Separating Fact from Fiction: Deconstructing the Myths Behind the Healthy Forests Initiative

By Matthew Koehler, Native Forest Network

Regardless of your political leanings, everyone should agree that any national policy to protect homes from wildfire and restore America’s National Forests should be based on facts and common sense, not on myths and unconfirmed data. Unfortunately, to achieve their goal of increasing commercial logging in National Forests the Bush Administration and some members of Congress have found it more convenient to rely on the later, while completely ignoring the former.

The southern California wildfires provide a recent case study of this phenomenon in action. The Bush Administration and members of Congress have used these fires as justification for Bush’s so-called Healthy Forests Initiative (HFI). Congressman Richard Pombo (R-CA) even boldly claimed that “The California wildfires make an airtight case for President Bush’s Healthy Forests Initiative.”

The truth is that the majority of the California fires burned on private lands and over 90% of the land was even forested, but rather chaparral and brush. Furthermore, despite numerous allegations that environmentalists prevented the Forest Service from reducing fuels in the area, there hasn’t been an appeal or litigation of a fuel reduction project on southern California’s four National Forests in seven years.

If you’re wondering just how legislation such as the Healthy Forests Restoration Act, which focuses only on federal public lands, severely limits public participation and allows the logging industry to cut down trees across 31,250 square miles of National Forests, will protect homes and prevent shrubland fires on private lands in southern California you’re not alone.

In fact, if anyone closely examines the justifications for Bush’s HFI beyond the canned 8-second soundbites, you quickly realize the rhetoric is largely baseless.

For example, while we repeatedly hear that the Forest Service suffers from “analysis paralysis” because lawsuits from environmentalists are preventing them from reducing fuels, the facts tell a much different story. An October 2003 report from the General Accounting Office – the non-partisan, investigative arm of Congress – found that of 818 Forest Service fuel reduction projects, 97% proceeded without litigation. This is the forth-consecutive GAO study to contain similar findings.

What about the claim that more logging in our National Forests will protect homes from wildfire? Again, reality bites, because the Forest Service’s own experts have found that the most effective way to protect a home is to focus on the home and its immediate surroundings with 200 feet.

Well, if logging in National Forests isn’t needed to protect homes, certainly commercial logging is needed to effectively reduce hazardous fuels across National Forest lands, right?

Sorry, but again the truth trumps the rhetoric. A recent review of 250 studies by the Southwest Community Forestry Research Center revealed that “The proposal that commercial logging can reduce the incidence of canopy fire was untested in the scientific literature. Commercial logging, with its focus on large diameter trees, does not remove the ladder fuels that contribute to fire spread.”

As you are beginning to clearly see, a sensible policy to protect homes and restore National Forests would look nothing like Bush’s HFI or the bills recently passed by Congress.

What would a sensible policy look like? First, it’s important to separate the issue of protecting homes from the issue of restoring our National Forests – as success in each of these areas requires different solutions.

In addition to basing a home protection strategy on the facts outlined above, we must take into account the fact that 92% of the land presenting a risk to communities is non-federal land. So, unlike the Healthy Forests Restoration Act – which only focuses on federal lands – the policy should provide resources to homeowners and cash-strapped states to conduct effective, non-controversial “firewise” projects around homes and communities.

When it comes to restoring the health of National Forests, the environmental community supports bona-fide, ecologically-based restoration projects that put local people to work healing the land. One of the first steps in the restoration process is recognizing that past commercial logging and roadbuilding are major causes of our current “forest health” crisis. Unfortunately, the Healthy Forests Restoration Act will result in more, not less, commercial logging and roadbuilding.

We also need to prioritize the restoration work. With an estimated 50% of riparian areas on National Forests in need of restoration and the fact that 80% of all rivers in the U.S. originate on National Forest lands, watershed restoration clearly needs to be a top priority. So, too, with 440,000 miles of roads on National Forests, coupled with a $8.4 billion road maintenance backlog, we need to focus considerable resources towards road obliteration and restoration projects.

The closer you look, the clearer it becomes that the Healthy Forests Restoration Act and Bush’s HFI leaves communities vulnerable to fire, fails to restore our National Forests and compromises the very qualities of our National Forests that Americans have grown to love and cherish.