Comments sought on Hebgen-area project

WEST YELLOWSTONE - The Gallatin National Forest has proposed thinning and prescribed burning on about 3,045 acres 12 miles northwest of West Yellowstone to reduce the risk of wildfires in a popular recreational home area on the west shore of Hebgen Lake.

The project is intended to reduce wildland fuels in the wildland-urban interface and provide adequate evacuation routes for forest users, homeowners, business owners and their customers.

In addition to thinning and burning, about 3.9 miles of temporary roads and 2.4 miles of reconstructed project roads would be built in the area along the Denny Creek Road.

The Lonesome Wood Vegetation Management environmental assessment is available for public review and comment. Copies are also electronically at www.fs.fed.us/r1/gallatin by clicking on the "Projects and Plans" link. To request a paper copy of the environmental assessment, contact the Hebgen Lake Ranger District by phoning 406-823-6961 or visit the District Office at 330 Gallatin Road, in West Yellowstone. Because of the holidays, the official 30-day comment period will not start until after Jan. 1.

Legislation News

Forest Restoration and Hazardous Fuel Reduction Efforts in the Forests of Oregon and Washington

December 13, 2007 Testimony of K. Norman Johnson, Jerry F. Franklin

Hearing of Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources

I am Dr. K. Norman Johnson and I am here today to give testimony for myself and Dr. Jerry F. Franklin regarding forest restoration and hazardous fuel reduction efforts in the forests of the Pacific Northwest. I am a University Distinguished Professor in the College of Forestry at Oregon State University. Jerry Franklin is Professor of Ecosystem Sciences in the College of Forest Resources at University of Washington. These comments represent our view and not those of our respective institutions.

Our testimony focuses on forest restoration in the National Forests of Oregon and Washington. Collectively, we have been studying these magnificent forests and the amazing variety of benefits that they provide for almost 100 years. In addition to research, we have served on many scientific panels analyzing forest policy issues, including the Northwest Forest Plan, and recently completed for the Klamath Tribe, a comprehensive restoration plan for their historic tribal lands, which are currently a part of the Winema-Fremont National Forest.

Our definition of "restoration" is the re-establishment of ecological structures and processes on these forests where they have been degraded and, simultaneously, restoration of economic and other social values on these lands. One product of this restoration will be substantial reductions in uncharacteristic fuel loadings. We emphasize restoration activities in which ecological, economic, and other social goals are compatible.

Northwestern Forests Require Multiple Restoration Approaches

Forests of the PNW are very diverse in their characteristic disturbance regimes and developmental patterns, and therefore restoration policies and practices must acknowledge and accommodate these differences.

This diversity is obvious when one compares a typical old-growth forest of Douglas-fir, western hemlock, and western redcedar on the western slopes of the Cascade Range, with a typical old-growth ponderosa pine forest found on dry sites on the eastern slopes of the Cascade Range. The complexity of environmental conditions, as measured by variation in macroclimate, soils, landform, elevation, etc., and related differences in disturbance regimes make simple stratifications of forests, such as into areas either west or east of the Cascade Range divide, poor bases for policy or management prescription.

Plant associations and groupings of similar plant associations (PAGs) provide a sound scientific basis for stratifying these forests into different disturbance regimes for purposes of policy development, management planning, and silvicultural prescription.

Restoration needs and objectives contrast greatly between forests representative of plant associations historically characterized by (1) relatively frequent (<100>100 year interval), high-severity disturbance regimes, such as west side Douglas-fir—western hemlock forests. Although there are many plant associations and sites that exhibit intermediate behavior, in this presentation we will focus our discussion on types that are more at one end or the other of the disturbance gradient.

Restoration of Forests Characterized by Frequent, Low- and Mixed-Severity Fire Regimes

These forests have been grossly modified during the last century by a variety of management actions including fire suppression, grazing by domestic livestock, logging, and establishment of plantations. Consequently, they differ greatly from their historical condition in having much higher stand densities and basal areas, lower average stand diameters, much higher percentages of drought- and fire-intolerant species (such as white or grand fir), and many fewer (or no) old-growth trees.

We will lose these forests to catastrophic disturbance events unless we undertake aggressive active management programs. This is not simply an issue of fuels and fire; because of the density of these forests, there is a high potential for drought stress and related insect outbreaks. Surviving old-growth pine trees are now at high risk of death to both fire and western pine beetle, the latter resulting from drought stress and competition. Many fir-dominated stands are now at risk of catastrophic outbreaks of insect defoliators, such as the spruce budworm, as has occurred at many locations on the eastern slopes of the Cascade Range in both Oregon and Washington.

Without action, we are at high risk of losing these stands--and the residual old-growth trees that they contain--to fire and insects and the potential for these losses is greatly magnified by expected future climate change. Historically, much of the loss of old growth trees and forests has come during time of drought. The expected longer and more intense summer drought periods with climate change will put additional stress on the forests here. The stress on old growth trees will be especially severe where they are surrounded by dense understories.

We know enough to take action (uncertainties should not paralyze us). Inaction is a much more risky option for a variety of ecological values, including preservation of Northern Spotted Owls and other old-growth related species. We need to learn as we go, but we need to take action now. Furthermore, it is critical for stakeholders to understand that active management is necessary in stands with existing old-growth trees in order to reduce the risk that those trees will be lost.

Activities at the stand level need to focus on restoring ecosystems to sustainable composition and structure--not simply to acceptable fuel levels. Objectives of these treatments need to include: Retention of existing old-growth tree populations; shifting stand densities, basal areas, diameter distributions, and proportions of drought- and fire-tolerant species (e.g., ponderosa pine and western larch) toward historical levels; and development of spatial heterogeneity. Plant associations provide a good basis for providing site-specific target goals for stand parameters, such as basal areas. Finally, restoring old-growth tree populations to, and maintaining them at, historical levels should be a goal of restoration management.

Action is also needed to restore hardwood species, such as aspen, willows, and alders, which have declined in these landscapes as a result of lack of regeneration and overtopping by dense conifers. Elimination of large predators is probably an additional key factor in the changes that have occurred in hardwood representation and riparian vegetation.

Restoration programs must be planned and implemented at the landscape scale to be effective; management over the last century has altered entire landscapes and created the potential for very large wildfires and insect outbreaks. Treating isolated stands within these landscapes will not be effective.

Creating fuel treatment patches and strips is a useful first step to help control wildfire, but is not sufficient to save these forests or the important array of values that they provide, including owls and old-growth trees. Many of the intervening areas will eventually burn and, even if they do not, old-growth trees will succumb to insects during periodic drought, since they are surrounded by dense competing vegetation.

To conserve these forests, we need to modify stand structure (e.g., treat fuels) on one-half to two-thirds of the landscape. This level of restoration will create a matrix of more natural and sustainable forest, which has a greatly reduced potential for stand-replacement fire and insect mortality, interspersed with islands of dense stands. These interspersed dense stands will provide habitat for species like the Northern Spotted Owl that utilize such areas. In fact, an approach that results in restoring conditions on the majority of the dry forest landscapes is the only way in which sustainable habitat for Northern Spotted Owls can be provided.

Key elements of actions to restore these forests include:

Conserving old growth trees as a first priority.

Utilizing historical conditions, such as historical densities and distributions of tree sizes, as an ecological guide, modified, as needed, by recognition of coming climate change.

Combining conservation of old growth trees, stand density targets, and emphasis on drought and fire-tolerant species as an overall guide to action. We suggest moving away from approaches based on diameter limits. Young, shade-tolerant trees of substantial size often contribute to the unnaturalness of many stands, as well as threatening old-growth trees. Also, old-growth trees may be smaller than a proposed diameter limit but still should be retained.

Focusing on areas with concentrations of old growth structure as a high priority for treatment. Recognition that such areas should receive early attention is recent; there
has been a tendency to think that stands with numerous old-growth trees should be left alone or, at least, be of much lower priority for treatment. The reality is the opposite! Forests that still retain substantial numbers of old-growth trees should be priorities for treatment because these are irreplaceable structures that are at great risk from uncharacteristic wildfire and bark beetle attack. Hence, reducing the potential for accelerated loss of these old trees should be at the top of the agenda.

