The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“WESTERN FOREST HEALTH INITIATIVE” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Agriculture was published in the Senate section on pages S1688-S1690 on Jan. 27, 1995.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
WESTERN FOREST HEALTH INITIATIVE
Mr. BURNS. Mr. President, I want to bring up a situation that caught my eye.
Day before yesterday I received a copy of an Associated Press article that exposed a previously unreleased
[[Page S1689]] Forest Service document, now being referred to as
``Phase I of The Western Forest Health Initiative.''
This report was internally submitted September 30, 1994, about the time the agency said it would release its final report to the public. The final report, however, was not released until December, and it was watered down considerably. It is called phase 2.
The difference between the two documents is remarkable and it appears to demonstrate the difference between how Forest Service scientists--in other words, the professional land managers, especially in the Forest Service--view forest health and how this administration sees it.
The phase I report in every way was more aggressive and emphasizes a much greater sense of urgency than the report that was finally released to the public. Phase I contains about 70 different recommendations on overcoming impediments and barriers to achieving good forest health goals and lists scores of specific actions needed to address those concerns. It identified work to be done on almost 5 million acres of U.S. Forest Service lands. The new document, phase II, is more of a discussion document than a policy document. It recommended projects covering only half a million acres of land--projects that were already planned for and would have been done regardless of this initiative. So phase II proposes to remove barriers without clearly stating what they are and it disregards some very significant problems that the forests have completely.
So, Mr. President, I think this action is flagrant. It undermines the honest and serious attempts of the land managers to deal with forest health problems by the Forest Service. It is of extreme concern to the people of my State and others in the West, who fought the 67,000 wildfires last summer--that burned 4 million acres, and it cost 26 lives. If we trail those back as to what caused the fires and how we could have controlled them, it goes back almost entirely to dealing with forest health issues.
I ask unanimous consent that a summary of the original Western Forest Health Initiative, dated September 30, 1994, along with an Associated Press article, dated January 25, 1995, be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
Executive Summary
Healthy resilient forests are important for sustaining ecosystems, including the needs and values of humans.
Currently, many of our national forested ecosystems are under stress and are unhealthy, meaning they cannot sustain their inherent complexity while providing for human needs. The problem with forest health is not confined to any single region of the country. Some eastern and southern forested ecosystems are challenged with considerable and complex forest health problems. However, the nation's attention is focused on western forested ecosystems, where the scale and magnitude of the problems are greatest, and where the loss of life, property, and resources from catastrophic wildfires have heightened the public's awareness.
To address the western forest health problem, the Chief of the Forest Service chartered an interdisciplinary team of 14 members from all organizational levels to identify Forest Service priority activities that can move towards restoring western forested ecosystem health across National Forest System and contiguous other land ownerships. The Team was asked to identify and recommend solutions to barriers and impediments that block or impede the accomplishment of restoration activities. The focus was on assessing the problems in our western forests, and then charting an ecosystem approach, emphasizing projects that restore, protect, or enhance ecosystem health. The Team's task did not include addressing burned area recovery and restoration. Rather it looked at actions that would work towards restoring forested systems, to reduce the risks of future catastrophic losses.
As part of this process, the Team did extensive outreach and shareholder sensing, personally contacting over 40 members of Congress, 30 non-governmental organizations, other federal agencies, tribes, the Western Council of State Foresters, Washington, Regional, and Northeast Area staffs, Forest Service Research Stations, and 92 western Forest Supervisors.
The data gathered in this intensive effort was compiled into two automated electronic data bases: one for projects and program level data from the National Forests and State Foresters; the other containing over 1,100 comments on barriers, impediments and proposed changes in management direction, policy, or law. Content analysis and synthesis was conducted by the Team. It resulted in an identification of the magnitude of planned and needed work. Over 70 recommendations were developed for changes that are needed to overcome impediments.
Key findings estimate that over the next two years, there are approximately 5 million acres of treatment opportunities that restore forested ecosystem health. In addition, there is a significant amount of ecosystem analysis needed in support of future forest health projects.
Not all forests are unhealthy, nor can we treat or restore all forests that are unhealthy. To facilitate management decisions and move towards implementation, the team developed a framework for prioritizing projects and budget needs that contains biological, physical and human components. In using it, managers will both be able to identify high priorities for management, as well as get a sense for the level of public acceptance and likelihood for successful implementation.
Recommendations for changes that are needed centered into the following key areas: changes to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the National Environmental Protection Act; appeals, and consultation processes; increased budget and funding flexibility, with a focus on increasing carryover and multi-funding approaches to support multiple resource projects; comprehensive review of legislation, regulations, and policies to remove inconsistencies and conflicting direction, new ways to get the job done on the ground, such as land management services contracts and competitive inter-agency grants; a greater commitment to truly working in partnerships with other federal agencies, States, tribes, and neighboring landowners in addressing forest health problems that cross our boundaries; and better frameworks, protocols and education and training for tying integrated inventories, assessments and planning into more holistic and integrated systems.
