September/October 1999. Planning for the Sierra Nevada. Protecting worker health. Craig tries to turn back the clock.

A New Course in the Sierra Nevada

For the past decade, the U.S. Forest Service has promised to set a new management direction for the national forests of the Sierra Nevada range, largely due to heightened concern about the California spotted owl and other wildlife species. In 1993, the agency established interim guidelines and began considering long-term management alternatives for Sierra forests. Last year, amid swirling controversy and criticism from a blue-ribbon panel of scientists appointed by the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, the Forest Service started anew.

The Forest Service is scheduled to present several alternatives for public comment this fall, and to put in place new management direction by the year 2000.

For the past two years, FSEEE has worked with Forest Service scientists and others to develop our own management plan for the Sierra Nevada. Our goal has been to help the Forest Service find ways to improve resources and save imperiled species. Last November, a draft of the FSEEE plan was circulated widely for a peer review that included the Forest Service team charged with developing and analyzing the various alternatives.

FSEEE’s plan will be included as Alternative 3 in the Forest Service’s draft environmental impact statement (EIS), slated for publication later this year. The thrust of the alternative is to protect, maintain and restore ecological processes in Sierra Nevada national forests. At about the same time that the draft EIS is published, FSEEE will release the full text of its plan. The EIS team is also taking a close look at alternatives submitted by the California Forestry Association and a coalition of environmental groups known as the Sierra Nevada Forest Protection Campaign. Never before has the Forest Service analyzed such a broad array of publicly submitted alternatives.

The outcome of this broad planning effort remains uncertain, for a number of reasons. For one, the Forest Service does not enjoy the high level of public trust that it did in decades past. Developing and implementing a Sierra plan that can stick will be no small task.

In addition, because this effort is centered in California, the nation’s most populous state, it is certain to be subject to political manipulations. Millions of Americans recreate in Sierra Nevada national forests and take great interest in the forests’ future. The agency’s new plan will almost certainly be challenged in court by one or more groups.

End Clear-cuts for Kids

The American public wants its national forests beautiful, its hiking trails maintained and its fish abundant. But the U.S. Forest Service’s budget continues to emphasize logging over all other uses. Forty percent of the national forests’$1.6 billion budget finances timber sales. The combined expenses on behalf of recreation, fish, wildlife, soil, water and air quality amount to 22 percent of the budget.

Congress’s misguided priorities threaten to get even worse if a new coalition of rural counties and the timber industry has its way. The Forest Counties School Coalition includes among its members the American Forest and Paper Association; the American Pulpwood Association; Louisiana Pacific Corp.; Catron County, New Mexico (birthplace of the wise-use movement); and Senator Trent Lott (proud holder of a League of Conservation Voters’ “zero” voting record on the environment). This marriage of convenience seeks to use children’s education as a wedge to open up public lands to increased logging.

In 1908, Congress decided that counties containing national forests within their boundaries should receive 25 percent of the proceeds from Forest Service logging. As timber sales took off in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, some counties in the West became big winners in the timber sweepstakes. One Oregon county, for example, reaped windfall profits of almost $100 million a year.

Should counties with national forests receive some sort of “rent” to compensate for the services they provide on national forest land? Probably so. National forests are exempt from state or local property taxes and, thus, don’t provide direct tax payments to counties. However, studies have shown that payments received by counties from timber sale receipts since the 1960s are up to 100 times greater than the amount of taxes they would have received had the national forests been private, taxable land. By any measure, the counties have realized enormous profits.

In the 1990s, the Forest Service has shifted from exploiting to stewarding our forests, bringing the high-flying counties down to earth. From payments in 1989 of about $390 million, the counties’ payout dropped to $227 million in 1998. The Forest Counties School Coalition wants to turn the clock back. The coalition’s strategy is simple and elegant. It seeks to hold the Forest Service’s budget hostage if the counties’ demands for more money are not met. The coalition’s timber industry members figure that when push comes to shove, the Forest Service will chose to cut more timber over reducing its budget. The coalition is probably right.

Here’s what the coalition wants: (1) a guaranteed annual payment equal to the average of the three highest timber revenues in history and (2) any difference between its regular 25 percent of timber receipts and the guaranteed payment must be made up out of the Forest Service’s nontimber budget. In 1998, that would have meant a $164 million cut in the Forest Service’s wildlife, fish, watershed, and recreation budgets, which would have eliminated those programs in their entirety.

Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber supports a different plan, one that “decouples” federal payments to counties from national forest logging. “It is time we brought some stability to rural communities so that they may design a future with some confidence in a fairly stable revenue supply,” Kitzhaber says. “The management of our public forest lands should not be driven, either directly or indirectly, by the need to produce timber revenue to pay for county services.”

We couldn’t have said it better. —Andy Stahl

A Tree Paint Victory

Six years after women workers first raised concerns about tree marking paint, the U.S. Forest Service finally stopped using the highly volatile substance. The decision was announced in December 1998, reiterated in March but not implemented until May, 1999.