Working to regain complexity—forests have been simplified through harvest, fire suppression, and grazing—work for heterogeneity at all spatial scales.

Returning understory community composition and ground fuels to characteristic composition and structure. Many areas that characteristically had frequent, low-frequency fire regimes no longer do, due to the accumulation of branches and dead trees on the forest floor and the loss of fine fuels (that used to carry these fires) to grazing. Reversing these effects will be needed.

Giving special attention to the hardwood component of the dry forest landscapes, both riparian and upland. In many ways, hardwood species and communities are in as much difficulty as conifer-dominated stands.

Ensuring conservation of aquatic systems. Limiting new roads, closing unneeded roads, improving road systems, revitalizing aspen and willow forests, and controlling aggregate watershed effects will all play a role in this effort.

Prescribed fire is a useful tool in forest restoration but is not sufficient alone—mechanical silvicultural activities typically will be required. Difficulties exist in safely dealing with the build-up in fuel; in many cases harvest is required to help reduce fuel loads. In addition, the uncertainty of a burn program, due both to smoke and safety issues, makes it difficult to base a forest management program for a large area solely on prescribed fire.

Harvest can help pay for actions and provide useful economic and social benefits, but additional funds will be needed. Significant commercial volumes need to be removed to restore these forests. They can provide the funds for treatment and also help maintain milling capacity and communities. Rarely has there been such a coming together of ecological, economic, and social considerations. Commercial harvest, though, will not pay for all that needs to be done.

Fire or other actions must follow harvest to reduce the short-term fuel hazards generated by mechanical treatment. Fire, at least to consume activity fuels (debris and small trees left on site), is an ideal follow-up to harvest where it can be carried out. Without treatment of activity fuels, thinning has a significant probability of actually accentuating the fuel hazards in treated forests for at least a period of time. Better yet, use this residue in biomass power plants.

Finally and most profoundly, policy makers and managers need to plan for continued active management of these restored stands. These activities and others will need to be repeated
through time to maintain the sustainable structure and composition. Sometimes, this may be accomplished with burning but most of the time repeated silvicultural treatment of stands and landscapes will be required in the more productive mixed conifer types.

Restoration of Forests Associated with Infrequent, High-Intensity Fire Regimes

On the west side of the Cascade Range, the primary restoration need is for silvicultural activities to accelerate the development of structural complexity in the plantations created following timber harvest. Tens of thousands of acres of young stands exist which could benefit from activities that reduce stand densities, favor biodiversity, and create spatial heterogeneity. There is an immense opportunity and need for restoration in these plantations that could result in significant contributions to ecological, economic, and social goals.

Restoration efforts can increase structural complexity in the plantations created after clearcutting. These plantations usually contain dense conifers dominated by one or two commercial species. Most have little or no structural legacy of standing and down trees from previous stands. Thus, these stands are much simplified from the young naturally regenerated forests that would have developed historically. Thinning and other activities can accelerate the development of complexity within these stands. Also, such thinning can speed the development of late-successional characteristics.

Key elements of actions to increase structural complexity in plantations:

Conserving all remnant old growth trees. There is rarely an ecological justification for cutting old growth trees as a part of restoration programs.

Utilizing silvicultural prescriptions that encourage development of spatial heterogeneity, such as variable density thinning.

Allowing plantation thinning beyond 80 years of age.

Ensuring conservation of aquatic systems Limiting new roads, closing unneeded roads, improving road systems, and controlling aggregate watershed effects will all play a role in this effort.

Using Management Objectives and Restoration Principles to Guide Activities Following Severe Disturbances

Management activities following major disturbance events, such as large intense wildfires, are among the most controversial issues in national forest management. Such "restoration" activities should follow the same principles previously emphasized with the goal of restoring structures and ecological processes where they have been degraded while simultaneously restoring economic and social values on these lands.

Management goals should be the starting point in determining appropriate post-disturbance activities. Hence, if ecological objectives are primary objectives prior to the disturbance they should be primary considerations in any post-disturbance restoration process.

Comparable structural goals should guide management before and after wildfire; these will certainly differ depending upon whether the management focus is primarily on ecological processes or wood production. Where ecological objectives are primary, proposed salvage operations should retain structures of the same size and density as those developed for the green forest. Old-growth trees should be conserved, whether alive or dead. This approach provides a solid reference for action and can eliminate intense arguments over such issues as the probabilities that burned trees will die.

Similarly, approaches to reforestation should reflect restoration principles and management objectives. For example, attempts to establish dense conifer plantations on ponderosa pine and dry mixed-conifer sites are not appropriate; if successful, such efforts simply have created, at best, stands in need of restoration thinning or, at worst, the next generation of uncharacteristic stand-replacement fires. Furthermore, the structurally-rich early successional communities that exist between a severe disturbance and re-establishment of a closed canopy of trees are very rich in biological diversity, including species and key ecological processes. Rapid termination of this successional stage is inappropriate where management objectives emphasize ecological objectives.

Trust but Verify; Third-Party Review as a Key to Forest Restoration

Successful restoration of these forests will require large-scale actions over space and time, as we have discussed above, and managers will need the latitude to adapt general policies to specific situations. Public acceptance and support will be needed and the social license for these efforts is tenuous in many places. A key component in gaining public support will be credible evidence that the actions are moving the forests toward restoration goals and a mechanism for changing management where the actions are not achieving the desired objectives.

Monitoring is necessary but not sufficient. Given the uncertainties that we face in forest restoration, keeping track of the state of the forests and the effects of actions is a first principle of forest management. We believe, though, that people are increasingly skeptical of an agency keeping score on the effectiveness of its own actions.

Third-party review will be essential to gain and retain public acceptance. We need mechanisms that provide trusted evaluations of the linkage between actions and goals along with the ability to suggest change as needed. Creation of third-party review as a regular part of forest restoration would go a long way toward this goal. As an example, a broad group of community leaders and resource managers could periodically review the results of restoration work and publish a report on their findings and suggestions for change. Other approaches, such as certification, could also be used. In sum, third party review could go a long way toward dispelling distrust in the public about the purpose and results of forest restoration programs.

Let's focus on forest solutions and solve the problems

Big Sky Coalition believes it is time to move beyond the past and focus on developing public support for state and federal legislation to address the most critical forest management issues in the Bitterroot National Forest and surrounding areas.

Our first public meeting provided over 650 concerned Montana citizens with an excellent overview of the successes, failures and history of western forest management practices in the 20^th century. The group of expert panelists and their presentations put into vivid context our belief that no single group (i.e., Congress, Forest Service, environmental groups) or single issue (legislation, litigation, low timber prices) is solely to blame for the mess our national forests are in today.

The meeting was a success by any objective measure. In fact, over half of the 650 people attending signed up as new members, and more concerned Montanans have joined each week since. Based on the large turnout and overwhelmingly positive response, we believe a majority of citizens in western Montana and beyond want real forest management solutions, not more rhetoric from organizational stakeholders.

Since the meeting, members of the Big Sky Coalition executive committee have met with a number of local and national environmental groups to better understand their respective positions and visions for a comprehensive forest management plan that is, in the words of Matthew Koehler, executive director of the WildWest Institute, “bracketed by reality.”

We have recently had discussions with representatives of the National Wildlife Federation, Montana Wilderness Association, Friends of the Bitterroot, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Bitterroot Forest Service, Beaverhead - Deer Lodge partnership, Montana Forest Restoration Working Group, Wilderness Society and WildWest Institute, just to name a few.

We have been encouraged by the number of environmental groups that believe as we do: That moving forward with a large-scale forest restoration program, using best practices and a combination of environmentally responsible applications to thin the forest and remove the slash, not only makes forests and buffer areas healthier, but much more resistant to catastrophic fires.

