Bush Rewrites National Forest Management Law

By J.R. Pegg

WASHINGTON, DC, November 27, 2002 (ENS) - The Bush administration has proposed broad changes to the federal government's management plans for U.S. national forests and grasslands.

The new rules would give increased authority to federal supervisors of each of the country's 155 national forests to approve logging, drilling and mining regardless of the forest plan's guidelines for protecting wildlife.

The proposal also calls for the removal of a provision that requires the U.S. Forest Service to scientifically monitor the effect of these activities on plant and wildlife species.

Clearcuts fragment the Willamette National Forest, Oregon (Photo courtesy American Lands Alliance)

The administration's plan, environmentalists say, reduces public participation and allows forest service managers to ignore the environmental impact of these activities within national forests.

Defenders of Wildlife president Rodger Schlickeisen (Photo courtesy Defenders of Wildlife)

"After months of waiting, the administration has timed this environmental attack to come out quietly on the week of Thanksgiving in a transparent attempt to sneak it past the media and the public," he said.

The administration announced its proposed changes to provisions of the National Forest Management Act (NFMA) in a statement issued today by the U.S. Forest Service. The Act was passed by Congress in 1976 and governs the management of 192 million acres of national forests. It requires forest plans for each of the 155 national forests and 22 national grasslands.

These lands are inhabited by more than 3,000 species of wildlife and more than 10,000 plant species, including 17 percent of federally listed endangered and threatened species.

Changes to the National Forest Management Act were proposed in 2000, but were put on hold by the Bush administration, which characterized the Clinton rules as too complicated.

According to the Bush administration, its latest proposal retains the basic principles from the 2000 rule, which it said "emphasizes meaningful public involvement, sustainability, use of science, and monitoring and evaluation."

Federally listed as endangered, this lynx kitten in Maine's White Mountain National Forest is one of some 200 Canada lynx in the United States. (Photo courtesy U.S. Forest Service)

But environmentalists are furious with the administration's proposal and believe it does exactly the opposite. Not only does it undermine environmental analysis, revoke critical species protection and eliminate science from the planning process, critics say, it also restricts public participation.

"These new forest rules reflect the Bush administration's belief that only timber companies belong in America's National Forests," said Carl Pope, Sierra Club executive director. "When the Bush administration rewrote the rules, they wrote the public out of the equation."

The proposal states that "form letters, check off lists, pre-printed postcards, or similar duplicative materials will not be accepted as objections" to forest management plans.

"Postcards from average Americans will no longer be accepted as input on the forest service rules," said Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, a Washington, DC based non-profit organization. "To the hikers, campers, and fishermen, the Bush administration is saying, 'We are not interested in hearing from you, we only care about hearing from the timber industry.'"

The previous revision of the national forest management regulations, which took place from 1997 to 2000, entailed what environmentalists say was extensive participation by the public and scientific communities, including more than a dozen public meetings.

In addition, those revisions were based on the recommendations of an independent committee of scientists. This latest rewrite, environmentalists say, was conducted by political appointees without public or open scientific input.

Cowlitz Valley Colors, Washington's Gifford Pinchot National Forest (Photo by G. Hird courtesy U.S. Forest Service)

The Bush administration believes the planning process for forest management plans is too complex, too costly and too time consuming. The proposal calls for "the elimination of most of the procedural requirements and redundancies in the planning process, which could allow plans to be completed in a third of the time."

"There is an urgency to make planning more efficient, as there are issues, activities, and resource concerns that are not halted during the planning process and which may pose increased concerns when planning occurs over excessively long timeframes," the proposal states.

Forest Service officials also see the 2000 rule as requiring more scientific input than they believe is required.

"The reviewers concluded that the 2000 rule anticipates a level of involvement by scientists that may or may not be needed considering the planning issues or the anticipated amount of project activities during on-the-ground implementation of the plan," officials wrote in the proposal.

In addition, the role of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) is questioned in the proposal. Administration officials have been vocal critics of NEPA, a law that environmentalists believe is crucial to assessing the impact of forest management plans.

"[T]he question with regard to NFMA planning is when and how - not whether - to follow NEPA where it applies," the proposal reads.

Antelope on Wyoming's Big Horn National Forest (Photo by Rob Yingling courtesy U.S. Forest Service)

The administration is trying to take NEPA out of the equation for forest management plans, says Steve Holmer, spokesman for the American Lands Alliance, a national grassroots forest conservation organization.

The proposal also seeks changes to the manner in which the Forest Service maintains the viability of native wildlife species in each national forest. Environmentalists see this rule as a useful barometer for determining the impact of logging on wildlife conservation and the health of forest ecosystems.

With regard to protecting critical plant and wildlife species, the Forest Service will "be able to put its head in the sand and not worry," Holmer said.

In conjunction with release of the proposed rule, the Forest Service issued a comprehensive study of the costs of land and resource management planning on national forests. The study predicts the proposed 2002 planning rule will save roughly 30 percent of these costs compared to the 2000 version of the rule.

"These savings can be used to address critical areas, such as wildfire prevention, watershed restoration, and recreation facility maintenance," said Collins. "The Forest Service wants to improve its planning processes to spend its available resources doing real work on the land and not disproportionately on planning and analysis."

This proposal is the latest Bush administration policy to draw the ire of environmentalists, many of whom see administration officials as far too willing to give timber, oil and mining interests a blank check to harvest natural resources with little or no concern for the environment.

"Every week since the [November 5] election, the Bush administration has announced a new attack on the environment," said Clapp of the National Environmental Trust.

This great gray owl Strix nebulosa is on the U.S. Forest Service list of endangered animals of the Eastern Region (Photo courtesy U.S. Forest Service)

"In addition to rolling back the National Forest Management Act with these new planning regulations, we know the administration is trying to gut the National Environmental Policy Act and the Appeals Reform Act both of which guarantee public involvement in land management decisions," Spivak said.

This latest proposal "looks grossly illegal," said Holmer. "It violates the National Forest Management Act by rendering it essentially moot."

Holmer expects the forest management plan revisions will result in a slew of lawsuits.

On this issue, some environmentalists have questioned the role of the USDA Undersecretary for Natural Resources and Environment Mark Rey, a former lobbyist for the American Forest and Paper Association.

According to Defenders of Wildlife, Rey and other Bush administration officials have refused to release most of their records related to the proposed changes and any meeting or contacts with the timber industry on this issue. Defenders of Wildlife filed a federal lawsuit in October seeking those records.

Rey's office did not return calls requesting comment.

The Defenders of Wildlife said the proposed new National Forest Management Act regulations are largely identical to at least eight major recommendations made by the American Forest and Paper Association.

"Protection of our national forests and their essential wildlife habitat is taking a back seat to Mark Rey's efforts to maximize timber cutting on public lands," Schlickeisen said. "Defenders of Wildlife will fight this all the way. If wildlife can't survive in our national forests, then where can they? Maintaining native wildlife species should be a basic requirement of all public land management.

"This administration hears only one voice, that of its friends in the timber industry who want to saw down our national forests without worrying about the needs of wildlife, the environment or the public," he said.

Officials from the American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA), a timber industry organization, did not return requests for comment. The association, however, has been vocal in its criticism of the current forest management plans.

"For too long, federal land managers have been drowning in paperwork and red tape that have prevented them from being able to actively manage our imperiled federal forestlands," said AF&PA president and CEO W. Henson Moore in an August statement.

The proposed forest management rule will be published in the Federal Register in December and will include a 90 day public comment period.

The announcement and related documents are available at: www.fs.fed.us/emc/nfma.