1970s and 1980s, the Forest Service’s creativity in siphoning these dollars into its K-V fund grew, too. Sales receipts far outpaced replanting costs on many national forests. If the agency couldn’t devise a way to spend those dollars, they would flow back into the U.S. Treasury.

In challenging this misuse of funds, FSEEE concentrated on the Stanislaus National Forest in California. Last year, the Stanislaus spent $2.3 million in K-V funds. Of that amount, 32 percent was used for reforestation, while 43 percent covered Stanislaus overhead costs. The rest went to finance “timber stand improvement” (thinning and other logging) and regional overhead expenses. In sum, fewer than half of the K-V dollars were spent on planting trees.

In September, FSEEE and the Forest Service agreed to settle the case. The settlement restricts overhead spending of K-V dollars to 20 percent or less nationwide. It also prohibits the agency from spending any K-V funds on office rent, public relations, unemployment compensation or compensation for on-the-job injuries. The Forest Service must also publish annually its computations of overhead expenditures and make these data available to the public. FSEEE will now turn its attention to the Forest Service Salvage Sale Fund, where the agency keeps most of the money earned from selling timber it determines is dead, dying or diseased.

Forest Magazine | FSEEE