(Aozotorp) wrote in message ...
http://www.berkshireeagle.com/Storie...035387,00.html

Article Last Updated:
Saturday, December 07, 2002 - 12:18:27 AM MST


Cutting down the forest for the trees

Just over the Vermont line from Rowe is a vast lowland forest called Lamb
Brook, filled with giant beech and maple trees that provide food for bears and
shelter for migratory songbirds. A few years ago, the U.S. Forest Service
proposed to open up this part of the Green Mountain National Forest to logging,
but an immense popular outcry and a successful lawsuit in federal court by a
local environmental group, Green Mountain Forest Watch, saved Lamb Brook. For a
little while, anyway.
Anyone who's taken a driving trip out west has seen the way the national
forests are managed there, whole hillsides scalped to the bare earth for mile
after mile and replanted as tree farms.

Obviously, this person has not actually BEEN out west. Most of what I
see on Federal lands are overstocked and unhealthy forests. This
person has to be talking about Pacific Northwest private timber
industry lands. Again, clearcutting (over 5 acres) has been
specifically banned since the early 90's in the USFS Region 5
(California).

In Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine,
the hillsides are greener. The difference lies in citizen participation. The
National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, requires decisions on the national
forests, including the writing of the "forest plans" that govern their use, to
be open to citizens. Out west, the timber industry dominates the process.

Is that why Federal timber volumes in the West are down by at least an
order of magnitude since the Spotted Owl? Why didn't the timber
industry block the decision to voluntarily and radically reduce timber
harvests to protect the unlisted California Spotted Owl in California
(including the nearly universal ban on harvesting trees over 30" in
diameter)?

Here,
more people live near the forests and prefer to use them for recreation.

Now, a seemingly innocuous rules change proposed by the Bush administration
would take away the rights of citizens to intervene in timber sales and hand
the timber industry a mandate to clear-cut the national forests. The U.S.
Department of Agriculture official in charge of the Forest Service is Mark Rey,
a former timber industry lobbyist. He has found a loophole in NEPA that exempts
decisions with no environmental impact, like painting the outhouses at rest
areas, from public review. Rey's clever idea was to expand that loophole to the
writing of forest plans, so they could be rewritten to favor logging over
environmental protection and citizens would have no right to object.

There has been a tremendous outcry from environmental groups, which would be
completely frozen out, and even from the Forest Service's own scientists, whose
recommendations are being ignored. Sadly, there's little anyone can do. As a
rules change, the measure doesn't have to go through Congress. There will be a
90-day comment period, after which the Bush administration is free to ignore
the comments.

If the comments has no basis in truth or science, why pay much
attention to them? To me, there is a tremendous potential to educate
the public by including them in the process. Rebuilding the public's
trust in the Forest Service should be the ultimate goal. However,
reaching that goal may take a lifetime because of the track record of
the USFS. Some will never trust again and I can understand that.

As a federal employee, I would welcome the chance to prove to the
public that the decisions that I make in the woods are based on
science and my extensive experience in my field. However, not every
employee feels this way and wants to hide their work to the public.
Also, many USFS units readily OK "field trips" for anyone wanting to
see what the Forest Service is doing. You can still get involved with
the process and won't be locked out.

Larry eco-forestry rules!