The tree paint was the subject of a 1998 federal health study that determined that worker exposure to the paint was “sufficient to produce central nervous system symptoms” and that women who used the paint were at higher risk for miscarriages. Frustrated with the Forest Service’s foot-dragging, several women asked for FSEEE’s assistance. Through a combination of national media exposure, litigation and the use of high-level Forest Service contacts, FSEEE succeeded in persuading the agency to replace the high-solvent paint with a water-based paint.

Several timber industry backers, including members of Congress, have complained to Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck that there isn’t enough of the new paint available to meet timber quotas. They claim logging in some Forest Service regions is down as much as 25 percent this year.

James Welch, an employee with Missouri’s Mark Twain National Forest, has suffered debilitating central nervous system disorders including seizures and a severe loss of balance. He attributes his condition to tree-marking paint exposure. Forest Service employees who would like to donate some of their leave time to help cover Welch’s lost time at work can call the personnel office that is handling his case, (501) 321-5203.

Doing the Job Too Well

Cindy Barkhurst is a twenty-year veteran U.S. Forest Service employee. She works as an endangered species specialist on the Umpqua National Forest in Roseburg, Oregon. Until several months ago, her superiors considered her to be an outstanding biologist who chaired a scientific team that reviews timber sales and their effects on endangered fish and wildlife. In 1998, Seattle federal judge Barbara Rothstein relied upon critical analysis from Barkhurst’s team to stop dozens of damaging timber sales that threatened salmon.

That court decision would prove to be Barkhurst’s undoing. Instead of changing the timber sales to comply with the law, the Forest Service decided to change the team so that it would be more logging friendly. The Forest Service summarily removed Barkhurst and two of her fisheries colleagues from the team.

“It is clear that these changes have been made by Umpqua National Forest management to allow Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management projects to be implemented despite the obligation to conserve listed species,” Barkhurst said.

FSEEE has filed a friend of court brief in the ongoing environmental lawsuit challenging these timber sales. We argue that the government’s removal of Barkhurst and her colleagues from the scientific team violates the Endangered Species Act, which requires that agencies use the “best available scientific” information in making endangered species decisions. The best information is in the minds of the best available scientists.

More Stumps from Craig

From a state renowned for its spuds, Idaho Senator Larry Craig has reintroduced a land management planning bill that’s about as attractive as Mr. Potatohead. The Public Land Planning and Management Improvement Act is Craig’s latest attempt to weaken environmental laws, remove agency accountability, limit public participation and designate logging as the preeminent use of national forests. Craig seeks to accomplish these goals by amending the National Forest Management Act, which Congress passed in 1976 to curb clear-cutting and protect fish and wildlife habitat.

Beginning with the notorious salvage logging rider of 1995, Craig and his western Republican colleagues have made numerous attempts to “streamline” environmental laws. First unveiled in December 1996, Craig’s legislation was officially introduced in Congress the following September but went nowhere.

The new Craig bill is essentially identical to the first and mimics timber industry recommendations. According to detailed analyses by Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund and the Wilderness Society, the first Craig bill followed the industry’s wish list on twenty-three of twenty-eight key points. The new bill continues Craig’s quest to give the timber industry a boost while limiting the ability of the U.S. Forest Service and the public to protect forests.

Craig’s bill begins with a ten-page rant against existing planning regulations that govern Forest Service operations. Those regulations, the bill claims, lead to “myriad administrative appeals and lawsuits É compell[ing] the Congress to enact emergency provisions to restore land management authority to the agencies.” This apparently refers to the salvage logging rider, which blocked the public’s right to appeal Forest Service decisions. And, the bill claims, these regulations have resulted in “loss of wages, revenues, and public services, and resultant social instability.”

The 110-page document goes on to create new oversight committees, set output targets for logging and other extractive industries, allow corporations to sue the Forest Service for not logging enough trees, and strictly limit public avenues for administrative and judicial challenges of Forest Service planning decisions. Craig’s bill would loosen land management standards, turning them into unenforceable “policies.” Further, the bill curbs the ability of courts to stop destructive logging, road building or off-road vehicle use until the Forest Service revises national forest management plans.

In March, an acclaimed panel of scientists provided its own set of recommendations for changes to the National Forest Management Act. The scientists made clear that the preservation of plants, animals and their habitats should be the first and overriding priority of national forest management.

And just days before Craig introduced his bill, the General Accounting Office reported that environmental laws and judicial interpretations of those laws have provided the Forest Service with a mission geared more toward protecting the environment than producing two-by-fours.

In his bill, Craig concedes that part of the Forest Service’s mission should be to “assure the health, sustainability, and productivity of the lands’ ecosystems.” However, the remainder of his bill makes that next to impossible and in fact shows that Craig’s real vision for national forests is stumps on the land and dollars in the timber industry’s pocket. —Amelia Jenkins

Forest Magazine | FSEEE