Yes, there are environmental groups who remind us that global warming is here to stay and we cannot do anything about it. Some have expressed the belief that we could lose up to 70 to 80% of our Bitterroot Forest to drought, fire and disease in the coming decades, and that large-scale thinning in the forest will not work.

Yet many of these same environmental groups support thinning trees 400 feet around homes and structures in the forest interface, but not beyond this point. This tactical approach is not a long-term solution. It is, at best, a band-aid.

It is difficult to understand why environmental organizations such as Friends of the Bitterroot do not advocate thinning the forests because they believe thinning on a large scale will do more harm than good to the forest ecosystem. Yet these same groups cite alarming studies that claim if we do nothing our forests will face catastrophic destruction by wildfires in coming years, which could lead to a devastating chain of events ecologically and economically in the Bitterroot Valley.

We seek a long-term fuel reduction solution in our forests that addresses key environmental concerns while providing a viable long-term, large-scale source for small diameter timber and slash materials that can in turn create opportunities for new and established wood products businesses in our communities.

To advance our organization's mission, we are studying new and emerging techniques for large-scale thinning and harvesting, such as "cut-to-length" technology, as well as very low-impact slash removal and chipping processes.

We are also researching new ways to use the millions of tons of renewable resources our forests could easily produce, such as small diameter timber and slash. We are having discussions with companies that are already using these new technologies, ranging from creation of composite lumber and decking materials to biofuel production using "plasma conversion" technology that not only burns slash and other solid waste without emitting pollutants, but which also provides a synthetic gas that can generate electricity and even power our automobiles.

Our country's surging demand for affordable, dependable and responsible energy is fueling an exciting wave of development focused on biofuels. However, until Congress provides adequate national legislation and the United States Forest Service (USFS) commits to long-term contracts to supply enough biomass to companies considering investments in these new technologies, it will not happen because the investment community will not get on board until this commitment is made.

Companies considering these capital-intensive investments will move to communities where this commitment can be realized. A long-term commitment by the USFS is therefore crucial in the success of these negotiations. But the USFS can't commit until our communities and elected officials come together to pass legislation to reduce the threat of protracted litigation in the common interest of developing a better way of managing forest overgrowth.

Montana is where the environmental movement began* in the 1950s and 60s. The Big Sky Coalition believes we must strive to return our great State to the forefront of sound conservation practices and environmental leadership with new forest management priorities, policies and technologies.

It is in this spirit that the Big Sky Coalition will pursue its mission to bring Montana citizens and our elected officials together to work for common sense solutions to today's most pressing forest management issues.

We invite your participation and support in advancing this worthy cause.

For more information, please visit http://www.bigskycoalition.org

* In 1952, Montana State University Professor Charles Crane Bradley made a movie about the Yampa River/Echo Park Canyon area of Colorado and showed the film in the Bozeman area to gain support for his position. Historians mark the Echo Park debate (in the 1950's) as the birth of the modern environmental movement in the United States.

Reference: http://www.geology.wisc.edu/alumni/ccbradley/scientist.html

New Technologies for Forest Thinning

Video: New "cut to length" logging technologies have great potential to help companies reduce thinning waste, minimize visual impact and greatly reduce soil compaction from heavy equipment.

Your Political Will Does Not Mean A Damn Thing

James D. Petersen

Executive Director, The Evergreen Foundation
Lolo Resource Advisory Council
Hamilton, Montana, November 27, 2007

Good evening,

Thanks for inviting me to join you.

Before I get started, would everyone in this room who works in the forest products industry please stand.

My message to the rest of you in this room is that if western Montana’s already teetering sawmilling infrastructure collapses – as it already has in Arizona and New Mexico – you can forget about your dreams for restoring western Montana’s beleaguered national forests, including those here in the Bitterroot Valley.

I know this story better than anyone in this room – probably better than anyone else in Montana - because I’ve spent a great deal of time in the Southwest watching the federal government cynically attempt to recruit new private investment capital to rebuild the region’s sawmilling infrastructure; this after it ran an earlier generation of millowners out of the business.

Why would the federal government now be attempting to recruit new capital for sawmilling ventures in Arizona and New Mexico? Because it knows that if there is no sawmilling infrastructure in the Southwest, there is also no hope for finding viable, profitable markets for the millions of tons of wood – most of it of very low quality - that must be removed from that region’s dead and dying national forests.

But radical environmentalists will tell you a very different story. They will tell you that the dead and dying trees that need to be removed from national forests in Arizona and New Mexico should be removed at taxpayer expense – that the trees that need to be removed from overstocked, diseased and dying forests should then be piled and burned or simply buried in the ground – at costs exceeding $1,000 per acre. Let me assure you, there is not enough gold in Fort Knox to pay for all of the restoration work that needs to be done in the West’s national forests.

Why would any environmentalist take such a bizarre stand, when everyone knows that some of the trees that need to be removed from Southwestern forests have commercial value – and that some of these thinning projects could actually pay for themselves?

The answer is both simple and direct: radical environmentalists hate the free enterprise system more than they love the environment.

And the law is on their side. All of the angels in Heaven are no match for the astonishing power Congress has granted to environmental extremists – and until Congress finds the courage to stuff the litigation genie back in the bottle, there is nothing that you or anyone else can do to reverse the eminent ecological collapse of the West’s federally-owned forests. So a fairly strong case can be made for the fact that I wasted my time driving down here to talk to you – and you are wasting your time listening to me.

Sawmills across the West, including Montana’s family-owned mills, know that what I’m telling you is true. It is the reason why not a single sawmill in the western states – not one - is investing a dime of its hard-earned capital on new technology or infrastructure in anticipation of a revival of even a small portion of the federal timber sale program. The trust relationship that once linked industry and the government is gone. That relationship was more than a half-century in the making – and it generated billions of dollars for the government and for the west’s rural timber communities.

Worse– depending on whose estimate you care to accept - perhaps 140 million acres of national forest timberland in the west is in ecological Condition Class 3 or 2: meaning it is ready to burn or soon will be. Many of those acres include threatened bull trout and grizzly bear habitat here in western Montana.

How many of you have driven to Elk City, Idaho in the last year or so? I photographed several drainages there last year. It is a political and an environmental travesty unlike any I’ve ever seen. In the upper reaches of many streams, lodgepole pine and spruce mortality is nearing 100 percent. These are fish-bearing steelhead spawning streams – yet almost nothing is being done to reduce the risk of catastrophic fire. Why? Because the Forest Service has been unable to devise a large scale plan that will pass muster with the Ninth Circuit Court in San Francisco.

If you have access to a helicopter you can see the same ticking time bomb along Interstate 90 between St. Regis and the state line: mile after mile of standing dead lodgepole at the end of its lifecycle. Lodgepole rarely live longer than 100 years. Most of these trees grew up in the aftermath of the Great 1910 Fire. They are dying a natural death. Fire will finish the job any year now, just as it has for thousands of years. Then the canyon between St. Regis and the Montana-Idaho line will be barren again. You can see what it will look like in photos that were taken after the 1910 fire.

My question is this: Should this kind of environmental devastation be acceptable in an advanced industrial society where safer, less environmentally disastrous, time-tested alternatives are available? Keep in mind we have nearly 100 years of fire research and restoration strategy we can call on. The visible results can be seen in experimental forests scattered all over the West – including Lick Creek only a few miles from here.

You know this devastation well – having witnessed it here in your own beautiful valley, perhaps even in your own backyard or just beyond your living room-window view of the valley. But how do you feel knowing you are powerless to stop what is happening? Does it make you angry? It should – because only your anger will stop the madness in Washington, D.C.

Is what you see dying on the mountains in western Montana the heritage you want to leave to your children and grandchildren? Are you content to cede your political power to the publicly-subsidized Conflict Industry? I assume you know that the taxpayers in this room are a major source of funding for their litigious activities.

I understand that some 600 of you recently came together down here to make a new start in your dealings with the federal government, specifically the Forest Service. You are to be congratulated for your willingness to try one more time to craft political consensus.

