[MCN] Pro-Logging 'Rider' Bill in Congress = More National Forest Logging, Less Public Input & Environmental Analysis

[Matthew Koehler]

Please TAKE ACTION (See bottom). You can bet Senator Daines and Rep Zinke
support this public lands logging rider. Senator Tester has in the past
supported greatly increasing National Forest logging through mandates and
through undemocratic riders, so please call his office too. Thanks!

Clearcuts for Christmas?

BY CHAD HANSON
<http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/oeuvre/Chad-Hanson/> –
DECEMBER 7, 2015

HTTP://WWW.EARTHISLAND.ORG/JOURNAL/INDEX.PHP/ELIST/ELISTREAD/CLEARCUTS_FOR_CHRISTMAS/
Pro-logging “rider” bill in Congress would allow clearcutting in our
national forests

When Americans think about the presents they want for the Holidays,
clearcuts on our national forests and other federal public lands is not
what they have in mind.  But that is exactly what radical,
anti-environmental members of Congress are proposing to do right now — make
a generous gift to the logging industry.

[image: Rim fire logging aerial]Photo by Maya KhoslaPost-fire clearcutting
on the Stanislaus National Forest in the Rim fire area, eliminated the
wildlife-rich snag forest habitat and left only stump fields.

Republicans in the Senate are using the upcoming December 11
government-funding deadline and fear and misinformation about wildland fire
in our forests, to pressure some Democrats and the Obama Administration to
go along with a logging bill that would be attached as a “rider” to the
Omnibus appropriations act in the coming days. The logging rider would
suspend environmental laws to allow commercial logging projects to go
forward on our national forests and other federal forestlands through
“categorical exclusions.” The rider would, among other things, effectively
exempt logging from any environmental analysis or disclosure of adverse
impacts on imperiled wildlife species, watersheds, or forest carbon
storage. The provisions of the logging rider are similar or identical to
many of those in HR 2647, which House Republicans passed earlier this year.

Troublingly, though the logging rider is being led primarily by
Republicans, some Democrat Senators from states with an active timber
industry presence too, appear to be willing to go along with the proposal.
Worse, there are indications that President Obama may be willing to
acquiesce to Republicans on the logging rider in exchange for an agreement
over increased funding for ill-advised and ineffective backcountry fire
suppression. Indeed, the recent fire-phobic and pro-logging rhetoric coming
from a few western Democrats, such as Senator Ron Wyden from Oregon, is
virtually indistinguishable from the media messages coming from logging
industry spokespersons.

Built on deceptions, the logging rider promotes the planned expansion of
timber sales on our public lands under the guise of “fuel reduction”,
“restoration”, and fire management, Much of the increase in logging would
be clearcutting of both old forest and ecologically vital post-fire habitat.

For example, one of the logging categories in the rider promotes
clearcutting of mature and old forest ostensibly to create “early seral”
conditions for wildlife. This sort of hyper-cynical spin is what now passes
for cleverness in Washington, D.C. But the advocates of the logging rider
are profoundly at odds with current science. As more than 260 scientists
told Congress and the Administration in a recent letter, “*complex* early
seral forest” is one of the most ecologically vital and wildlife-rich
forest habitat types, and it is *only* created by patches of intense fire
in forests and is destroyed by post-fire logging.  Clearcutting removes and
damages habitat, and there is not much wildlife activity in a giant
stumpfield.

In fact, there is actually a deficit of post-fire forest habitat created by
these beneficial fires, and many of the wildlife species that depend upon
the unique “snag forest habitat” created by more intense fire patches have
become rare and imperiled, and/or are declining, due to fire suppression,
"fuel reduction" logging, and post-fire logging, as detailed in the recent
book, *The Ecological Importance of Mixed-Severity Fires: Nature’s Phoenix
<http://store.elsevier.com/product.jsp?isbn=9780128027493&pagename=search>*.

The fundamental premise upon which this “Clearcuts for Christmas” logging
rider rests — that environmental protections supposedly lead to more
intense fire and logging reduces fire intensity — is quite simply one of
the most profound deceptions in the history of forest management.

[image: post-fire habitat]Photo by Chad HansonAn ecologically-rich complex
early seral forest, or "snag forest habitat", created by high-intensity
fire, with an abundance of snags (standing fire killed trees), native
flowering shrubs, natural regeneration of conifer saplings, and downed logs
used by small mammals and amphibians.

