Meet Mark Rey: The Fox in the Hen House

As Bush's Under Secretary for Natural Resources and the Environment, former timber industry lobbyist Mark Rey is responsible for the management of 155 national forests, 19 national grasslands, and 15 land utilization projects on 192,000,000 acres of publicly-owned lands in 44 states. Make no mistake: This fox is not guarding the hen house - this fox is IN the hen house.

Mark Rey U.S. Department of Agriculture Room 217-E, Jamie L. Whitten Building 1400 Independence Avenue, SW Washington, D.C. 20250 (202) 720-7173

October, 2001-Present: Sworn in as Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment by Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman. In this position, Rey oversees the U.S. Forest Service (USFS).

1995-2001: Rey served as a staff member with the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. Rey was the committee's lead staff person for work on national forest policy and USFS Administration, where he was directly involved in virtually all legislation concerning the USFS during this time period, with principal responsibility for a number of public lands bills. Specifically, Rey was the "key architect" (National Journal, 1997) of Sen. Larry Craig's (R-ID) 1997 version of the National Forest Management Act, which would have eliminated citizen oversight and made timber harvest levels mandatory and enforceable, while making environmental standards unenforceable "policies." The Act would have allowed the USFS to fine citizens up to $10,000 for filing appeals to halt timber sales for an "improper purpose." Rey is also widely known as the author of the infamous 1995 Salvage Rider, which suspended all environmental laws, giving logging interests the go-ahead to clearcut ancient forests in the Pacific Northwest (National Journal, 1996).

1992-1994: Vice President of Forest Resources for the American Forest and Paper Association (AF&PA). AF&PA is the leading national voice for more logging in national forests. Rey pushed for getting rid of the USFS appeals process, claiming it was being abused by "high-paid special interest litigators or by college pranksters" (Lewiston Morning Tribune, 1992).

1989-1992: Executive Director of the American Forest Resource Alliance, a coalition of 350 timber corporations formed by the National Forest Products Association to oppose "Option 9" - a plan to designate habitat in the Pacific Northwest for the endangered northern spotted owl. Rey publicly promoted the idea that the Endangered Species Act unfairly restricts business (National Journal, 1992) and authored a 1991 "secret" proposal circulated to the first Bush Administration calling for logging quotas in these ancient forests (Gannett News Service, 1991).

1984-1989: Vice President of Public Forestry Programs for the National Forest Products Association, a precursor to the American Forest and Paper Association.

1976-1984: Served as "Environmental Forester;" Director of Water Quality Programs; and Director of Water and Air Quality Programs for the National Forest Products Association/American Paper Institute.

Other Major Accomplishments and Public Statements

• Stated in 1991, "Claims that our forests are being overcut are simply not true. Not one forest in the entire national forest system has come close to meeting the timber harvest levels called for in its forest plan." (Mark Rey, letter to The New York Times, October 23, 1991).
  
  
• In responding to a 1991 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposal to designate 11.6 million acres of the Pacific Northwest as prime northern spotted owl habitat, Rey stated, "With this insane proposal the government has placed the interest of owls above the interest of thousands of logging families and communities." (Wall Street Journal, 1991).
  
  
• Has stated that clearcut logging, while "not aesthetically uplifting" is "compatible with rain forest ecology" and that the practice is "relatively comparable" to windstorms (Sunset Magazine, 1997).
  
  
• In 2000, Rey handled Sen. Craig's opposition to the Roadless Initiative (Almanac of the Unelected, 2000). Helped develop Sen. Craig's plan to stall the policy until the new Bush Administration could take office by introducing legislation to require a congressional oversight committee to investigate how the policy came about, effectively delaying enactment for at least a year (Oregonian, 2000).
  
  
• At a speech given at UC Berkeley in October 2000, stated, "Our public lands are now under the protection of sweeping laws, like the Endangered Species Act, enforced by powerful federal agencies. There is no emergency that warrants this unilateral exercise of executive authority."
  
