New Rules Issued for National Forests

Thu Dec 23, 7:45 AM ET

Add to My Yahoo! Top Stories - washingtonpost.com

By Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post Staff Writer

The Bush administration issued comprehensive new rules yesterday for managing the national forests, jettisoning some environmental protections that date to Ronald Reagan (news - web sites)'s administration and putting in place the biggest change in forest-use policies in nearly three decades.


The regulations affect recreation, endangered-species protections and livestock grazing, among other things, on all 192 million acres of the country's 155 national forests. Sally Collins, associate chief of the U.S. Forest Service, said the changes will replace a bureaucratic planning process with a more corporate management approach that will allow officials to respond to changing ecological and social conditions.

The new rules give economic activity equal priority with preserving the ecological health of the forests in making management decisions and in potentially liberalizing caps on how much timber can be taken from a forest. Forest Service officials estimated the changes will cut its planning costs by 30 percent and will allow managers to finish what amount to zoning requirements for forest users in two to three years, instead of the nine or 10 years they sometimes take now.

The government will no longer require that its managers prepare an environmental impact analysis with each forest's management plan, or use numerical counts to ensure there are "viable populations" of fish and wildlife. The changes will reduce the number of required scientific reports and ask federal officials to focus on a forest's overall health, rather than the fate of individual species, when evaluating how best to protect local plants and animals.

"We're really in a new world," Collins said in an interview. "You've got to have different plans for different places, and you've got to have more dynamic plans."

Critics such as Rep. Tom Udall (news, bio, voting record) (D-N.M.), a member of the House Resources Committee who tried twice unsuccessfully to block the proposed rules, said the changes will promote logging and other commercial exploitation of the national forests and relegate the public to the sidelines.

"With Bush's anti-environmental forest policy, you can't blame him for trying to hide behind other news, but not even Scrooge would unveil these regulations," Udall said. "These regulations, being offered two days before Christmas, cut the public out of the forest planning process, will inspire many more lawsuits and provide less protection for wildlife. It's a radical overhaul of forest policy."

Collins said the administration sought to update the rules to address new challenges, such as invasive species and forest fires, and to give the public input on how to manage the forests rather than commenting on individual projects.

The new rules would affect two national forests that encompass 1.6 million acres of Virginia land: the George Washington National Forest, 70 miles west of Washington, and the Jefferson National Forest in the southwestern part of the state. Jefferson National's officials just completed their management plan, and the George Washington forest is due to issue a new one in 2008.

Three presidents, including George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton (news - web sites), have tried to change how the government drafts the 15-year management plans that dictate how federal officials auction off timber, locate campsites, allocate grazing rights and protect vulnerable species in each forest. Because the plans can take five to nine years to complete, some activists and timber industry representatives have complained they are out of date when they become final.

Just before leaving office, Clinton finalized a set of regulations that emphasized ecosystem health and wildlife protection over commercial exploitation; President Bush (news - web sites) reversed those rules just before Thanksgiving 2002. The final regulations issued yesterday, which will take effect when they are published in the Federal Register next week, are nearly identical to a proposal the administration outlined two years ago.

Rick Cables, who oversees 11 national forests spanning 22 million acres in the Rocky Mountain region, said the regulations will save his deputies time so they can devote more attention to such issues as use of off-road vehicles and forest overgrowth.

"This planning rule just makes more efficient and effective use of our field people's time and energy," Cables said. "In doing that, it makes it easier for us to tackle the problems we have today."

Administration officials said they will balance this newfound flexibility with regular audits of forest management decisions, but environmentalists said only strict federal rules can guarantee a haven for animals that seek refuge in the forests.

One-quarter of U.S. species at risk of extinction -- including more than 25 species of trout and salmon -- live in national forests, according to the conservation group NatureServe. Large animals such as grizzly bears, wolves and elk depend on the forests' large, undisturbed swaths of land for habitat.

"The end result of all this is there will be more logging and less conservation of wildlife," said Mike Leahy, natural resources counsel for Defenders of Wildlife. "They're not going to provide enough land for these species to hang on."

National forests are also an increasingly popular tourist destination for tens of millions of Americans. The number of visitors to national forests doubled over the past eight years, said Chris Wood, a Clinton administration Forest Service official who is now vice president of the conservation group Trout Unlimited.



But timber industry officials want access to the land, and they said they need a less burdensome process so federal officials can make timely decisions on proposed timber auctions.

Chris West, vice president of the American Forest Resource Council, called the new rules "a step in the right direction" that will allow forest managers to make "better, more informed and quicker decisions" about timber sales.

