Focus wildfire management on communities, not logging
Point of View by Clyde Hanson
Last week President Bush unveiled a new forest fire management plan. Earlier that week, the Sierra Club and other conservation organizations put forward a plan of our own aimed at protecting communities at risk from fire.
We urge the Forest Service to focus their resources and manpower on protecting people and homes first, rather than diverting assets far from communities. Forest scientists say the best way to save lives, save homes and save money is to treat the forests in the immediate vicinity of communities -- not by doing logging deep in the backcountry.
We think it's important to protect trees, but we think it's much more important to protect people first. Unfortunately, the president's proposal allows global timber corporations to log deep in the backcountry rather than focusing Forest Service resources on communities.
Scientists and firefighters say the best way to save homes is to reduce fuels in a buffer zone 500 yards around communities, or 35 yards around individual houses, and for homeowners to take responsible measures to keep flammable materials away from structures. When a fire racing through a forest hits this community protection zone, the flames get knocked low to the ground, where firefighters are able to control the fire and save homes.
Here in the land of 10,000 lakes, we can also use sprinkler systems to protect homes and as fire breaks.
The Sierra Club and Bush both believe forests need some thinning to reduce the risk of catastrophic fires. We use the definition of "thinning" used by forest scientists; Bush uses a definition put forward by the timber industry. We advocate getting rid of the brush and small trees around communities to create a buffer zone around communities. Bush's proposal would let timber companies take out the big trees deep in the forest under the guise of "thinning," but fire scientists say this won't do anything to protect homes and communities.
Projects to protect communities are not controversial. We haven't appealed or tried to delay community protection measures, and we won't. A congressional investigation into claims by the Forest Service that environmentalists delayed half of all fire prevention measures found absolutely no basis for the claim. However, the president's plan attempts to use the guise of fire prevention to allow timber corporations to take out the big trees that don't add to fire risks.
Here in the Arrowhead, we negotiated an expedited process for reducing fuel in the Gunflint Trail blowdown that allowed citizens to have a project stopped and moved back to the traditional environmental review process. Not a single project was challenged.
Logging companies dismiss environmental protections as red tape. But Congress set up the process to give citizens a say, to bring facts to light and to improve the quality of decisions about our treasured national forests. Logging companies quietly use the same process to argue for increased logging and fewer environmental protections. Now they're trying to gut the accountability process that lets citizens hold their land managers to the high-quality standards that our wild forest heritage deserves.
We do field trips to proposed timber sales in Minnesota's two national forests and we sometimes find the foresters don't know what kind of trees are actually in the woods, where rare birds are nesting, or the locations of sensitive stream banks or the Superior Hiking Trail. The Tofte Ranger District accidentally let 14 acres be logged that a federal judge had ordered them to leave alone, because they forgot to change it in their computer database. The Forest
Service "misplaced" $215 million in badly needed fire prevention funds two years ago and failed eight of 10 inspector general audits over the past decade. Foresters make mistakes and the process helps correct them before damage is done to the forest.
Being a forester today is not easy. Nobel Prize-winning physicist Murray Gell-Mann noted, "Physics is easy, ecology is hard." Foresters are endlessly pressured to sell more trees so timber companies can buy at lower prices to increase profits. Their budgets also increase as timber revenues rise, giving the agency an incentive to log rather than to meet the needs of other users and wildlife. We've got to change these incentives.
Ironically, as the president is calling for more accountability for business leaders, he is proposing to deregulate federal forest executives. Deregulation didn't work for savings and loans, California electric rates or Enron stockholders, and it's not a wise way to deal with the threat to people's homes from forest fires.
The proposed weakening of forest protections would undo decades of work by conservationists. We think the president should make protecting communities from fire the Forest Service's top priority, and have them focus all resources on that mission. Let's solve the problem, not create new ones.
Clyde Hanson of Lutsen is Conservation Chair of the Sierra Club - North Star Chapter.