  
• Rey was a featured speaker at the 1993, 94, 96 and 98 "Fly In for Freedom," an annual event held by the "Wise Use" umbrella organization, Alliance for America. In 1998 Rey suggested getting the attention of the U.S. Forest Service by limiting the agency's budget to "custodial management." (The mission of the "Wise Use" movement, as expressed by one of its founders, Ron Arnold, is "to destroy, to eradicate the environmental movement. We want to be able to exploit the environment for private gain, absolutely.")

Special thanks to EarthJustice and the Clearinghouse on Environmental Advocacy and Research for background information.

Mark Rey is a Devoted Timber Industry Lobbyist

By Brock Evans

Pleasantly ordinary, non-threatening in appearance and stature, quiet, soft spoken, even somewhat scholarly - this is the Mark Rey I came to know in the 1970s and 80s when he was a key lobbyist for the National Forest Products Association (now the American Forest and Paper Association) and I was the point person on forest issues for the Sierra Club, then the National Audubon Society.

The setting was the "forest wars" of the times: campaigns leading to passage of the National Forest Management Act (1974-76); the tussle over its implementation (1977-80); battles over Reagan's timber appointees and their attempts to reverse NFMA's protections (1981-85); the struggles of the early 80's to add more forested Wildernesses in Washington, Oregon and California to the system; the epic venture which we know as the Ancient Forest Campaign (1985 to its partial resolution in 1994, but still raging in many parts of the Pacific Northwest); and many other encounters. Rey was the person we would most often see on the other side of hearing rooms, in Congressional offices and across the table representing the interests of logging companies during those highly charged years.

Later, when the Republicans took control of the Senate in 1994 and Rey became Chief of Staff for Idaho's notoriously pro-timber Senator Larry Craig, we learned to appreciate his skill at drafting forest legislation to benefit his former employers in the timber industry.

"Hell, you have to read one of Mark's bill drafts about five times before you can figure out how you're getting screwed," said one of my rueful colleagues after wading through one of Senator Craig's infamous "forest health" bills in the mid-90s. Over the years, many of us actually came to respect his acumen, the quiet intensity with which he represented the interests of the logging companies who were destroying the forest places we loved.

It's hard not to like the guy, in a personal sense. He was always courteous to us - even when he and his partisans held all the legislative power over forests. I still remember how he invited us all over to his office to outline Senator Craig's program for the national forests in 1995. We had a pleasant discussion in the Washington, D.C. manner. In the politest and most friendly terms, he informed us how he - through Senator Craig - was going to log the heck out of our national forests, and in the same vein we said we would fight back with everything we had.

A month later came the now-infamous Salvage Rider, known by us as the "Logging Without Laws Rider," because it decreed a suspension of all environmental laws while ordering the Forest Service to log any forests it wanted - all in the name of "forest health," of course. I am told that Mark denies authorship of this statute - called by the New York Times as "the worst piece of conservation legislation ever written" - but most of us see his drafting and philosophical fingerprints all over it. Somebody - certainly NOT a Senator or Congressman - wrote it!

This is how an unprepossessing man came to be what my knowledgeable colleagues like to call the "Darth Vader" of the national forest system. Maybe that's a strong term. And although he is now Bush's Under Secretary for Natural Resources and the Environment - holding immense power over the Forest Service and its policies - even this clout has its limits.

Republican administrations always appoint someone representing the timber industry to oversee the national forests. Mark Rey is just the latest in a long line. But Rey is also different. A consummate Washington insider, as well as a total industry partisan, he knows where all the bodies are buried. With his buddies in the timber industry completely behind him and his contacts at the highest levels on Capitol Hill, we - and the national forests still standing - can expect no quarter.

Now Rey's goal is to increase logging everywhere and weaken environmental protections at every turn. These attempts will be made with great skill - probably in bits and pieces - Rey being too smart to invite a direct confrontation with us. We must be ready for a wave of attacks on all we have fought for and on all that we thought had been made safe already in our national forests, under the able - if sinister - guidance of Mark Rey. I very much hope I am wrong, that the man I remember from the past has changed, but I suspect not.

Brock Evans is executive director for the Endangered Species Coalition and a longtime environmentalists.