Monday, March 20, 2006
Forest bill disregards science
From the RoundTable blog
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Ralph Bloemers
Bloemers grew up on a dairy farm outside Whitehall in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. He now lives in Oregon.
I have spent countless hours of my life enjoying the forests and rivers of this great country. Growing up, I hiked in the Blue Ridge Mountains and enjoyed the pristine swimming holes in the George Washington and Jefferson national forests. After high school, I followed the Lewis and Clark trail westward and ultimately settled in Oregon.
The majestic old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest were born in fire and have thrived for millennia and survived countless droughts, windstorms and insect outbreaks. The majestic stands of Douglas fir in the Columbia River Gorge, the Western hemlocks on Oregon's volcanic peaks and the dry Ponderosa pine forests in the eastern part of the state flourished and recovered after natural disturbance without logging.
I have spent time in all these places and still return to the beautiful mountains of Appalachia to visit my family. Burned forests are great for backcountry skiing in the winter, as well as for spotting mountain bluebirds and black-backed woodpeckers. Burned forests are also great places to hunt morel mushrooms and witness the amazing rebirth of wildflowers, sprouting seedlings and the host of plants that literally rise from the ashes.
Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., in his recent commentary about the Forest Emergency Recovery and Research Act (March 9, "Forest bill permits recovery options") claimed: "[O]ur bill only requires the U.S. Forest Service to conduct a rapid evaluation of an area impacted by a catastrophic event." He suggests that the growing number of people who are criticizing the bill simply misunderstand it.
Goodlatte's claims about the need for new authorities are dead wrong. After every fire or disturbance, the Forest Service already conducts a rapid assessment known as a burned area emergency recovery report that looks at the impact of the fire on the landscape. Using existing authorities, the Forest Service is able to quickly respond, and no conservation groups have stood in the way of recovery projects designed to achieve genuine restoration of our forests.
The "recovery" projects that Goodlatte and his backers really want involve removing commercially valuable timber from our forests. They want to do so without the pesky environmental regulations that are there to protect the last remaining old-growth and roadless areas in your federal forests and to ensure these forests are there for this and future generations.
They mask their real agenda with what appeals to the public -- the language of conservation and restoration. And where there is complete scientific certainty, Goodlatte seeks to manufacture doubt. This is the same approach that has allowed politicians and the oil industry to deny global warming for years, leaving Americans without the tools to deal with root causes of massive hurricanes and windstorms hitting our southern coastlines.
Of more than 30 independent peer-reviewed studies on post-disturbance intervention, every single one has found that post-fire logging sets back recovery for decades if not centuries.
As The Washington Post reported (Feb. 27, "In fire's wake, logging study inflames debate"), Jerry Franklin, one of the Northwest's most respected forest ecologists from the University of Washington's College of Forest Resources, has already warned Congress to be careful not to prescribe salvage logging as the cure-all for forest fires.
If Congress wants to promote the sound recovery of burned federal forests, Franklin told the resources committee at a recent field hearing that the overwhelming weight of scientific research suggests that "salvage logging is not going to be appropriate."
Logging after a fire is just adding insult to existing injury.
This new bill undermines what we Americans hold dear -- accountability, sound science and protections against the quick sell-off of our last remaining old-growth and roadless forests. These rare and special places are becoming increasingly valuable for their recreational opportunities and a bounty of fish and wildlife. Logging them in the name of recovery is short-sighted, unsustainable and scientifically incredible.
Don't be fooled. Even if you dress up a pig and call it Peggy Sue, it is still a pig -- even if Bob Goodlatte tells you it's not.