Forest health problems are national in scope. Lasting solutions that can only be achieved by shared conservation leadership toward common goals and land conditions. This will require cooperative efforts and shared vision by the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of the federal government, as well as by our varied and many cooperators from the private and public sectors. There are no easy or short-term cures for forest health problems that have developed over a span of the past century.
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Document Shows Clinton Forest-Health Plan addresses Only Part of
Problem
(By Scott Sonner)
Washington.--Agriculture Undersecretary Jim Lyons says the administration's Western forest health plan tackles only a portion of the acres needing treatment and will be fortified with additional projects in coming years.
``This was not a one-shot deal,'' Lyons said in a telephone interview Tuesday night.
``There is a lot of work to be done on the forests, a lot of opportunities to improve on their health,'' he said.
Lyons responded to criticism from the timber industry after a Forest Service document disclosed Tuesday indicated the Clinton administration's plan to reduce wildfire threats addresses only about one-fifth of the 5 million acres a Forest Service team identified as needing treatment.
The Forest Service's Western Forest Health Initiative Team advocated a broader, speedier effort to remove dead timber and otherwise reduce the amount of fuel in national forests, according to a copy of the team's report obtained by The Associated Press.
``Based on field responses, work was identified for completion over the two years covering approximately 5 million acres on national forests in the West,'' the team wrote in its Sept. 30 report to Forest Service Chief Jack Ward Thomas.
``In addition there is a significant amount of ecosystem analysis needed in support of future forest health projects .
. . . Time is critical,'' the team said.
Critics in the timber industry said the team's report indicates the administration watered down the scientists' recommendations before launching the new strategy last month.
``The difference between them is what the Forest Service wanted and what the administration wanted,'' said Doug Crandall, vice president for public forestry at the American Forest & Paper Association.
The team's report ``in every sense was more aggressive, substantial, specific and urgent than the final report,'' he said.
The Agriculture Department's plan calls for 330 health-restoration projects on approximately 1 million acres of national forests over the next two years.
The projects include plans to obliterate some old logging roads and restore fish habitat as well as remove dead, burned wood and thin bug-infested forests where fuel loads pose a threat.
The salvage logging and thinning is controversial because environmentalists and some forest scientists say the cutting does more harm than good to a forest ecosystem.
Conservationists also point to past cases where the Forest Service used salvage logging as a guise to cut large, live trees without jumping through the hoops of as many environmental regulations.
``The team gave us a wide range of projects,'' Lyons said Tuesday.
[[Page S1690]] ``They instructed us in the first phase to do those the team thought would have a high likelihood of being implemented and that were less controversial and would demonstrate we can get some of these projects done on the ground,'' he said.
``There's nothing to hide. There was no scrubbing. It was important to gain the confidence of both the industry and the
environmental community that our forest health initiative was intended to improve the health of forest ecosystems and not simply to generate timber,'' Lyons said.
Some lawmakers have proposed exempting some salvage logging operations from the normal environmental requirements in an effort to expedite the cutting before the dead wood loses its market value.
Senator Larry Craig, R-Idaho, chairman of the Senate Agriculture subcommittee on forestry, is preparing a forest health bill that may adopt some of the team's recommendations, his spokesman David Fish said Tuesday.
The 5 million acres identified by the Forest Service team includes 1.3 million acres in need of fuel reduction and 1 million acres in need of ``vegetation treatments,'' including
``commercial harvest, salvage . . . commercial thinning, commercial thinning . . . firewood.''
The team also identified 1 million acres for soil and watershed work, 400,000 acres of ``combination treatments,'' which could include some prescribed burning, and another 1.1 million acres of other projects ranging from educational projects to seeding and fertilization.
In addition, the team addressed two other controversial areas that did not show up in the final initiative--reform of U.S. environmental laws and below-cost timber sales.
In addition to coming up with ways to reform the National Environmental Policy Act, the team recommended the Forest Service return the agency's administrative appeals process to exempt some salvage logging from the appeals that environmentalists have used to block such harvests.
The team warned that efforts to do away with so-called
``below-cost timber sales''--logging operations that cost more to offer than the revenue they return--could harm forest health programs.
Ann Bartuska, the Forest Service's director of forest pest management who led the forest health team, said the USDA plan
``was not intended to be a comprehensive look at forest health; it was a snapshot.
``It was a subset of the total package,'' she said. ``We thought it was important to get started on some of these.''
Bartuska said the 5 million-acre estimate was based on 1,900 project sites that regional and forest supervisors
``rapidly identified on the first go-round.'' The 330 projects in the USDA plan represent the supervisors' top priorities and will cover an estimated 1 million acres, she said.
Mr. BURNS. Mr. President, for the benefit of any interested Senators, I have a copy of the entire Phase I initiative in my office. I would be happy to let them read it.
I also thank the Senators and the managers of the unfunded mandates bill. It is a terrific day. I think it is a victory for not only the States but the people of America.
I yield the floor.
Mr. KERREY addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nebraska [Mr. Kerrey] is recognized.
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