I’ve been reporting on similar efforts for over 20 years – most notably the Applegate Partnership in southern Oregon and the Quincy Library Group in northern California – two projects in which the government and private industry have invested millions of dollars. Quincy and Applegate have long and frustrating histories. Both groups even had the strong support of local environmentalists. Citizens got involved in good faith with good intent– gave of their time and talents, only to find out after the fact that their work counted for nothing because the process had been rigged in advance. Congress had handed all of the decision making power to malcontents, lawyers and their friends on the federal bench.

Worse, Congress now lacks the political will needed to right its own wrong by crafting new legislation that would clear the way for large scale long term thinning projects in the west’s dead and dying national forests – projects that could keep family-owned sawmills in business in small out of the way places like Darby, Montana, Orofino, Idaho, Colville, Washington, Enterprise, Oregon, Show Low, Arizona, Hayfork, California and Farmington, New Mexico.

Until the Congress finds the political will to right its wrong, your political will does not mean a damned thing. Your vote does not count – and will not be counted. But shouldn’t you have as much to say about the future of these forests as anyone else? I think you should, but you don’t.

Wayne Hedman asked me to tell you how I think we got into this mess. It depends on which mess you are talking about. There are two of them: one is environmental, the other is economic.

The economic mess is easily explained. After the northern spotted owl was listed as a threatened species in 1990, the federal timber sale program that had for 50 years been the economic lifeblood of most of the rural west began to collapse. Practically speaking, the program no longer exists. It is history.

You may think you are somewhat safe in this valley because there is still a modest amount of sawmilling infrastructure here. Our friend Pat Connell is still here; but Rocky Mountain Log Homes buys virtually all of its timber in Canada because it can’t buy it here. It can see it, standing dead on nearby hills, but it can’t buy it because it isn’t for sale. Instead, it stands dead, waiting for the fire next time.

Meanwhile, the unspoken and awful truth is that what is left of the timber industry in western Montana is a house of cards. It will not stand much longer. Whatever happens in the future will be determined by people like you sitting in rooms like this all over the western United States. If you can find a way to come together around two or three themes that are so simple that even members of Congress can understand them, you might in time reverse the tide. But it will take time and cost a good deal of money.

I know what those themes are but I have absolutely no idea where you will get the money you need to get the job done. The big bad timber industry that carried your political water for you for nearly 50 years has exited the game and – with rare exception – is no longer interested in doing business with federal agencies that lack the authority and the capacity to make decisions.

Speaking of decisions, how do you feel about the fact that decisions concerning the fate of western Montana’s national forests are now made in behind-closed-door meetings chaired by a federal district court judge? Who represents you in these proceedings? Are there public meeting laws in this state? If there are, why aren’t they being enforced? Remember, these forests are public assets, public property. They are not the exclusive playgrounds of malcontents and their lawyers – or are they?

I said there were two parts to this problem. There second part is ecological.

Environmentalists would have you believe the wildfires you are witnessing in western Montana and across the entire west are natural events – ecological responses to a century of timber harvesting that left forests incapable of sustaining themselves. But there is no ecological evidence that supports this claim, though it is certainly true that the west’s forests came in for very rough treatment during our country’s westward migration.

The real problem is more complex – and has historic and political underpinnings. The Great 1910 Fire, which devastated three million acres of old growth timber in northern Idaho and Western Montana, created a public uproar unlike any that had preceded it. Congress subsequently passed two landmark acts – the Weeks Act in 1911 and Clarke-McNary Act in 1924. These two laws put the federal government in the forest firefighting business. Over time, the government and its private industry partners got very good at putting out fires before they got too big – but never let it be forgotten that they did what they did with strong public support at the backs. In fact, there still strong public support for quick action where wildfire is concerned.

The problem is that the fires we are facing today are larger, more frequent and more destructive than any for which we can find ecological evidence anywhere in the West.

This is because these fires are burning in forests that are far denser than they once were. In some mixed conifer forests in the Intermountain West, tree density today is more than a hundred times what it was before white settlement began after the Civil War. We know this because the ecological evidence of past natural disturbances, some of them dating from the time of Christ, tells us it is so. We also know it because we have anecdotal accounts written by early explorers and westward bound pioneers describing the look of the forests they saw. There weren’t nearly as many trees in these forests and there were many more grassy plains and savannahs.

Many of these accounts also describe ever-present smoke from fires that were set by lightning or by Indians. Indians used fire for a variety of reasons including hunting and defense against other warring tribes. The Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon – that’s "Blue" with a capital "B" and "Mountains" with a capital "M" were once known generically as the blue mountains: little "b" and little "m" because they seemed to be perpetually shrouded in blue smoke – much like western Montana now is every August. The smoke, of course, came from forest fires.

I tell you this story to illustrate some points:

First, natural wildfire fire is a natural feature of the western landscape and has been for eons.

Second, Indian fire has also been a feature of the western landscape for thousands of years. This second fact is very important because it leaves no doubt in my mind that the forests early pioneers described in their diaries were not natural forests, but were in fact the products of widespread human-caused disturbances that may well date to the end of the last Ice Age, some 10,000 years ago.

Third, these fires, regardless of their source, had great ecological value because they kept insects and disease in check, favoring fire-adapted tree species like lodgepole, Ponderosa pine, western larch and Interior Douglas-fir, while holding at bay fire-sensitive shade intolerant tree species like white fir, which today is a major source of increasing forest density throughout the Interior.

Fourth, as per acre forest density increases available sunlight, moisture and soil nutrients must be divided between thousands of trees, where once these necessities of life were shared by as few as 15 or 20 trees per acre. The trees we see in these thickets today are killing each other.

Fifth, wildfire frequency began to increase first as a direct result of the nation’s shameful reservation policy. As tribes were driven from their native lands onto distant reservations native fire disappeared from the landscape.

Sixth, we compounded this first mistake in the 1920s by putting the government and private industry into the business of putting out forest fires. But again, it is very important that you understand that this was done with overwhelming public support - done because the country feared what fire was doing in its communities, feared it might also lose its timber supply

As a public policy, excluding wildfire from forests has had its ups and its downs. On the upside, communities, lives and forests were well protected against fearsome loss. But on the downside, the manner in which our forests function began to change. A forester named Earl Weaver first sounded the alarm in the early 1950s. He had noticed that thin-barked white fir, a tree species easily killed by fire, was overtaking fire resistant ponderosa pine in forests in eastern Washington, and he said that if something wasn’t done soon to reverse the trend we’d have big problem on our hands in Intermountain forests in the years to come. Weaver went so far as to suggest that we ought to be using prescribed fire in such forests to clear away the white fir seedlings. Most other foresters of that era – all of them schooled in the evils of fire - thought Earl Weaver was nuts. Obviously, he was not.

The question now is, "What should we do about the problem we face?" Should we stand by and watch the West burn to the ground, as many environmental groups advocate in the misplaced name of naturalness – or should we launch the large scale, long-term thinning projects most fire ecologists say would be the best thing to do under the circumstances?

Keep in mind that this question is currently moot because you and I have absolutely nothing to say about what happens or doesn’t happen in the west’s publicly-owned forests. Congress has ceded our authority to malcontents, their lawyers and judges.

But for the moment let’s assume Congress has come to its senses. What now?

My fire ecologist friends tell me that tossing a match over our shoulder on our way out of the woods offers no assurance that the next forest will be the forests pioneers described in their diaries. It fact, it is likely that it won’t be. I say this because we know that Indians used fire to manage these forests for eons. The forests early settlers saw and wrote about were not natural. They were managed landscapes.

So could we use fire again in the same way Indians used it? Perhaps, but not initially, because our forests have grown much too dense to safely permit the widespread use of prescribed fire. A great deal of thinning work has to come first. And there is an often forgotten second half of this question – implied though it may be - that cannot be ignored – and the second half of the question is this: Are we ready and willing to accept the same persistent levels of smoke pioneers referenced in their diaries?

