[MCN] WARNING: See how 'collaboration' is leading to privatization of National Forests

[Matthew Koehler]

This is a must read for those concerned with efforts to privatize America’s
National Forests.

In this example, from the Colville National Forest in eastern Washington,
the Forest Service contracts with a private timber company, Vaagen Brothers
Lumber, to run the NEPA process from start to finish for a public lands
timber sale, which the timber company hopes to log.

Please note that Vaagen Brothers Lumber is also very active with a
so-called ‘collaborative’ group in Montana, called the Kootenai Forest
Stakeholders Coalition. The Kootenai Forest Stakeholders Coalition, which
also includes the Montana Wilderness Association, recently filed an amicus
brief in support of the Kootenai National Forest’s East Reservoir logging
project, which would clearcut a few square miles of critical habitat for
lynx. In that amicus brief the Kootenai Forest Stakeholders Coalition and
the Montana Wilderness Association are actually represented by the American
Forest Resource Council, a timber industry law firm that actually sued to
prevent implementation of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule.

Please, if you care deeply about America’s public lands legacy, pay
attention to what’s happening all around us right now under the banner of
“collaboration.” The more citizens dig deeper and learn more the more
everyone will realize it’s not all it’s cracked up to be and is basically
being used by industrial, politicians and some multi-million conservation
groups to essentially take over the management of America’s public lands.



A-to-Z Timber Sale a bad idea, and a bad model
By Jeff Juel
Source:
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2016/jan/10/juel-a-to-z-timber-sale-a-bad-idea-and-a-bad-model/

Privatizing our national forests doesn’t mean ownership necessarily changes
hands. It does, however, mean control is handed over to a private entity.

The concern about keeping public forests in public hands was one reason
why, in August, conservationists objected to a major timber sale in the
Mill Creek watershed northeast of Colville: the A-to-Z Timber Sale on the
Colville National Forest. In October, the U.S. Forest Service did right by
withdrawing the timber sale.

The Mill Creek watershed was heavily and unsustainably logged years ago.
Only about 154 acres of ancient forest remain out of 12,802 acres of
national forest in the project area. That’s about 1 percent.

Given prior damage to wildlife habitats and watershed values, should
further logging occur? If so, how much? Answering these questions requires
careful, thorough, and unbiased analysis. Indeed, that’s what the laws
protecting our National Forests require; laws such as the National
Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), and laws informed by nearly two centuries
of deforestation on the American continent.

NEPA requires an objective process be completed for every proposed project
and decision affecting federally managed lands and resources. Various
alternatives are to be explored, environmental impacts thoroughly analyzed
and disclosed, and scientific controversies and public concerns fully
aired. And it’s the federal agency’s job, in this case the U.S. Forest
Service, to prepare the environmental analysis on our behalf.

But that’s not what happened. Instead, the Forest Service contracted a
private timber company, Vaagen Brothers Lumber, to run the NEPA process
from start to finish, or from “A to Z” as this pilot project is revealingly
titled. According to Vaagen Brothers, they’ve already spent about a million
dollars.

In an internal document found on the A-to-Z project website, an agency
contract expert expressed concern about the objectivity of this new
process, asking how the Forest Service rationalizes the ability of the
contractor to invest upfront without any guarantee of compensation and
“without artificially deflating the stumpage value or artificially
inflating the costs of other service work.” The Forest Service replied that
it was presented that way by Vaagen Brothers “and supported by the
collaborative group… Contractor would recoup its costs by not having to
competitively bid on the timber.”

Can the public really expect a logging company’s analysis of environmental
risks and benefits to be objective and thorough? Or provide a balanced
exploration of the scientific controversies say, over whether logging truly
restores fire-dependent ecosystems when the logging company puts up $1
million to kick-start the project?

Having private, local collaborators cheer on the privatizing of our
national forests should not be comforting, even if collaborators include
environmental groups. This A-to-Z sale of the NEPA process to the highest
bidder represents an ominous step towards privatizing our national forests.

To make ethical decisions about our national forests and the environment
generally, actual or potential conflicts of interest must be disclosed and
understood. For example, it’s not widely known that The Lands Council, one
of the collaborating groups, takes annual contributions from Vaagen
Brothers Lumber, one of its so-called “business partners.”

Decisions must be made by professionals, subject to strict codes of
conduct, after the analysis is completed, not as a vaguely implied
condition of the contract granting rights to prepare the NEPA documents. We
must restore ethical integrity in our government’s decision-making process
in order to restore ecological integrity in our forests.

The A-to-Z also teaches important lessons nationally because Rep. Cathy
McMorris Rodgers has touted it as a pilot process in moving legislation (HR
2647), impacting the entire national forest system, through the U.S. House
of Representatives. This deceptively named “Resilient Federal Forests Act”
is, as noted by the Seattle Times, “an opportunistic remedy that doesn’t
pass the smell test, and the Senate needs to douse it quickly.”

This bill would exempt national forest logging up to 15,000 acres from
normal NEPA analysis. Citizens challenging illegal and damaging timber
sales in court would be required to post a bond upfront, making the
constitutional right of judicial redress unaffordable in most cases. The
bill would prohibit important watershed improvement by requiring local
county commissioners to agree to the decommissioning of unneeded roads on
national forests. It would also severely weaken protections for ancient
forests in eastern Oregon and Washington, such as on the Colville.

Our national forests help define the Inland Northwest. The A-to-Z Timber
Sale and the shenanigans in Congress are a reminder that constant public
vigilance is a price we pay to keep our forests standing.

*Jeff Juel is National Forest Chair of the Upper Columbia River Group of
the Sierra Club, which successfully objected to the Mill Creek A-to-Z
timber sale.*
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