Gridlock must end in order to save western forests

Jim Riley, Executive Director, Intermountain Forest Association

I, along with twenty-nine of my colleagues from across the country, have sent a letter to Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt in response to an opinion editorial he wrote which has appeared in various newspapers across the country.

We appreciate the Secretary’s willingness to address the very real forest health problems plaguing our national forests, but take strong issue with his characterization of the forest industry and our motivation regarding federal forest management. The current forest health crisis is not a forest industry issue - it is a forest density issue. A recent scientific General Accounting Office report states, “the most extensive and serious problem related to the health of national forests...is the over accumulation of vegetation, which has caused an increasing number of large, intense, uncontrollable, and catastrophically destructive wildfires.” (GAO/RCED-99-65).

Having identified the cause, we should now work towards the common goal of returning forest density and composition to historically tolerant levels, thereby improving the ability of living, breathing forests to withstand wildfires. Scientists call this restoration forestry - forestry which concentrates on what is left in the forest, not what is taken. There is an important and constructive role for today’s forest businesses to play in restoration forestry. The role we envision is not the industrial logging of the past, but includes approaches like American Forest & Paper Association’s New Federal Forestry program involving a broader range of forest restoration activities.

Secretary Babbitt is absolutely wrong to suggest that our interest is “to renew the old battle about whether to have more or less logging on public lands.” This historic battle has not served our industry, and as this summer’s fires indicate, it has not served our federal forests, or our country either. Our interest is to move beyond the polarized debate and begin a new era of constructive partnership in which we work together to restore our national forests to health, reducing the risk of catastrophic wildfire which threatens wildlife, our air and water, our communities, and our privately owned, but adjacent forests. All of us have a role to play in getting that done. It doesn’t matter where the fires burn or how they get started. What is important is whether forests and communities are intact and healthy after the next fire passes. We urge our government to work with us to find common ground and to support a science-based approach to restoring the ecological integrity of overly dense forests. Today’s forest businesses have both the technology and the motivation to be active partners in science-based restoration forestry programs, but federal land managers must recognize they need our help.

This year, California took a great step toward building bipartisan partnerships to restore our federal forests. A Joint Resolution unanimously passed out of the California Legislature which requires the Forest Service and other federal land management agencies to implement a strategy to reduce the overabundance of fuel in the forest. Additionally, the measure requests the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Interior to immediately draft a national prescribed fire strategy for public lands. The same measure, in the form of House Concurrent Resolution 406, was recently introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives with bipartisan sponsorship.

An opportunity exists to break free of the gridlock of the past decade. Our businesses stand ready to play an active partnership role in the restoration and maintenance of federal forests. The challenge to Secretary Babbitt and other government leaders is to create the climate for new environmental partnerships that allow America’s forests and forest businesses to thrive, rather than trap us all in the polarized debates of the past. This approach is right for the forest and it’s right for the people.