Are you as a society willing to endure long summers of smoke filled skies – days in which you can’t see the mountains but you can taste the air you breathe – days in which the air you breathe is so unhealthy you can’t be outside? Is this what you want here in the Bitterroot? Is it what anyone living in the west today wants? Is it the best we can do in "The Last Best Place?" Will businesses still want to move here? Will tourists still come here? Remember, tourism was supposed to save us from economic calamity after the timber industry was run out of the state.

I think these are very real and very legitimate questions. Unfortunately, no one is asking these questions. The press isn’t paying attention. It isn’t doing its homework. It isn’t asking the hard questions of the judges, lawyers and malcontents who have total control over this situation. We are ignoring history, ecology and the needs of generations yet unborn.

Do not allow these questions to be swept under the carpet by anyone. Demand action. Demand results. Demand accountability. Gather expertise and organize yourselves so that you can fend off public attacks on your character and motives, because you will be attacked – and you will be vilified.

You face a tough fight against formidable, deep-pocketed adversaries. And you’re not going to get much help out of the forest planning process. How can you possibly recruit people when they know they have no voice, when they know that long hours, weeks, months and years of volunteer time can be wrecked in a single court hearing?

There is not one person in the United States Forest Service today – including Gail Kimball, who many of you know - who should be telling you that the public involvement process works, because it doesn’t. If it did we would have at least one large scale, long term thinning project in place on every national forest in the West – two would be better.

Instead, what we have is one such project in the entire western United States. That project, in the White Mountains in northern Arizona, is probably doomed because there is not enough sawmilling and marketing infrastructure left in the Southwest to profitably support it. And profitability is key because – again – there is not enough gold in Fort Knox to pay for all the forest restoration work that needs to be done across the West.

As you may have already concluded, I don’t have much in the way of good news to share with you this evening, but I do have a little – and it may come as a great surprise. Did you know that public support for doing the thinning and stand tending work necessary to pull the West’s federally owned forests back from the brink of ecological collapse runs in the mid-80 percent range?

Let me repeat that because it is important. Polling and focus group work done two and three years ago in major urban centers around the country reveals public support for thinning in the West’s desperately ill federal forests is in the 80-85 per cent range. By any measure you care to apply, this is a political landslide. And yes, Congress has the results of this polling and focus group work. It used it in its work on the Healthy Forests Restoration Act.

I know a good deal about this research because I was involved in it. I saw the dial testing results. I know what happens when you tell urbanites why the west is burning to the ground and what can be done to alleviate the situation before it is too late. What our urban neighbors want to know is why the hell the work isn’t being done now!

You have natural allies in these people, but first you have to get on their radar screen. But then how do you start the conversation? Well, you could start with a short story about an old friend of mine: Alan Houston, a PhD wildlife biologist who runs the forestry program at the Ames Plantation in middle Tennessee. Alan and I were out walking on the Cumberland Plateau on a brilliant and cloudless fall morning in October of 1996 when he turned to me out of the blue and said something so profound I can still repeat it verbatim. He said: "When we leave forests to nature, as so many people seem to want to do, we get whatever nature serves up, which can be pretty devastating at times, but with forestry we have options, and degree of predictability not found in nature."

Let’s switch gears for a moment. Can anyone in this room name me a job or a product on this earth that is not the rest of the harvest or extraction of a raw material and its conversion to a finished product?

I’ll spare you the agony: there aren’t any.

Imagine a friend’s astonishment when I explained to her – gently of course – that her laptop computer was a product of the two industries she hated most: the plastic case a product of the "greedy" oil industry and the guts of her computer – the brain – a product of the "dreaded" mining industry.

How nice it would be if we could manufacture laptop computers from trees grown by the free, non-polluting energy of the sun; CO2 absorbing, oxygen producing trees: renewable, recyclable and biodegradable, with a strength-to-weight ratio that is unmatched among competing structural building materials – all of which use far more energy in their manufacture and use than wood, all of which use more water in their manufacture and use than wood, all of which release more harmful pollutants into the atmosphere in their manufacture and use than does wood. The world should be using more wood, not less.

I said a moment ago that I’d tell you what I think your message points should be. When we did our polling and focus group work two and three years ago we asked participants to name the forest values they prized most. It was no contest. The four forest values that polled highest from coast to coast are as follows:

Clean air

Clean water

Abundant fish and wildlife habitat

A wealth of year-round recreation opportunity

I submit to you that these are not amenities found amid the black sticks left in the wake of stand replacing wildfires.

I will also suggest that these amenities – clean air, clean water, abundant fish and wildlife habitat and a wealth of recreation opportunity – are products of well- managed forests. But note that I said "products," not "by-products." I did so very purposefully, because I think the public is more comfortable with the idea that its amenities come first – and that wood, which was once the chief product of forestry - becomes a by-product – at least in publicly owned forests By reversing these historic roles, focusing first on the amenities people want and making wood a by-product of their desires – forestry can begin to recover some of the credibility it began to lose in the 1970s.

I’m going to wrap up my comments this evening with a series of quite thought provoking quotations taken from past issues of Evergreen, the magazine that I’ve been publishing for the last 22 years. When strung together, these quotations, tell a powerful story that I hope will become part of your story.

Some of you may know Alston Chase by reputation. He lives over around Livingston. About 20 years ago he wrote a fascinating book titled "Playing God in Yellowstone," in which he described the philosophical underpinnings of radical environmentalism. I interviewed Chase for a cover story in Evergreen Magazine in the September 1990. Among the observations he shared with me was this statement:

"Environmentalism increasingly reflects urban perspectives. As people move to cities, they become infatuated with fantasies of land untouched by humans. This demographic shift is revealed through ongoing debates about endangered species, grazing, water rights, private property, mining and logging. And it is partly a healthy trend. But this urbanization of environmental values also signals the loss of a rural way of life and the disappearance of hands on experience with nature. So the irony: as popular concern for preservation increases, public understanding about how to achieve it declines."

In the 17 years since I interviewed Dr. Chase, the demographic shift that had people moving to cities has reversed course. Now many of them are moving to rural environs, like the Bitterroot Valley, in pursuit of the same fantasies Chase referenced in our discussion.

If you’ve not read "Playing God in Yellowstone," I recommend that you do so. Only then will you begin to understand how vital it is for rural Americans, like you, to reach out to their new neighbors. Here is what Chase said when I asked him about the take home message in his book:

"The lesson in ‘Playing God’ is that there is no such thing as leaving nature alone. People are part of Creation. We do not have the option of choosing not to be stewards of the land. We must master the art and science of good stewardship. Environmentalists do not understand that the only way to preserve nature is to manage nature."

My old friend Tom Bonnicksen knows something about nature. He’s a PhD forest ecologist, author and former naturalist with the National Park Service. Here’s what he had to say when I asked him what would happen if timber harvesting were banned in federal forests:

"The proposed ban on timber harvesting in federal forests – however well intended – chases an unachievable ideal. It says that if we leave forests alone the result will be a more natural landscape. But reality presents a much different picture. Our forests are byproducts of 12,000 years of dominance by Native Americans, mainly through their use of fire. Removing human influences – by imposing a harvest ban in national forests – would have horrendous impacts on native forests and species. Many early and mid-succession plant and animal communities would be lost, creating very unnatural landscapes, a significant decline in biological diversity and a significant increase in the size and frequency of wildfires, resulting in further losses to native forests."

We’re already witnessing the kind of social upheaval that occurs in timber communities when harvesting levels plummet, as they have over the last 15 years. My friend Bob Lee, a PhD sociologist, biologist and author who teaches at the University of Washington talked about this upheaval in an interview we did in the mid-1990s:

"Preserving and maintaining this nation’s cultural diversity is as important to the survival of America as is preserving and maintaining biological diversity. What we are preserving in rural farm and timber communities is people, not abstractions or symbols, but real people who embody basic values which are fundamental to our nation’s history and its traditions."

