http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1204-09.htm
Published on Thursday,
December 4, 2003 by the Los Angeles Times
Going Backwards
New Forest-Thinning Policy Drops Safeguard for Wildlife
by Elizabeth Shogren and Richard Simon
QUOTE:
"There's a real danger that the president's pen might
as well be a chainsaw."
Amy Mall, Natural Resources Defense Council
WASHINGTON - As President Bush, with much fanfare, signed
legislation Wednesday aimed at speeding fire-prevention efforts
in federal forests, his administration quietly adopted a rule
that would expedite timber-thinning projects by removing a
safeguard for endangered species.
Under the Endangered
Species Act, the U.S. Forest Service
and other federal agencies are required to seek confirmation
from the Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine
Fisheries Service before taking any action that may adversely
affect any endangered plant or animal.
The new policy, which does not require congressional approval,
authorizes biologists for the Forest Service or other
land-management agencies to make the call that no endangered
species will be adversely affected, exempting them from
consulting with the agencies whose main mandate is protecting
rare plants and animals.
The Bush administration
stressed that the policy would not
reduce the level of protection for rare animals and plants.
"All of these
land-management agencies have biologists
who have been trained to assess the likely impact of their
actions on listed species," said Steve Williams, director
of the Fish and Wildlife Service. "By issuing these regulations,
we are tapping into their expertise and accelerating review of
much-needed forest health projects."
But environmentalists
said the policy removed a key check
and balance.
"The conflict
of interest is that the agency whose top job
is to do the logging will make this decision, rather than
the agency whose top job is to protect threatened or
endangered species," said Marty Hayden, legislative
director for Earthjustice, an environmental law firm.
With this policy and
the rest of its "healthy forests"
initiative, Hayden added, "the administration has used
the emotional issue of wildfire to get the kind of weakening
of environmental law and limiting of public involvement
that they have wanted."
Cabinet members and
lawmakers looked on Wednesday morning
as Bush signed into law the legislative components of his
initiative, which is designed to limit environmental and
judicial reviews of thinning projects in national forests
in order to reduce the risk of wildfires such as the ones
that recently devastated Southern California.
"This law will
not prevent every fire, but it is an important
step forward, a vital step to make sure we do our duty to
protect our nation's forests," Bush said during the signing
ceremony at the Department of Agriculture.
The measure authorizes
$760 million a year for forest-thinning
projects, a $340-million increase, and targets at least half
the money for thinning projects to regions nearest to populated
areas.
Bush proposed his initiative
in August 2002, during a visit
to a fire-ravaged forest in Oregon, and it was passed by the
House in May. The recent California fires, which killed 24
people, burned about 740,000 acres and destroyed more than
3,500 structures, provided the impetus for the Senate's passage
of the bill in October and approval of the final legislation
by a House-Senate conference committee last month.
Bush could benefit
politically by this legislation, which
could create additional logging jobs; in 2000, he lost Oregon
by less than half a percentage point and Washington state
by fewer than 6 percentage points.
Environmental groups
contend that the legislation will
enable timber companies to log healthy trees and will
not do enough to reduce the fire danger to homes.
"There's a real
danger that the president's pen might
as well be a chainsaw," said Amy Mall, a forest specialist
with the Natural Resources Defense Council, a Washington-based
environmental organization.
But Rep. Richard W.
Pombo (R-Tracy), chairman of the House
Resources Committee, called the measure an environmental
protection bill. "The 70 million acres of land classified
by the U.S. Forest Service as 'at extreme risk' of catastrophic
fire represent one of the single greatest threats to our
environment today," he said.
Copyright 2003 Los
Angeles Times
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