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National Forest System

National Forest management policy is a complex and sometimes confusing subject.  Many often disparate issues and interests converge in its making, and new developments seem always to be in the works.  If you’re not already familiar with the sometimes arcane history and workings of the National Forest System, please visit our Get Forestry-Informed page to learn more.  Below, you’ll find the skinny on new or developing issues...

 

Contents:

 

HR 1904 “Healthy Forests Restoration Act”  

Update; December, 2003:  Congress Passes, President Signs HFRA!!  After months of negotiations, conference committees, and perhaps some of the worst wildfires in the history of the State of California, Congress finally passed the Healthy Forests Restoration Act.  The vote was unambiguous; HFRA, as amended in conference, passed the House on a 286-140 margin, and passed the Senate on Unanimous Consent.  That's right, unanimously passed the US Senate.  President Bush signed HFRA into law, to raucous applause, on December 3, 2003.

The amended HFRA is a compromise piece of legislation.  Bargains were struck on issues such as "old-growth" protection, the type and amount of land which can be treated under the legislation, and provisions related to administrative appeals and judicial review.  Here is a summary of the bill:

The HFRA is the first significant revision of national environmental policy in over 25 years.  It is difficult to predict what the real effect of this legislation will be, but in the near-term, it's certainly a new mandate from Congress to focus natural resource agencies on doing something meaningful to stem the tide of wildfire, insects, and diseases plaguing public lands.  Should you wish to read the entire text of the legislation, go to The Library of Congress and perform a bill search for HR 1904.  The Forest Service will shortly develop and release field direction for implementing HFRA and new appeal regulations for HFRA projects; look for these developments at www.fs.fed.us.  You may also like view a transcript of President Bush's remarks at the signing of HFRA. 

Update; April 30, 2003:  Our Nation’s public forests are in peril.  Catastrophic wildfires, vast epidemics of forest insects, and the spread of invasive weed species threaten to irreparably harm our National treasures, destroy the habitat of the wildlife species that inhabit them, and pollute the clean air and water they provide us.   The Healthy Forests Restoration Act is a recently introduced, bipartisan piece of legislation aimed at helping to restore the ability of the US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to effectively manage our Nation’s public lands in the hopes of preventing such a catastrophe.  Click here for some more background information.

Call, write, email, or fax your Congressperson, and tell them you support H.R. 1904!

So, what does the Healthy Forests Restoration Act do?  Not long ago, the Forest Service and BLM proposed a set of regulatory changes, called the Healthy Forests Initiative (see briefing below).  However, some of the problems that confront these agencies as they attempt to manage our public lands cannot be solved by regulation changes alone; new legislation is necessary.  This legislation has taken shape in the US House of Representatives’ Resources Committee, and has come to be called the Healthy Forests Restoration Act.  The major tenets of the bill would:

·         Codify the public participation requirements set out in the bipartisan Western Governors Association 10-year wildfire management strategy, and give the Forest Service and the BLM discretionary authority to limit analysis during the NEPA-phase to the proposed agency action, meaning the agencies would not be required to analyze and describe a number of different alternatives to the preferred course.  Also, the bill would direct the establishment of an alternative administrative review process for the Forest Service, ensuring a more timely airing of administrative challenges.  Finally, the bill would require the federal judiciary to periodically renew any preliminary injunctions issued against a project, while directing the Courts to give consideration to the potentially devastating environmental consequences associated with management inaction. 

·         Establishes two grant programs to encourage energy-related utilization of the otherwise valueless wood, chips, brush, thinnings and slash removed in conjunction with projects on federal forests and rangelands focused on reducing the threat of catastrophic wildfire and insect infestation and disease.

·         Creates a Watershed Forestry program to provide financial and technical support needed by private forest landowners to better manage their lands in order to protect water quality, to restore watershed conditions, to improve municipal drinking water supplies, and to address threats to forest health, including catastrophic wildfire.

·         Directs the Department of Agriculture to conduct an accelerated program to plan, conduct, and promote systematic information gathering on certain insect types that have caused large-scale damage to forest ecosystems.  Authorize and direct federal land managers to establish early detection programs for insect and disease infestations, with an emphasis on hardwood forests, so that agencies can isolate and treat adverse conditions before they reach epidemic levels. 

·         Establishes a Healthy Forests Reserve Program, which is a private forestland conservation initiative that would support the establishment of conservation easements (ranging in length from 10-years to permanent with a semi-regular buyout option) on one million acres annually of declining forest ecosystem types that are critical to, amongst other things, the recovery of threatened, endangered and other sensitive species.

