Bush Administration Sinks to New Lows in Quest to Increase Logging

By Matthew Koehler

Matthew Koehler is with the Missoula-based Native Forest Network. He may be reached at koehler@wildrockies.org.

Cheered on by resource extractive industries that have given the Republicans $71 million in contributions since the 2000 election cycle, the Bush Administration and the GOP-controlled Congress have been on quite a roll limiting citizen involvement and undermining environmental laws in order to increase logging and resource extraction on America’s national forests.

For example, last week the Bush Administration put new regulations in place allowing an unlimited number of 1,000 acre logging projects across the national forest landscape with absolutely no environmental analysis and limited public involvement.

Incredibly, the Bush Administration wants us to believe that logging a forest the size of 930 football fields will cause “no significant environmental impact.” Next time you’re at a football game, take a look at the field and just try and imagine how logging an area 930 times as big will result in a healthy forest.

Also last week, the Bush Administration announced a plan to triple logging levels on eleven national forests in California by opening spotted owl reserves to logging and allowing cutting of trees nearly 8 feet in circumference under the guise of fuel reduction.

Back in May – at the urging of Montana Congressman Denny Rehberg and Governor Judy Martz – the U.S. House passed the so-called “Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003,” a misguided fire bill that does not include any specific measures to protect rural homeowners from fire.

Instead the bill limits citizen participation, undermines environmental laws, interferes with the U.S. judicial system and gives the logging industry 125 million dollars in taxpayer subsidies to log millions of acres of national forest land.

What’s the rationale for these policies? Well, we’re told repeatedly that the Forest Service suffers from “analysis paralysis” and efforts to protect homes and reduce fuels are being stalled by appeals and lawsuits. In fact, this has been the underlying premise upon which the Bush Administration’s entire national forest policy has been based. There’s just one problem: The facts don’t back them up.

A May 2003 General Accounting Office report – requested by GOP lawmakers – found that of 762 Forest Service fuel reduction projects, 95% were ready for implementation within the standard 90 day review period and 97% proceeded without litigation.

These numbers from the independent, nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress hardly support Administration claims of analysis paralysis.

And then of course there’s the fact that Forest Service experts have found that a home’s ability to survive a fire depends on its location, condition and surroundings within 200 feet. In short, experts tell us that fire protection begins at home, not with more logging on our national forests.

But the truth is a mere inconvenience to the Bush Administration. These masters of manipulation – enabled by the mainstream media – realize that if you repeat a lie often enough it will soon become “fact.”

A new report from Jacquleine Vaughn – a political science professor at Northern Arizona University – offers proof of this phenomena. By closely examining the recent debate surrounding national forest management, Dr. Vaughn found that the Bush Administration and some members of Congress have “demonized environmental groups through the use of rhetoric and the repetition of unconfirmed data to reduce their influence and credibility in the forest and fire policy debate.”

Unfortunately, the Bush Administration’s smear campaign doesn’t stop there. An anonymous source within the Forest Service has provided us with talking points put together by Bush Administration officials in response to an Endangered Forests, Endangered Freedoms report release last week by a coalition of 130 environmental groups.

In a chilling revelation that hints of McCarthyism, Forest Service employees were instructed to respond to the report, which detailed efforts by the Bush Administration to limit citizen involvement and weaken environmental laws, by calling us “a confederacy of militant environmental groups.”

These carefully chosen words on the part of Bush Administration officials serve as a stark reminder of to what lengths this Administration will go to discredit citizens and public interest organizations who dare question their policies.

Despite these underhanded tactics by the Bush Administration, the environmental community will continue to advocate for science-based restoration projects that put local people to work restoring our forests. We will also continue to call for a common-sense fire policy that focuses scarce resources in the area immediately adjacent to our homes and communities.

Given that only 12 communities out of 22,000 at risk from wildfire nationally are recognized as “firewise,” we think it’s criminal for the Bush Administration and their supporters to ignore rural homeowners while giving the logging industry 125 million dollars for more logging in the backcountry.