Speaking of history and traditions, here’s what Dr. Robert Buckman said about the environmentalist obsession with old growth forests. Buckman is a professor emeritus at Oregon State University College of Forestry, former Director of Research for the U.S. Forest Service and past president of the International Union of Forest Research Organizations:

"Conservationists need to consider a broader range of land management options. There is currently a significant bias favoring old-growth related research. It is undermining our more complete understanding of how the pieces of nature fit together. For every old-growth related research project, there should be companion research involving young and middle-aged forests. Biological diversity is the sum of all ecological processes, not just those we can observe in old-growth forests."

Certain fish and wildlife species – grizzly bears, bull trout, spotted owls and certain salmon and steelhead runs to name just four– have become proxies in the old growth debate, and it’s widely assumed that the only way to save forests is to create vast reserves where they can prosper beyond human influences. But here’s what Dr. Bill Libby, a world-renowned forest geneticist and professor emeritus from the University of California at Berkeley said about that in a mid-1990s interview:

"Plantation forestry saves more endangered species in a month than most American conservationists save in their lifetimes. As federal logging in the Pacific Northwest is slowed to a virtual standstill, species extinction in tropical forests has accelerated at a thunderous rate. Is saving the spotted owl and the marbled murrelet worth the loss of eight to ten thousand species in the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Madagascar? Not in my opinion."

My old friend Dr. Jim Bowyer took a different approach when we discussed the matter about a year ago. Jim is a professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota Department of Bio-products and Bio-processing and Director of the Responsible Materials Program for Minneapolis-based Dovetail Partners. Here’s what he said:

"A nation that consumes more than it produces is exporting its environmental impacts to other nations that provide what is consumed. It is like shipping your garbage to another town that needs the money and is willing to put up with the stench. Most of the raw materials consumed by the industrialized world – including the United States – come from impoverished countries that lack the money, technology and political will needed to regulate their own extractive industries. In the emerging global economy, nations should be increasing, not decreasing their dependence on wood fiber because wood is renewable, recyclable, biodegradable and far more energy efficient it its manufacture and use than are products made from steel, aluminum, plastic and concrete. Furthermore, growing forests and the lumber they provide store large amounts of carbon dioxide that would otherwise escape into the atmosphere, adding to the potential for global warming."

Here’s a similar perspective from my old friend Hal Salwasser, a PhD wildlife biologist who spent many years with the Forest Service before being named Dean of the Oregon State University College of Forestry. Some of you may remember Hal from his days as Region 1 Regional Forester, before he was run off by Al Gore.

"It is not unethical to grow and cut trees in ways that leave soil, water and ecosystems in a healthy condition for the future. What is environmentally unethical and globally irresponsible is to use amounts of wood we are not willing to produce as prudent land stewards – or to think that we can get by with wood substitutes that use far more energy to produce and are not as recyclable or biodegradable as wood. What good does it do to conserve biological diversity in our backyard forests if society merely depletes the same in some else’s forests to satisfy their wants and needs. The ultimate challenges may not be what we think they are – old growth, jobs, spotted owls, roadless areas, endangered species or even biological diversity. These are important issues we must address, but they are only symptoms of the real challenges: human population growth, consumption and pollution. The real challenge is not to see whether bio-centerism can overcome homo-centerism as the paradigm of the 1990s, but to develop a new and more useful paradigm: eco-centerism, where people and nature are seen as interdependent parts of the whole."

But for its sheer magnitude, no one can trump the insights of my old friend Leonard Netzorg. Leonard was a union lawyer in Detroit in the 1930s. He went on to become the best lawyer the forest products industry ever had. In one of our many long conversations – which were always made more spirited by his homemade plum sherry - he said something I’ve never forgotten In fact, I wrote it down – and will close out this evening by sharing it with you.

"There is no perfect truth that can guide us forward. The larger issues of our time, including those swirling about our forests, require separating society’s material wants from its spiritual needs.

"Society has demonstrated an unwillingness to vest in scientists the final authority to make decisions that affect the rest of us. We insist that our non-scientific views be heard, that we whose lives are affected have the right to participate in the decision-making and policy processes that flow from today’s scientific facts.

"Meanwhile, the timber industry is going to have to learn how to share these forests with others who have different values and want different things from the forest. Frankly, I welcome it and I rue the day when polarized factions no longer tear away at the fabric of our society.

"The American Revolution is still going on. We are still changing, still learning. If some of us were not constantly tearing away at what others of us think we know, we would all still think the earth flat. What is science today is witchcraft tomorrow."

Groups battle over Bitterroot forest timber

By PERRY BACKUS of the Missoulian (Repost)

The subject of U.S. Forest Service appeals on the Bitterroot National Forest has become a hot topic on Internet blogs, mass e-mails and guest editorials in newspapers over the last month or so.

The controversy flared following statements made by a brand new Bitterroot Valley-based group calling itself the Big Sky Coalition: Environmentalists with Common Sense. The group contends that appeals and litigation are keeping the Forest Service from accomplishing fuel reduction work in the woods.

Their critics, led by Matthew Koehler, executive director of Missoula's WildWest Institute, and fueled by a report by Friends of the Bitterroot, say relatively few timber sales on the Bitterroot National Forest have been appealed in relation to what's been offered.

Gary Milner of Friends of the Bitterroot used information he gained from the Forest Service through a Freedom of Information Act request to put together a report showing 534 timber sales from 1985 to 2002 on the Bitterroot National Forest. Of that number, 29 were appealed.

In a mass e-mail to other environmental groups and the Missoulian, Koehler said those numbers showed that 95 percent of all commercial timber sales went through without any appeal in the 17-year period.

As for litigation, Koehler said there had only been two cases filed against timber sales on the Bitterroot National Forest from 1985 to present.

"Two court challenges out of 500-plus timber sales hardly seems like getting sued ‘almost every time,' " Koehler wrote.

Koehler referred all questions by the Missoulian about the numbers to Friends of the Bitterroot, saying that group did the actual research.

Bitterroot National Forest Service officials say the figures Koehler uses are flawed.

"This stuff is very complicated because the rules are continually changing," said Sue Heald, the Bitterroot National Forest's planning and recreation staff officer. "It's easy to play games with the numbers."

For instance, the two lawsuits filed against the Bitterroot National Forest weren't over individual timber sales, Heald said. Instead, environmental groups, including Koehler's, filed suits against projects that included more than one timber sale.

"In this case, one decision doesn't equate to one timber sale," she said.

The environmental analysis completed on the Bitterroot National Forest's Burned Area Recovery plan included more than 22 separate stewardship timber sales. The Middle East Fork fuel reduction plan included four timber sales.

Friends of the Bitterroot President Jim Miller said when environmental groups challenged those projects in court, they did not include numerous timber sales.

"We weren't challenging 20 different timber sales," Miller said. "We were challenging the entire project."

As far as the number of timber sales on the Bitterroot National Forest, Heald said the agency provided Milner with two different sets of data.

The first set, which Milner used in his report, included every commercial activity that involved cutting trees, including commercial Christmas tree sales, post and pole permits and commercial firewood sales.

Milner said that was what he asked for.

"The key word for me was commercial," Milner said. "If money was generated off the sale, then I wanted it accounted for."

Milner's request for information came after he heard people voice concerns that the Bitterroot National Forest's timber sale program had essentially been shut down because of appeals and litigation.

He wanted to know if that was true.

So Milner sat down with a Forest Service employee with the initial list and crossed off mushroom permits and other activities that didn't have anything to do with timber.

"I felt they (the Forest Service) knew exactly what it was that I wanted," he said.

From there, Milner said he simply counted the number of projects that remained on the list.

Heald said the first set of information the agency provided Milner included hundreds of projects that couldn't be appealed under Forest Service regulations in place at the time.

A second document sent about two months later excluded the smallest offerings, including commercial Christmas trees sales, firewood, boughs and mushroom sales. From 1985 to 2002, the new document indicated there were 155 timber sales on the Bitterroot.

