Subject: Larry Craig's forest bill...
Date: Jan 16 13:04:41 1997
From: Don Baccus - donb at rational.com


Here it is, folks, and you're going to love it. Now is the time to
take action by writing your Senators, Congresscritters, and LOE
pages of your local daily! It's awful. So awful, in fact, that
I view it as a blessing as it runs against the grain of the Republican's
new policy of moderation on environmental issues. Since he's incorporated
many timber industry recommendations, it should if nothing else give
the lie to timber industry's claim that it is moderating its position on
forest issues.

********************************************************************

The Wilderness Society Contact: Jerry Greenberg 202-429-2608,
jerry_greenberg at tws.org

SHOULD THE TIMBER INDUSTRY TAKE CONTROL
OF OUR NATIONAL FORESTS?

A preliminary analysis of the "Public Land Management
Responsibility and Accountability Restoration Act" (12/5/96 draft)
proposed by Senator Larry Craig (R-ID).

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Senator Craig's 100-page bill would affect all national forests
and all lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).
While its stated purpose is to improve management efficiency and
stability, the bill would dramatically change the way federal
lands are managed. As summarized below, the bill would reduce or
eliminate current environmental safeguards and public
participation and give logging, mining, and grazing interests
broad power over public lands.

WEAKENING ENVIRONMENTAL LAWS

The bill exempts the Forest Service and BLM from the interagency
consultation process now required by the Endangered Species Act;
thus, land managers would be responsible for policing their own
activities in endangered species habitat (Sec. 203(a)).

Activities that could jeopardize an endangered species would be
allowed to continue even while the land managers are reviewing the
impacts of their management plans on those species (Sec. 203(b)).


The bill undercuts the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by
generally prohibiting the agencies from preparing environmental
impact statements for timber sales or other activities, regardless
of how much environmental damage the activity would cause (Sec.
202(b)).

Contrary to NEPA, the bill forbids consideration of the cumulative
environmental effects of specific management activities;
similarly, impacts on water quality could only be considered at
the site-specific level, preventing analysis of downstream impacts
on water users, for example (Sec. 103(b)).

Environmental protection requirements in management plans would be
converted to non-binding "policies," while expected timber and
other commodity outputs would be mandatory (Sec. 103(a)).

TURNING BACK THE CLOCK

The Northwest Forest Plan would be terminated within two years,
requiring the agencies to amend each national forest and BLM
district plan in the region (Sec. 102(d)). A forestry association
would be assigned responsibility for evaluating the Plan and
recommending changes (Sec. 306).

Protection measures currently in place for Columbia River salmon
(PACFISH), California spotted owls (CASPO), and other imperiled
species would also terminate in two years.

The bill gives the Forest Service and BLM an explicit mandate to
maintain "community stability" a policy that many economists
(including those within the government) consider to be outdated
and misguided (Sec. 108).

ELIMINATING PUBLIC PARTICIPATION

The bill repeals the law requiring the Forest Service to give the
public an opportunity to comment on proposed management activities
(Sec. 115(c)).

Forest Service and BLM officials would be able to impose $10,000
fines on people for filing administrative appeals that the
officials consider to be "frivolous" or causing "unwarranted
delay" (Sec. 115(b)(9)).

INCREASING FEDERAL SUBSIDIES TO THE TIMBER INDUSTRY

The bill expands the use of salvage timber sale revenues to
prepare new timber sales and a wide range of other timber
management activities, thereby reducing the return of timber
revenues to the Treasury and increasing the federal deficit (Sec.
409).

The bill authorizes the use of "forest health credits," which
would allow timber companies to further reduce their timber sale
payments to the government in exchange for salvage logging,
thinning, and other activities that may actually worsen, rather
than improve, forest ecosystem health (Sec. 408).

PUTTING THE TIMBER INDUSTRY IN CHARGE

The bill incorporates 17 of the 19 recommendations by the American
Forest and Paper Association designed to give the timber industry
greater influence over the national forests.

The bill reverses current law by requiring the Forest Service and
BLM to use private contractors to prepare timber sales (Sec. 410).
Furthermore, timber sale boundaries could be expanded by 20%
without public notice or environmental review (Sec. 411).

Timber and mining companies and livestock grazers would receive
special exemptions from public meeting laws (Sec. 206).

TURNING OVER FEDERAL LANDS TO THE STATES

The bill authorizes transferring management authority over entire
national forests and BLM districts from the federal government to
the states (Sec. 601).

Once a state gains management authority over federal lands,
federal environmental laws and management plans would no longer
apply to those lands (Sec. 605).

After ten years of managing the land, a state could apply to
assume full ownership (Sec. 609).

OTHER POINTS

The bill relegates current ecosystem management policy to a purely
analytical role and prohibits the agencies from applying it in a
way that interferes with commodity outputs (Sec. 3(a)(3) and 110).


The bill requires the agencies to calculate the cost of protecting
resources from exploitation, ignoring both the many potential
economic benefits of resource protection and the fact that the
government's costs of exploitation may exceed revenues, as is the
case with below-cost timber sales (Sec. 111).

Prepared by Michael Anderson, Senior Resource Analyst, The
Wilderness Society



- Don Baccus, Portland OR <donb at rational.com>
Nature photos, on-line guides, at http://www.xxxpdx.com/~dhogaza