The Loma Prietan
April 2003
Our Endangered National Forests
by Karen Maki, Forest Protection Committee
These are perilous times for our national forests. The Bush administration has stated its intention to double the amount of logging in California's national forests. They are taking steps to undo environmental protections that have been established over the last 20 years, and have already begun the process to offer timber sales in the Giant Sequoia National Monument and Yosemite National Park. What is the Sierra Club doing? What can you do?
On February 28, 2003 the Chapter was fortunate to have Chad Hanson provide us with the start of an answer to these questions. As a member of the Sierra Club National Board of Directors and as board liaison to the National Forest Campaign, he knows how the Club is responding. As the executive director of the John Muir Project with many years of experience monitoring timber sales in the Sierra Nevada, he knows both the state of our national forests and U.S. Forest Service policies. Chad provided historical background on the U.S. Forest Service, a sense of the danger inherent in this admini-stration's proposed changes, and suggestions for how we can respond.
Forest Service history
The official charter of the Forest Service is to protect our national forests and log only if habitat is protected. In practice it has not worked this way. You may have heard that the federal government loses money with each log taken from our national forests, and this is true. However, Forest Service funding comes both from timber sales and congressional appropriations. As one would expect, the Forest Service has had a history of promoting logging.
In the mid-1990s with the spotted owl court case and subsequent court-ordered pause in logging, the public became increasingly environmentally-minded and protective of our national forests. In response, the Forest Service stepped back from their former position of logging advocacy and presented themselves as stewards of the forests. How then could they still allow logging? Timber sales are now all about fire.
The "fire" excuse
The recent Sierra Nevada Framework forest plan allows the Forest Service to approve timber sales after a "stand replacement event" where 80% of the trees have been burned. According to the Forest Service, a tree is technically "dead" when 65% of its crown is burned and 50% of the crucial cambium layer in the trunk is destroyed. Such damage proves fatal for a small tree but frequently not for a mature tree. Many trees are being proposed for logging that would otherwise survive. Either way, valuable portions of habitat are removed. Dead or alive, trees are valuable to nature. More creatures live in a standing dead snag or a fallen log than a living tree.
The Sierra Nevada Framework ostensibly doesn't allow timber to be removed for commercial reasons. However, loggers can take out 20-inch trees and canopy can be reduced by 20%. It protects remnant stands of old growth and prohibits clearcutting. Though most of the provisions in the Framework are quite protective of forests, after a fire occurs, the Forest Service has used a loophole in the Framework which allows them to nearly clearcut old growth stands if they claim that the area was severely burned. Site inspections have shown that most of the areas they have called "severely burned"--and were proposing to log--were in fact green, healthy, and only mildly burned.
In all the above situations, the government does not enforce their own laws. The task of monitoring forests to see whether trees are really "dead", or that some other regulation is not transgressed, falls to volunteers or forest activists like the John Muir Project. Chad Hanson says that monitoring a timber sale can take as much as 100 hours. If the appeal is lost, the case may go to court, where the evidence against the federal agency must be overwhelming to prevail.
What is happening now
The Bush administration came into office with a desire to increase logging on public lands. Mark Rey, a former timber industry lobbyist with a keen understanding of how forest legislation functions, was appointed Under-Secretary of Agriculture in charge of national forests.
After last summer's average forest fire damage with a few spectacular blazes, the administration responded as if to a crisis with its proposal of the Healthy Forest Initiative. This time they moved to make the logging preemptive--before any trees had burned. However, the fire prevention went far beyond the removal of brush or trees near structures or prescribed burns as recommended by scientists. Instead the proposed changes would reduce environmental protections and public input and leave much discretion to the loggers.
Unable to get this law passed by the Senate, the Bush administration began the process of rewriting administrative rules (by which past laws were implemented) and forest management plans such as our Sierra Nevada Framework. Recently they added a logging rider to an appropriations measure.
The administration's newest logging proposal goes beyond our national forests to national monuments and national parks. The Clinton administration created the Giant National Sequoia Monument to protect it, but left it to be managed by the Forest Service under its policies. Recently the Forest Service proposed a massive logging plan in the monument under the guise of forest fire prevention. The administration is working to circumvent the protections established for the monument to allow the removal of any size tree and eliminate canopy retention requirements. Clearcutting would be allowed within the giant sequoia groves under the Bush proposal.
Even Yosemite National Park is not safe. The administration has drafted a proposal to allowing logging on thousands of acres. Although clearcuts will not be allowed, trees as large as 31 inches in diameter with average age of 150 years may be logged.
The only portions of national forests that are safe from logging are those designated as wilderness, which is why
the passage of Senator Boxer's California Wild Heritage Act has become so important. Under her bill, 2.5 million acres of national land would be declared wilderness and thus off limits to logging.
What the Sierra Club is doing
The Sierra Club has leaped into action to protect our forests. The national office continues to monitor timber sales and appeal or litigate when regulations are
not followed. They closely track any new laws and riders, rule changes, and review national forest management changes.
They focus public attention on the administration's actions.
On the legislative front, Jim Leach (R-Iowa) will reintroduce the National Forest Protection and Restoration Act to restore rather than log our national forests. Although we will not be able to pass this law during this Administration, the introduction of the bill will provide us another platform from which to fight for forest protection and will move us closer to eventual passage. Last session the bill had 112 co-sponsors in Congress. When the number reaches 150, we will be a force. As part of a large environmental coalition, the Club is also working hard to win the key support of Senator Feinstein for the California Wild Heritage Act. A portion of the bill that safeguards 56,000 acres in Los Padres National Forest and Pinnacles National Monument passed last year.
What you can do
The administration's efforts are persistent and ubiquitous. The Sierra Club can not fend off this attack alone. It requires all our efforts working in partnership. The national office can uncover the breach or help to craft the legislation, but it falls to us to express outrage and demand the bill be passed. Fortunately, the work can be educational, fun, and put you in contact with other environmentalists.
In the Loma Prieta Chapter, we invite you to support the Club's efforts by:
1. Participate in Forest Protection Committee events and meetings.
To participate, contact Karen Maki, Forest Protection Committee chair at 650/366-0577 or karenmaki@earthlink.net.
2. Be a forest watch activist!
Do a forest watch in the Stanislaus or Sierra National Forests. We will take you through the whole process: forest watch training on what to look for and how to write it up, as well as a weekend scope-out of a timber sale to see whether rules are being followed under Chad Hanson's guidance.
With this training and our experience, we will write up our observations and appeal, if need be.
3. Be a forest armchair activist!
Join our campaign to educate the public about attacks on our national forests. All you need is e-mail access and the willingness to write one letter a month to either the editor or your legislator or a government official.
The danger to our forests is tremendous. The Bush administration wants to drastically reduce environmental protections and public input and rely upon loggers to care for our forests. They intend to double the logging in our national forests in the Sierra Nevada. If we don't act now, much of our national forests will be clearcut.