June 20, 2003 The Missoulian

Burns: Focus efforts on backcountry


By SHERRY DEVLIN of the Missoulian


His larger-than-life likeness beamed onto a pair of
screens in a hotel ballroom, U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns
told the Western Governors' Association forest health
summit Thursday that the real wildfire danger is in
the backcountry - "that's where the fires start" - and
that's where forest-thinning funds should go.

Burns talked with the governors of Montana, Idaho and
Oregon by video conference during the lunch hour,
briefing them on healthy forests legislation soon to
be considered by the Senate and his thoughts on the
best way to lessen the fire danger in drought-weary
Western states.

While much of the discussion at the governors'
three-day summit focused on the need to protect
communities on the forest's edge, Burns said he's not
interested in funding work on private land.




"Who built the house in the forest?" he asked. "Who's
responsible for that?"

"The real problem is in the backcountry, folks," Burns
said. "That's where the fires start. Let's give the
Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management the
tools they need to take care of this problem."

"While the wildlife-urban interface is important
because it's where the people and the forest meet, we
must recognize that the WUI isn't where the forest
health issues start," he said. "It is not only in the
interface that we see degradation of air and water
quality during and after a major wildfire. And it is
not in the interface that we lose critical wildlife
habitat as a result of a major wildfire."

Everybody, Burns said, "has to take on some
responsibility" for reducing the wildfire danger.

Earlier Thursday, Interior Secretary Gale Norton
assured the conference's nearly 400 participants that
the federal government is committing time, money and
expertise to the forest health issue, but said it will
be important to offset restoration costs by finding
uses for even the smallest-diameter wood culled from
the forest.

Norton announced an initiative to encourage the use of
woody biomass byproducts as sources of renewable
energy - a joint effort of the departments of the
Interior, Agriculture and Energy.

A memorandum signed by the department secretaries
promotes the use of small-diameter wood culled from
forest, woodland and rangeland restoration and
hazardous fuels projects. The resulting "woody
biomass" - trees and woody plants - can be used for
biomass energy production, such as steam and
electricity.

"The challenge has been that markets for biomass and
small wood are sporadic and marginally economical in
most Western states," Norton said.

Under the agreement announced Thursday, the federal
government will:

n Promote understanding of forest restoration
projects, as well as biomass quality, quantity and
utilization.

n Develop and apply the best scientific knowledge of
woody biomass utilization and forest management
practices to projects that improve forest health.

n Encourage the sustainable development and
stabilization of woody biomass markets.

n Support Indian tribes in the development and
establishment of biomass projects.

n Explore opportunities to provide a reliable,
sustainable supply of woody biomass - and find ways to
measure the success of biomass utilization.

Already, the Interior Department has a mobile "power
plant" that can be wheeled into the forest, plugged
into the electric transmission grid and put to work.
At project's end, the plant is simply moved to another
forest.

Norton said 190 million acres of federal forestland
are in need of thinning, more than the government
could ever afford to treat, the Interior Secretary
said. "But we are beginning to see results in the
high-priority areas. Sixty-two percent of the dollars
we spent this year went to projects in the
wildland-urban interface."

As of June 12, the Interior Department had thinned
800,000 acres of land already this year, "and we're on
track to treat more than 1 million acres in 2004," she
said. Some of those acreages are infested with bark
beetles, some have been damaged by fire, others are at
high risk of fire.

And to those who worry that forest-health projects
will actually damage the forest, Norton showed off -
by video - the latest logging technology, a six-legged
Finnish machine that looks like it should be carrying
troops in a "Star Wars" movie.

"Truth is stranger than fiction," she quipped, as the
machine high-stepped into the forest, adjusting its
weight to avoid damage to ground vegetation, shifting
right and left, up and down, forward and backward.

The video technology that brought Burns to the summit
over the noon hour was live, albeit slightly delayed
between the sound and the picture.

The senator beamed when he saw Idaho Gov. Dirk
Kempthorne on the picture from Missoula, as he and
Kempthorne served in the Senate together for six
years.

"We miss you back here," Burns said. "We've got a
place for you, by the way."

Kempthorne is being courted by the Bush administration
to head the Environmental Protection Agency. And while
the possibility he'll leave Idaho was mentioned by
others at several points during the summit, Kempthorne
kept his thoughts to himself.

Burns was blunt in his critique of Western forests and
the wildfire danger. "The public is outraged about
these fires," he said. "They want us to fix this
problem."

Some of the responsibility does belong to the federal
government, the senator said. The Forest Service needs
help from Congress in getting the mix of funding and
regulatory changes required to increase timber cutting
on the national forests, he said.

In 2001, the agency logged 248,000 acres, the lowest
cut since the 1940s, according to Burns. "We're losing
forests to insects, fire and disease much faster than
we are losing them to timber harvesting. We've got to
get moving on that. We need to give the Forest Service
the tools they need to get the work done."

Both Burns and Norton endorsed regulatory changes
limiting citizen appeals, and hastening the process by
which projects are reviewed and approved.

"No one party is responsible for this mess," Burns
said. "We've committed some sins in the past. But now
we need to get some common sense back into our forest
management."

Reporter Sherry Devlin can be reached at 523-5268 or
at




http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2...cal/news03.txt


Comment by poster: This quote pretty much says it all

In 2001, the agency logged 248,000 acres, the lowest
cut since the 1940s, according to Burns. "We're losing
forests to insects, fire and disease much faster than
we are losing them to timber harvesting. We've got to
get moving on that. We need to give the Forest Service
the tools they need to get the work done."

Is "preservationism" sustainable in our National Forests?? "Crisis
logging" to combat drought, insects, fire and disease will treat the
symptoms and not the disease. When we thin our forests, we can pick
the trees that are removed. "Mother Nature" will "re-balance" our
forests in ways we Americans will certainly not like. The South, the
Black Hills, the desert Southwest and California are all impacted by
drought, insects, fire and disease all brought to you by "Mother
Nature" and "preservationists" who want to save an unnatural tinderbox
of live and dead fuels that have been building up for decades.

Larry, forest sculptor