 

The Healthy Forests Restoration Act passed with flying marks from the House Resources Subcommittee, garnering more than 70 bipartisan cosponsors.  The bill will soon get its day in front of the full House Agriculture Committee on Thursday, May 8, 2003; your Congressional representatives need to hear from you!! 

   

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Healthy Forests Initiative

Update; February 20, 2003:  Throughout the past year, several new or revised initiatives and rulemakings have been proposed to help better-manage our public forest lands and watersheds in the face of catastrophic wildfire, insects, and disease.  Currently, the Forest Service and BLM are mired by a straightjacket of procedural red tape, keeping them from being effective in their jobs as caretakers of the land.  For instance, the Forest Service estimates that 40 percent of their time is spent on analyses and planning; that’s a $250 million chunk out of their annual budget!  These proposals, collectively referred to as the Healthy Forests Initiative, are designed to restore some common sense to the process, enabling the Forest Service, BLM, and Department of Interior to move more sensibly, efficiently, and decisively in implementing projects and plans that will protect our homes, communities, and the forest’s natural resources. 

 

The Forest Service and BLM have completed the public input process on the Healthy Forests Initiative and its proposals.  However, without your support, they may be forced to abandon or water-down the proposals under the pressure of nationally organized special interest groups who oppose sound multiple-use forest management. 

 

Although the comment periods have closed, it is imperative for your Congressional Representatives to hear from you!  To save you time, we have constructed a point-and-click letter service -- it’ll take you five minutes at most to send a letter of support.  Just click here, enter your ZIP Code, click ‘Go’, fill in your name and address, and you’re done!

 

So, what is the Healthy Forests Initiative?  Here’s a little more info on the proposals:

1. CATEGORICAL EXCLUSIONS:  Categorical Exclusions, or “CE’s”, are a designation the Forest Service and BLM can make for a few specific types of small projects that exempt these activities from the years of environmental documentation ordinarily required.  They are NOT, as some environmental interest groups have said, a ‘new’ concept that does anything like ‘cut the public out of the process’.  The Forest Service and BLM have had and responsibly used CE’s for a very, very long time.  They are a necessary and essential part of the management toolbox because CE’s are the Agencies’ ONLY way of moving quickly on a project of timely nature.  These typically include actions like squashing small insect or disease outbreaks before they get big, cleaning up damage to trees from heavy storms or wind, salvaging burnt timber, and a new category, cleaning up hazardous fuels. 

The CE for small timber sales was taken away by a zealous Judge in a 1999 Illinois court case.  The Clinton administration, in servitude to the demands of its environmental special interest colluders, failed to address the Judge’s concerns and reinstate CE’s.  The Forest Service, under the leadership of a new White House administration, is finally taking up the cause and returning this invaluable tool to the hands of forest managers.

 

2. ADMINISTRATIVE APPEALS:  Each and every project the Forest Service or BLM might propose, such as hazardous fuels reductions, grazing permits, and even recreational improvements, is subject to a process of gathering public input under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).  If certain members of the public aren’t satisfied with how their comments were addressed by the Agency, they are allowed the opportunity to appeal a project decision and get a “second opinion”.   

Unfortunately, the appeals processes for the Forest Service and BLM are fraught with opportunities for organized special interests to monkey-wrench scientifically sound, ecologically beneficial forest projects.  The impact of appeals and litigation has lead the Forest Service, for example, to spend 40 percent of its time and money “bulletproofing” their projects against such challenges, usually without success. 

What’s most egregious about these sorts of appeals is that many of them succeed on the basis of paperwork or procedural errors -- NOT because something “bad” would have happened to the environment as a result of a proposed project.  For this reason, the new proposal would prevent people and groups from filing, last-minute, shotgun type appeals.  Those wishing to file an appeal will have had to participate in the public input process from the start, and would not be allowed to file an appeal on an issue they had not raised in a prior comment letter.  This gives the Forest Service and BLM the opportunity to address people’s concerns before the project is finalized; right now, they don’t always have that opportunity.

 

3. PLANNING REGULATIONS:  Each National Forest has what’s called a Forest Plan; these are the ‘programmatic’ documents the Forest Service uses to set goals and objectives for their particular forest over the next 10 to 15 years.  Forest planning decisions affect EVERYONE -- not just recreation, or grazing, or timber -- everyone, because forest plans are the point at which the Forest Service decides what balance of multiple-uses they think is appropriate for their forest.  Right now, the planning regulations are a maze of ambiguous and conflicting requirements -- a process full of holes into which lawsuits are often inserted to eliminate your rights to the benefits that public lands can provide.  The proposed revision of the Planning Regulations clarifies the wishy-washy concepts, sets clear goals for the Forest Service to meet, and empowers the Forest Service to return active multiple-use management to our public landscape through ambitious goal-setting.

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