Administration changes rules for national forests
By Brad Swenson, Staff Writer
December 01, 2002
Rules proposed by the Bush administration last week hope to simplify and make more responsive management of 155 national forests, including the Chippewa National Forest. But environmentalists say the rules only benefit timber and paper companies who want quicker access to more wood on national forests.
The administration, through the U.S. Forest Service, on Wednesday released its proposed land and resource management planning rule, which will govern the nation's 155 national forests and 20 grasslands.
"The national forests and grasslands are everyone," said Forest Service Associate Chief Sally Collins. "The proposed rule is designed to more effectively involve the public and to better harmonize the environmental, social and economic benefits of America's greatest natural resource - our forests and grasslands."
But environmentalists say the administration has given the pulp and paper industry an early Christmas present.
"This change would take away the public's right to hold government accountable for protecting our national forests," says Clyde Hanson, conservation chairman of the Sierra Club's North Star Chapter. "All in the mane of profits for our paper companies, most of which are foreign-owned."
The proposed planning rule retains the basic principles from the last rule made in 2000, which emphasizes meaningful public involvement, sustainability, use of science, and monitoring and evaluation, said the U.S. Forest Service. Also, the proposal provides local forest managers with more flexibility to tailor analyses to the specific characteristics and challenges presented by their forests and grasslands.
It also eliminates most of the procedural requirements and redundancies in the planning process, which could allow plans to be completed in a third of the time.
"The goal of the agency is to have a planning rule that is simpler and easier to implement than the 2000 rule and that allows the agency to more easily adapt to changing issues and opportunities," states the 155-page proposed rule that will be published later this month in the Federal Register.
"Available agency budgets, personnel availability, and other resource limitations are recognized as important because they help provide a framework for the responsible official to make decisions ..." it states.
But the Sierra Club maintains that the new regulations under the National Forest Management Act of 2000 would limit participation in deciding how public lands are used, bypass certain environmental and wildlife protection requirements and allow logging anywhere in the forest under the guise of preventing forest fires.
The Chippewa and Superior national forests are currently five years into planning efforts to develop new forest plans, and the U.S. Forest Service plans to submit draft plans for public comment in February.
Forest Service staff has given many updates to stakeholders about the anticipated draft plans, the latest in late October with a preliminary comparison of the six alternative plans with the current forest plan.
In an October meeting with Superior National Forest Planner Duane Lula, the Sierra Club said the forest plans for both Minnesota national forests would be finished under the existing regulations, which allow for public input.
"These proposed regulations keep the public in the dark as to why these decisions are made," said Sharon Stephens, Sierra Club Legal Committee chairwoman. "They keep the Forest Service in the dark as well by not providing for meaningful public comment or environmental review.
"We may not always agree with Forest Service decisions, but at least Minnesotans have had an opportunity to let their voice be heard in how we manage our national forests," she said.
The Chippewa and Superior national forests are working together to develop their separate forest plans, which haven't been updated since 1986. The current process began in 1997 and expected revision completion is in fiscal year 2003.
The new rules, the U.S. Forest Service says, will allow future revisions to be done in less time and less bureaucracy.
In conjunction with the release of the proposed rule, the Forest Service issued a comprehensive study of the costs of land and resource management planning. The study predicts the proposed 2002 planning rule will save about 30 percent from the 2000 rule.
"The trend in planning over the past 20 years has been toward more complexity with the result that limited funds and personnel available to the agency are being disproportionately spent on planning and analysis," states the proposal.
"With this proposal, the agency seeks to produce a planning rule that sets the stage for planning to be done in a reasonable manner, at reasonable costs, in a reasonable amount of time, and thus provide a sound and rational framework for managing National Forest System lands," the rule states.
"These savings can be used to address critical areas, such as wildfire prevention, watershed restoration and recreational facility maintenance," the Forest Service's Collins said. "The Forest Service wants to improve its planning processes to spend its available resources doing real work on the land and not disproportionately on planning and analysis."
But the Sierra Club's Hanson says the American people "have a right to know if forest plans are going to allow for projects that harm the forests where they fish and hike, and they have a right to speak out against such destructive projects."
Environmentalists fear that "with these changes, the industry can point at any tree and say it would burn if you set it on fire, and then cutting it would be a fuel reduction project," Hanson said. "Minnesota cannot afford to lose all the recreation and restoration jobs that depend on natural forests and wildlife in these national forests."
Specifically, the Sierra Club opposes what it says are parts of the proposed rule that:
- Allows timber sales and other projects even if they are inconsistent with the forest plan.
- Allows logging anywhere in the forest - even where it is prohibited by the plan - under the name of "salvage logging" or "fuel reduction."
- Abuses the "categorical exclusion" provision in the National Environmental Policy Act to exclude forest plans from meaningful environmental analysis.
- Eliminates the current requirements for maintaining native wildlife species on national forests.
- Eliminates public appeals of forest plans.