In this Healthy Forests Initiative update:
1. The Senate passes the Healthy Forests Initiative
2. A forestry expert lists the myths of forest management
Great news! The U.S. Senate passed the Healthy Forests bill last Thursday
night on a very strong and bipartisan 80-14 vote. Importantly, the Senate
turned back several amendments pushed by opponents that would have made the
Senate bill more difficult to reconcile with legislation previously passed
by the House.
As most of our supporters know over the past year and a half we have been
asking you to contact your representatives and voice your support of this
effort to address the health and mismanagement of our forests.
This Senate bill authorizes $760 million dollars annually for projects to
remove dead trees and underbrush. At least half of the funds will be used
near residential forest communities; the remaining funds in forests where
fire hazards are critical and watersheds and reservoirs are most threatened.
There is one hurdle left before it reaches the Presidents desk for
signature. The legislation needs to clear a House-Senate conference to
clear differences between the House and Senate versions. Senate opponents
and the environmental industry are seeking to delay that conference.
One of the chief sponsors of the bill, Senator Diane Feinstein (D) CA, has
struggled for two years to get this legislation passed. In a letter to the
Executive Director of the Warrior's Society written last year, Senator
Feinstein wrote of the seriousness of the problems faced by our forests here
in Californian and of her hopes to get legislation passed to address these
problems.
To see the text of the letter posted on our web site click here.
Please call Senator Feinstein to thank her and tell her you support her
efforts to get this legislation passed. Contact Senator Boxer and ask her to
drop her opposition to the bill; it is time she represented the concerns of
California, not EarthFirst!. Urge them to support rapid negotiations to
resolve differences between the House and Senate versions of HR 1904.
Senator Feinstein's and Boxer's contact and fax numbers are at the
end of this alert.
In 1998, reflecting the conclusions of earlier government reports, the
General Accounting Office warned that too little was being done to address
the problem of "high levels of fuels for catastrophic fires" that were
"transforming much of the region into a tinderbox." The GAO fears were
realized in 2000 when forest fires burned 8.4 million acres, the worst fire
season in half a century.
There was another terrible fire season in 2002, when 6.9 million acres
burned and federal fire-fighting costs set a new record of $1.7 billion. In
2003, matters were looking better until Southern California erupted in
flames. These devastating fires have burned close to 20 million acres of
forest since the year 2000, killed millions of species, destroyed thousands
of houses and taken many lives.
Stories are now appearing in the press regarding the scramble to save
species severely affected by the fires:
CEDAR GLEN, Calif. (AP) -- Wildlife experts are beginning extraordinary
efforts to protect animal species whose habitats were charred by wildfires
and now face the risk of imminent flooding.
"Particularly in Southern California, we have endemic species -- they're not
found any place else in the world. If we lose them, the world has lost
them," said Chamois Andersen, a spokeswoman for the California Department of
Fish and Game.
One species in trouble is a strain of mountain yellow-legged frog separated
for millennia from its Sierra Nevada brethren and now making its home in a
10-mile stretch of the San Bernardino Mountains' City Creek.
With no more vegetation to hold the soil and sop up impending rain, flooding
into the Santa Ana River could push the frogs more than 30 miles downstream.
"They just would never make it back," said Steve Loe, a U.S. Forest Service
wildlife biologist. "There's a good chance if we don't do some fairly
significant recovery work, we could lose them forever from these mountains."
The recent fires have confirmed the thesis we have presented intensely over
the past year and a half that our forests have been mismanaged and the
wilderness designation is not the answer - but a detriment that ties the
hands of land managers. For an education on the Healthy Forests Initiative
and what should have been done to prevent these fires - or warned of the
dangers of the wilderness designation in preventing these fires read these
updates.
Thanks to California Senator Diane Feinstein (D) and other representatives
for pushing this bill through - and to all who called, faxed and e-mailed in
an effort to help pass this important bill.
From the Friday, October 31, 2003 issue of the Orange County Register:
Dr. Bonnicksen is Professor of Forest Science at Texas A&M University and
author of the book America's Ancient Forests: From the Ice Age to the Age of
Discovery published in 2000 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. He has also held
posts as president, chair, and vice-chair of several other organizations,
including the Bay Area Chapter of the Sierra Club.
In testimony last month before a congressional hearing in Lake Arrowhead,
Bonnicksen spelled out what he considers misconceptions about forest
management. Here are excerpts:
MYTH: ALL FIRES ARE GOOD AND FOREST MANAGEMENT IS BAD.
Historically, natural fires burned a far different kind of forest than the
uniformly thick, overpopulated forests we have today. Forests of the past
were resistant to monster fires, with clearings and patches of open forest
that acted as tiny fuel breaks for fires that were far smaller and far less
hot.
Fires can't burn that way in the forest of today. They bite into a
superabundance of fuel, burn super-hot, destroy wildlife and watersheds, and
leave a desolate landscape scarred by erosion and pitted with craters.
MYTH: WILDFIRES AND MASSIVE INSECT INFESTATIONS ARE A NATURAL WAY FOR
FORESTS TO THIN AND REJUVENATE THEMSELVES.
On the contrary, "no-cut" policies and total fire suppression have created
the overcrowded forest conditions that enable fires to spread over vast
areas that never burned that way in their known history. The resulting
devastation is not natural. It is human-caused.
MYTH: THINNING NARROW STRIPS OF FOREST AROUND COMMUNITIES, OR FUELBREAKS, IS
MORE THAN ADEQUEATE AS A DEFENSE AGAINST WILDFIRE.
Anyone who thinks roaring wildfires can't penetrate these flimsy barriers
could not be more mistaken. Fires often jump over railroad tracks and even
divided highways.
Fuelbreaks are impractical because forest communities are spread out over
huge areas. It would be virtually impossible to create an effective thinned
zone to encompass an area so large.
Dr. Bonnicksen's September 2003 resources committee testimony was prophetic:
"Among the saddest aspects of this forest being wiped out is that the
devastation was predictable and preventable. In fact, specialists
representing many interests and agencies came together in a 1994 workshop to
do something about the unnaturally thick forests in the San Bernardino
Mountains. They knew that communities like Idyllwild, Big Bear, and Lake
Arrowhead were in imminent danger from wildfire. The workshop produced a
report charting a course to improve the safety and health of the forest and
surrounding communities. The recommendations were never acted on. Now, an
entire forest is lost."
Click here to read the full testimony of the hearing
SENATOR BOXER AND FEINSTEIN'S CONTACT INFORMATION
Please take the time to call Senator Feinstein to thank her for her support of the Healthy Forests Initiative and for not supporting the current wilderness bills.
Contact Senator Boxer and let her know of your concern for her support of the agenda of Dave Forman of EarthFirst! and the environmental industry in pushing for wilderness designations.
Honorable Senator Feinstein
One Post St., #2450
San Francisco, CA 94104
Phone: (415) 393-0707
Fax: (619) 231-1108
Fax: (310) 914-7318
Fax: (415) 989-3242
Fax: (202) 228-3954
Fax: (559) 485-9689Honorable Senator Boxer
1700 Montgomery St., #240
San Francisco, CA 94111
Phone: (415) 403-0100
Fax: (213) 894-5012
Fax: (909) 888-8613
Fax: (619) 239-5719
Fax: (559) 497-5111
Fax: (415) 956-6701
Fax: (916) 448-2563
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment for non-profit research and educational purposes only. [Ref. www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml]
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