"Even some of these were quite small and would not have been appealable," Heald said. "We were trying to make a totally accurate count, but it was very, very difficult given the data we had to work with."

The second Forest Service report provided to Milner said that between 1998 and 2002, the number of decisions that were subject to appeal that included a timber component was eight. Half of those decisions were appealed.

"We weren't sure why we were going back 15 to 20 years," Heald said. "A lot has changed in 20 years. We thought maybe it was more relevant to look at what happened over the last five years."

Besides, she said the best data available to the agency begins after 1998.

"That was when we really started to get more computerized systems," she said. "We have good records of what was appealed, but we don't have good records of every decision that was appealable."

A 2003 study by Northern Arizona University's Ecological Restoration Institute that analyzed Forest Service appeals supports Heald's contention the agency's data is often incomplete before 1996.

A 1999 court settlement required the agency to maintain an electronic database available to the public on all administrative appeal final decisions.

The study suggested there's a lot the Forest Service doesn't know or understand about the impacts of administrative appeals, including ecological, social, economic and administrative costs.

"There's no way of tracking the financial costs of processing Forest Service appeals within the current budget structure," the study said. "People can only guess."

A shrinking workforce and a requirement to do more costly and time-consuming analysis have resulted in fewer projects being offered each year, Heald said.

"That additional analysis isn't about appeals, it's about litigation," Heald said. "The courts keep setting the bar higher and higher for our analysis."

Where in 1990 an environmental analysis might be 30 pages long, the analysis for the controversial Middle East Fork fuel reduction project was two volumes of 250 pages each.

"We're talking inches here," she said. "Over the years, this cumulative additional analysis combined with the reduction of our work force has meant longer time frames to complete projects."

It's a challenge the Forest Service faces across the West.

According to an October 2007 Northern Region report, 314 million board feet of timber is tied up in either appeals or litigation.

Amounts vary from forest to forest.

On the Bitterroot National Forest, the figures are relatively small. About 2.4 million board feet on two timber sales included in the Middle East Fork fuel reduction project await a decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

On the Kootenai National Forest, more than 80 million board feet are tied up in appeals and litigation, according to the report. The Lolo National Forest has more than 21 million board feet either in litigation or on appeal.

"The Kootenai normally offers about 50 million board feet every year," said Gary Dickerson, the Northern Region's acting assistant director of timber management. "So 80 million board feet equals about 1.6 years of that forest's total timber program that's tied up in appeals or litigation."

The WildWest Institute and Ecology Center are involved in five lawsuits on the Kootenai National Forest, four on the Lolo National Forest and one each on the Bitterroot, Beaverhead-Deerlodge and Helena national forests, according the regional report.

The regional office began putting together the report on appeals and litigation three years ago after people expressed concerns over the time and money being spent to complete all the additional analysis, Dickerson said.

"With a tight workforce and tight budgets, people working on appeals and litigation aren't able to work on other projects to get more acres treated," he said. "It's a real dilemma for us."

At the high point in the summer of 2006, 528 million board feet of timber sales were tied up in appeals and litigation.

"It's way more than some people would have you think," Dickerson said. "It's a big deal. This isn't small potatoes."

Heald doesn't see anything in the near future that will change that course.

"The process is not designed to resolve conflict," Heald said. "If there was less controversy, then there would probably be less appeals. Appeals are just the process. They're not causing the controversy.

"Underlying philosophical differences lead to appeals."

Friends of the Bitterroot President Jim Miller sees administrative appeals as a form of democracy.

"Appeals are not a dirty word," Miller said. "Appeals are a safety valve put in by the Forest Service to ensure that projects that move ahead are good projects. � The American public has a right to stand up and say no when something isn't right."

Miller became president of the grassroots organization in 2001. Since then, he said Friends of the Bitterroot have been involved in "a handful" of appeals - "maybe four or five."

In comparison, the Ecology Center, which merged with the Native Forest Network in 2006 to become WildWest Institute, filed 236 appeals from 1997 through 2002, according to the Ecological Restoration Institute's report.

Most of those appeals - 204 - were filed in the Forest Service's Northern Region.

Miller said Friends of the Bitterroot carefully analyze proposed projects to see if they meet a variety of standards, including those established by the National Forest Management Act and the Endangered Species Act.

In some cases, Miller said the Forest Service has made changes upfront to address issues raised by Friends of the Bitterroot. And there have been cases where the group didn't find anything to comment on and the sale was completed, he said.

The challenge for the Bitterroot National Forest is in its history, Miller said.

In the 1960s, '70s and into the '80s, "a huge amount of timber was cut in an unsustainable manner," Miller said. That left a legacy of compacted soils, sedimentation problems from logging roads and impacted streams on the Bitterroot forest, he said.

"A large part of the forest is still suffering from that industrial logging era," Miller said.

Miller said it seems like a lot is being made over little litigation on the Bitterroot National Forest.

"The bottom line is three lawsuits have been filed on the Bitterroot National Forest in 20 years (one was dropped before it made it to court)," Miller said. "That just doesn't seem like a whole heck of a lot."

Reprinted under the Fair Use doctrine of international copyright law. Full copyright retained by the original publication. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

Big Sky Coalition promotes legislation, education to boost logging

Clark Fork Chronicle - Nov. 29, 2007 (Repost)

Environmentalists with common sense

by John Q. Murray

The Big Sky Coalition is moving forward with legislation, hopes to participate on the Bitterroot National Forest's restoration committee, and may seek to launch education campaigns directed at East Coast and West Coast environmentalists, organizers told the Chronicle Tuesday.

The group, which characterizes itself as “environmentalists with common sense,” drew an eye-popping 650 people to a public informational meeting in Hamilton earlier this month, with the crowd overwhelmingly in support of increased logging on the national forests as a way to mitigate catastrophic wildfires. The group has already received over $10,500 in donations.

The summer's smoke in the valley--again--frustrated a lot of Bitterrooters, explained organizer Tom Robak. “After the smoke started to die down, we spent a lot of time talking to people, and everybody had the same message---this is getting old. We need to try something different.”

He and his wife Charlotte decided to rent the county fairgrounds, advertise a meeting, and find out if other people felt the same way. “We have no ties to the logging industry. We're not loggers. Let's find out what would happen if we did that.”

The first guy he approached wrote a check for $3,000, Tom said. “I went, 'Wow, I guess I've got to do this now.'”

Organizer Sonny LaSalle explained, “This is just not the timber industry saying, 'We need more logs.' This is the common everyday citizen saying, 'I'm tired of the situation the way it is. It's only going to get worse and we want something done.' We believe there is something that can be done, and that the silent majority needs to become the vocal majority.”

That silent majority has felt disenfranchised and helpless, he said, watching from the sidelines while the courts and Forest Service interact only with litigants.

“We in the Coalition honestly believe there are things we can do, and the way we can do it is by speaking with one large voice to our elected officials at the state and the national levels. Then we can get some changes that need to be made. That takes a lot of people making as much noise as possible so the elected officials know this is just not one or two folks,” he said.

Sonny, who is retired from the U.S. Forest Service, organized the panel for the informational meeting Sunday, Nov. 4. The panel included: Forest Service historical vegetation and fire ecologist Jack Losensky showing photographs demonstrating changes in western forests over the last century; Forest Service fire manager Mick Dezell; Ravalli County commissioner Alan Thompson speaking on the impacts of Forest Service lands on the local economy; and Dr. Mark Jergens, chief medical officer at Marcus Daly Memorial Hospital, on the health effects of smoke from wildfires.

“I wanted to start with an educational effort to put as many people as possible on the same level playing field, with a basic understanding of how we got to where we are today, and what we need to do to try to fix this situation,” Sonny said. “It truly is fixable.”

Some people claim that with global warming and drought, increasing catastrophic fire is inevitable, and there is nothing that anyone can do.

