Logging Rider Poses National Threat

By Chad Hanson (August 1, 2002)

Most environmental advocates expected the logging industry's friends in Congress to threaten an appropriations rider this summer, much like the "Salvage Logging Rider" of 1995. Predictably, as fires burn in the West, the timber industry and its political allies have sought to exploit the public's misunderstanding of fire to push for increased logging in national forests, and suspension of environmental laws. This, despite the fact that scientists have concluded that logging increases fire behavior.

Few, however, expected the fight to be triggered by Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota. Under political attack from GOP challengers, Daschle passed an appropriations rider in July, suspending environmental laws to allow several otherwise illegal logging projects to proceed on the Black Hills National Forest. Several pro-logging Western Republicans, emboldened by Daschle's actions, have now begun to argue that environmental laws should be suspended on national forests across the nation, supposedly to allow "fuel reduction" projects and protectrural homes.

Ironically, however, neither the Black Hills logging rider nor more extreme measures being considered by Western Republicans have anything to do with home protection or fire risk reduction. Instead of focusing on reduction of flammable brush near homes, the Black Hills rider targets logging of large trees in the Beaver Park Roadless Area and the Norbeck Wildlife Preserve, which the timber industry has long coveted. These areas are actually some of the least fire prone in the Black Hills, due in large part to their older forest conditions that shade the forest floor. The abundance of larger trees in these places, of course, is also the very reason that logging companies want access to them.

In fact, an analysis of recent fires on the Black Hills National Forest by the Pacific Biodiversity Institute (www.pacificbio.org) found that they overwhelmingly burned in areas that had been heavily logged and roaded. The largest fire began in an area subjected to intensive commercial "thinning". Such timber sales remove the larger, more fire-resistant trees, leave behind the smaller, more combustible material, and create flammable "slash debris"--branches and needles from felled trees. In addition, removing mature trees reduces the cooling, shading effect of the forest canopy, creating hotter, drier conditions on the ground.

Decades of logging hasn't reduced severe fire conditions, it has created them.

Environmentalists urged brush reduction near homes in the Black Hills. This could have occurred at any time without delay or environmental review because such activities are already exempt from environmental laws since there are no real negative impacts. Likewise, if Western Republicans truly wish to protect homes in their districts, they would simply urge the U.S. Forest Service to focus its time and resources on clearing undergrowth near houses and educating homeowners on simple steps to help fireproof their residences.

Instead, these politicians are now pushing the Forest Service to sell mature trees to timber companies in remote areas on public lands. And, with debate on the Interior Appropriations bill scheduled for September, they now seek to broaden Daschle's logging rider and apply it nationally to allow increased logging of mature and old growth trees on our national forests. If allowed to occur, this will destroy wildlife habitat, further increase fire severity, and continue to ignore real dangers to rural homeowners.

We all saw what happened in the 1990's with the Salvage Logging Rider, as logging corporations ravaged tens of thousands of acres of old growth forests on federal lands while environmental laws were suspended. Will history repeat itself or will the public prevail upon Congress to demonstrate some honesty and integrity? Time will tell.

One thing is certain, though. Until our national forests are protected from commercial logging, they will always be threatened by the political strangehold that powerful timber interests have over some elected officials. What Senator Daschle did was wrong. What some Western Republicans, like Idaho's Senator Larry Craig, are now threatening would turn Daschle's transgression into a national catastrophe.

Chad Hanson is the executive director of the John Muir Project and is a national director of the Sierra Club. He is based in Cedar Ridge in California's Sierra Nevada mountains, and can be reached at chadhanson@juno.com, P.O. Box 697, Cedar Ridge, CA 95924 or visit www.johnmuirproject.org.