In one large fire after another in recent years, such as the California Rim
fire of 2013 in the Sierra Nevada, the forests with the least environmental
protections and the most significant logging history burned most intensely,
while forests that were completely protected from logging, with no logging
history, burned the least intensely. This is true even when key factors
such as forest type and topography are taken into account. Nor does logging
conducted under the banner of “thinning” meaningfully reduce fire intensity.

Research shows
<http://www.fs.fed.us/ffs/docs/blodgett/Stephens_Mogh_FFS_fire_behavior_FEM_05_64.pdf;%20http://www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/07-1755.1)>
that
it is previous fires, not thinning, that modify fire intensity and spread.
For example, forests that have been thinned tend to burn more intensely
when wildland fire occurs. Forests that have a combination of both thinning
and prescribed fire tend to burn about the same as those with prescribed
fire alone, and no thinning; in other words, thinning does not make forests
burn less intensely but can sometimes increase fire intensity. Though the
term sounds benign, in fact most “thinning” projects on national forests
and other federal lands are intensive logging projects that often remove 50
to 80 percent of the trees in a given stand, including many mature and old
trees. Such projects do not effectively modify fire intensity and
unnecessarily cause significant damage to wildlife habitat for imperiled
species like spotted owls and black-backed woodpeckers, while costing
taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

Moreover, increased logging and fire suppression in backcountry forests on
our public lands will do nothing to help homeowners in rural forested areas
where fire is a natural occurrence. In fact, by diverting scarce federal
resources away from home protection, and focusing on logging and fire
suppression in remote forests, the logging rider, and the fire suppression
measure with which it is likely to be associated, would actually put rural
homeowners at greater risk from fire. Further, the rider would increase
risks to wildland firefighters by unnecessarily putting them in harm’s way
in steep, difficult, remote terrain, as they try in vain to stop
weather-driven, mixed-intensity fires that are creating important wildlife
habitat and ecological benefits. As *The Ecological Importance of
Mixed-Severity Fires* details, the only effective way to protect homes is
to focus on making the homes themselves more fire-resistant, and to help
homeowners create “defensible space” within 100 to 200 feet around homes by
reducing combustible vegetation and removing lower limbs on mature trees.

It’s ironic that this logging rider is being proposed even as world leaders
meet in Paris to address climate change. If the rider is passed, the
increased logging on our public lands would substantially reduce carbon
storage in our forests, significantly undermining climate solutions. There
will be very little carbon storage in the thousands upon thousands of acres
of stumpfields that would be created on our public lands if the logging
rider becomes law.

The timber industry’s allies in Congress — in both political parties — want
Americans to be as scared and confused about wildland fire as possible,
because that’s the only political context in which something as regressive,
unscientific, and wrong-headed as this logging rider has any chance to
pass. This is particularly true in the cover-of-darkness type of
legislating that occurs during appropriations season. There is no public
dialogue, no open committee hearings, or informed debate. There are only
closed-door meetings and back-room deals.

But the truth is that we shouldn’t be afraid of fire in our forests. Fire
is not “destroying” our forests, as self-serving, pro-logging members of
Congress would have you believe. Rather, fire is doing important and
beneficial ecological work on our national Forests and other federal
forestlands. And, if homeowners take basic, proven steps to protect their
homes and the immediate vicinity, homes have a better than 90 percent
chance of surviving
<http://store.elsevier.com/product.jsp?isbn=9780128027493&pagename=search> a
wildland fire.  Homeowners need help to do this, but the logging rider,
coupled with more backcountry fire suppression, would take us in exactly
the wrong direction.

*What you can do*: Call the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121, ask to be
transferred to the offices of your Senators, and leave a comment with the
environmental aide for each of them, urging Senators to stand firm against
the “Clearcuts for Christmas” logging rider, and oppose any logging riders
from being added to spending bills.  Please also call the White House at
202-456-1111 and urge the President to oppose the logging rider. Finally,
please write letters to the editor to your local newspapers to get the
message out there about this issue.

*Chad Hanson
<http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/oeuvre/Chad-Hanson/>*
Chad Hanson, the director of the John Muir Project
<http://www.johnmuirproject.org/> (JMP) of Earth Island Institute, has a
Ph.D. in ecology from the University of California at Davis, and focuses
his research on forest and fire ecology in the Sierra Nevada. He can be
reached at cthanson1 at gmail.com, or visit JMP’s website at
www.johnmuirproject.org for more information, and for citations to specific
studies pertaining to the points made in this article.
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