"This will get the Forest Service caring about the land and caring about the people, instead of caring about the process and serving the bureaucracy," said West, who represents lumber and paper companies as well as landowners in 13 western states.

*************

I wonder what the timber companies will do when all the timber is GONE.

Don't blame me, I voted for Kerry. The American people will reap what they have sown.

not that big business is pandered to by this administration or anything.

Well the people in Colorado have been waiting for something to happen with forest overgrowth for the last few years. But what this administration needs to do is supply the forest service with some fire fighting airplanes. WWII planes are great but...

Cutting it all down isn't really the best option either, but the Prez seems to think so.
I agree wholeheartedly that there needs to be something done to help the Forest Service fight these fires, but I feel a little unsympathetic for people that build homes in known fire areas. What? Hurricanes in Florida? MY TRAILER! AHHH!

I'm not saying cutting it all down. But forests do need to have the underbrush removed. It is what fuels forest fires.

I agree with you to a point about building homes in forests. Most people understand where they live and understand the cost of living there. But obviously some dont.

Unfortunately the people who live in towns away from or downstream of the polluted streams from these fires are also victims. My fiance and I both had bronchitis from the big forest fire here in CO 2 years ago. Shit, we lived probably 75 miles away from the fire and it still rained ash. Also, in colorado lighting strikes here set most forest fires. So its not like people are setting these fires intentionally.

My big grip is that the planes they are using to fight fires are from WWII and there is less than a dozen planes for the whole country. I believe 1 plane (in CA) and 1 helicopter (in CO) crashed in the last 2 years. So if there are fires in CA and CO at the same time, everyone loses.

Eric come to Colorado next summer and I'll take you mountain biking on a trail where there was a forest fire. Its really neat to see the new growth.

Or come to McCall, Idaho--there was a huge forest fire nearby 10 years ago, and the new growth there is great to see as well.

I'm almost content in saying to let it burn unless it threatens development. Fire is a natural part of forests, something that Smokey The Bear got wrong.

I'm also for reasonable forest thinning for industry if tree farms can't cover the slack. But I prefer a "laissez faire" approach to the massive national forests--I don't want to see many more roads built in them, if at all.

This is very distressing news to me, as someone who lives 1/2 hour away from a beautiful National Forest - the Shawnee - and one of the most beautiful places in the otherwise lame state of Illinois. Very sad stuff.

Say, did Bush do this by himself? Or did two branches of Congress have to approve this too? Just ONE Democrat stood up against this?

Yes, and that's absolutely unacceptable

It still makes it wrong. What are you trying to prove? Goddamn it, quit trying to make everything Conservative Vs. Liberal.

That's just regression, and I can't believe how selfish your government is. I can't think of another word, they couldn't be this stupid, so they must just be doing it to boost their economic gains and the bottom line is $$$$$, as usual. This administration is frighteningly dangerous, you are going to be more and more fucked.

Agreed GH.

And well said.

We agree a lot, it seems.

Did you read the first sentence of the article? Apparently not.

How awful. It is a shame and the government continues to make themselves look completely idiotic.

Do you remember the fires of 2000? In particular the enormous fires in Montana? Well, fires are completely natural, and for decades we've been preserving and protecting forest fires and wildlife areas, and we've inadvertantly created areas susceptable to enormous, gigantic fires that have never happened. We've created unhealthy forests as well. It's been proven that removing underbrush, and having well planned clearcutting schemes in certain areas results in healthier, safer forests. Perhaps you should go to Fort Stewart Georgia, where they've been doing this...

I remember not too long ago, opposite legislation was going through congress pertaining to this. In fact, it was sponsored by Tom Daschle. He wanted to ban logging entirely in our national forests when there were states, particularly out west, that WANTED to systematically cut down areas of forest to prevent forest fires. Well, ole Tom would have none of it. So he tried to pass this bill that would have applied to all of America...except he made an exemption for South Dakota. The reason? So they could prevent fires in forests not far from the Black Hills.

Look, I'm not making this liberal or conservative. YOU ALL are making this liberal or conservative by not keeping this in perspective at all. What good are laws limiting logging, if we have ginourmous, fires each year that claim hundreds and hundreds of thousands of acres each and every year? It makes no sense what so ever.

What strikes me about all of you, is that you seem to think that the forests are just suddenly gonna dissappear. Like the logging industry wants to eliminate their source of income...crazy...

But I'm the illogical one making this conservative vs. liberal, when the entire article and the entire thread is a blatant attack at what? Hmmmmm.

Keep this in perspective folks. ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY TWO MILLION ACRES! IT'S NOT GONNA GO AWAY EVER!