“That's just simply not true,” Sonny said. “There's a lot of things we can do. We cannot prevent wildfire--we can't do that and we shouldn't. Fire has played a natural role in these ecosystems in the Bitterroot and all over the West for thousands of years. We cannot prevent it, but what we can do is lessen the impacts. It's been proven over and over that it is possible to do that by reducing the fuel loads.”

The dense buildup over the past century is not natural, especially in the Ponderosa pine zones, he said, recapping the photos presented by Jack Losensky.

Losensky's job for the past 25 years involved looking at thousands of photographs of the West as it appeared at the time of Euro-American settlement. His main resources included the U.S. Geological Survey photo library in Denver and universities throughout the west.

He selected 130 positions he thought he could find on the ground to re-photograph, and spent a few years traveling around and finding them. Those photo points included spots in the Bitterroot, Northern Idaho before and after the 1910 Burn; the Colorado River Basin, and the Gallatin area. He presented a few of those before-and-after photos at the Hamilton meeting.

In general, Sonny said, the photos showed areas that 100 years ago were open or park-like forests transformed to today's dense, unhealthy tree stands.

“Probably one of the more dramatic photos was an 1890 photo in the Gallatin area,” he said. “It showed a small community with bare hillsides behind it, all grass, and no stumps, so there was no evident history of trees ever growing there. In the more recent photo, around 1990, the whole slope behind the settlement was totally covered by trees.”

Foresters measure either the actual number of trees per area, or the basal area, Sonny explained. By all measurements, there are two to four times more trees than can be sustained by the amount of moisture available. That means the trees are stressed, and when they become stressed, the bark beetles get them, and the dead trees provide fuel for catastrophic wildfires.

“We have to balance the number of trees drawing moisture from the ground with the amount of moisture available in the ground,” Sonny said. “That means we have to do a lot of thinning. To me it's nothing but common sense. I get exasperated and a little short trying to understand why people want all of this to burn. They talk about it being natural, but it really isn't. The kind of stand-replacement fires we're having in the ponderosa pine forest type are not natural.”

The second speaker was fire manager Mick DeZell, Bitterroot born and raised, who started working for the Forest Service in the 1950s.

Mick told about extensive salvage logging after the 28,000-acre Sleeping Child Fire of 1961. The main logging activity went on for a solid two years, and included the construction of firebreaks on the east side of the valley, while smaller salvage operations continued on even longer. When the fires burned through the Bitterroot in 2000, they did not burn through the Sleeping Child, but went around it.

“It fingered in but actually had to burn around it,” Sonny said. “If you fly the area you'll see this great big green patch of trees, while everything around it was burnt. The same can be seen in some of the old clearcuts done here in the 50s and 60s. Some of those burned in 2000 but most of them did not. That's a fairly obvious example of what most of us that have a lot of years of fire experience have seen--there is a direct relationship between fuel and fire. The heavier the fuel, the harder the fire is to manage or contain.”

Ravalli County Commissioner Alan Thompson spoke about the impacts of the forest and forest management on the county. Ravalli County is 73 percent Forest Service land, and heavily impacted by what happens on the national forest. While it can help draw growth, the forest can also contribute heavy smoke for a long period of time.

Alan talked at length about the volume of trees killed on the 300,000 acres burned in 2000, the small amount harvested, and its economic impact on the county. He pointed out that the annual harvest is now less than the natural mortality rate, let alone the new growth rate. That discrepancy, harvesting far below the sustainable amount, has led to a huge buildup of fuel.

“We're not even taking out what is dying, so we're not even close to taking out what grows,” Sonny said.

Dr. Mark Jergens talked about the health effects of wood smoke. While there have been no long-term studies, nothing in wood smoke is beneficial, Sonny said. Everything in it is harmful, and it is known to include carcinogens.

The group is considering a similar meeting in Missoula as they continue to build an environmental organization with a full-time staff that can participate in decision-making regarding public lands. They also hope to continue to develop broad public support to push legislation through Congress.

“The most positive thing we've got going right now is, we've got some legislation in the pipeline that we wrote about two weeks ago,” Tom said. “One of the things I'm finding out is that it's taken years to get where we are. Years of legislation have basically just hog-tied the Forest Service to the point where they can't do anything. It's really hard for them to manage the forest in any way, shape, or form. They need some relief if we're going to bring them back to being able to manage the forest properly.”

While Tom and Sonny did not offer details, their comments suggested that the legislation would require litigants to post bonds when they seek to halt emergency thinning projects.

Sonny said he found it hard to believe that Congress intended the National Environmental Protection Act to become the administrative burden that it has become for the Forest Service and other federal agencies.

NEPA and its implementing regulations state very simply: “The responsible official needs sufficient information to make a reasoned decision.” But over the years, litigation has doubled the costs of NEPA documentation. In the Ninth Circuit, it has become almost impossible to write a NEPA document that can make it through the entire system without being thrown out, he said.

“It's also very costly—it can take 18 months and over a million dollars to write an EIS on a controversial project, and you still run the risk of being overturned in the Ninth Circuit.”

That offers two basic alternatives, he said. “You can get the people who want to go to court to agree with what you're trying to do, or you can make it a hell of a lot more difficult for them to take you to court.”

One potential approach is to require litigants suing to stop a project to post a bond. “In an emergency situation, if you are going to stop a project, you need accountability,” Sonny said.

Another possible activity for the group is to reach out to east coast and west coast environmentalists, he suggested. After this year's California wildfires, more people are starting to understand that with global warming, action must be taken to mitigate the effects of the west's natural wildfires. The group would encourage them to join the Big Sky Coalition in putting their environmental donations to the best possible use.

Sonny expressed great appreciation for the restoration committees being formed on the Bitterroot and Lolo national forests and said he hoped the Coalition would be an active participant in landscape-level restoration projects.

“Those 13 principles are excellent and they are the kinds of principles that should be supported by everybody,” he said.

The Big Sky Coalition is establishing partnerships with the Montana Wilderness Association, the National Wildlife Federation, and Montana Trout Unlimited. “Having a healthy forest and healthy habitat is beneficial to everything and everybody,” Sonny said.

The enormous turnout for their kickoff meeting energized the organizers.

“I've been involved in public meetings for 40 years and I've never seen a turnout like that,” Sonny said. “It sends a message to me that people really are frustrated and they want change. The status quo is not acceptable anymore and the Forest Service and our elected officials need to be responsive to that change.”

Tom said he received a 100-page briefing document from Bill Ward that described how we arrived at our present state. After reading it, he said he understood why each of the agencies and groups had made their decisions at the time.

The Forest Service started cutting timber after World War II to serve the returning veterans and create a building boom. Their targets were often far too aggressive and caused environmental damage, which caused the environmental groups to organize and seek to halt the projects. Their success put a lot of loggers out of work. “I think the loggers got a raw deal here. We treated them a lot like the Vietnam vets coming back from the war-- it wasn't their fault. They did a great job,” he said.

Tom said as he put himself into each of those actors' shoes—the politicians, the Forest Service official, the man who borrowed his last dime to start a logging mill, the environmentalists—he saw that each had a good reason to act as they did. “I would have done the same thing,” he said. “They made the right choices at the time.”

Having said that, he acknowledged that it is time to make a new choice. “Today we are at another crossroads,” he said. “What we've been doing isn't working. We need a new plan.”

He said he and his wife Charlotte were now fully committed to helping develop that new plan over the long haul.

“Char and I both feel a great responsibility now,” he said. “We had a feeling like, if only 50 to 100 people showed up we could walk away, but the opposite happened. There were 650 people there, and they've given us over $10,000. Now we feel like a great responsibility has been put on our shoulders.”

For more information about the group, see their website http://www.bigskycoalition.org, or email Tom at tom@bigskycoalition.org.

You can make tax-deductible contributions through the Bitter Root RC&D, 1709 North First, Hamilton, MT 59840 (write “Big Sky Coalition” in the memo field), or make non-tax-deductible contributions to Tom Robak, PO Box 335, Darby, MT 59829.