Bush defends forest plan as 'common sense' policy

Fri Aug 23, 9:05 AM ET
Laurence McQuillan and Tom Kenworthy USA TODAY

President Bush ( news - web sites) set the stage Thursday for a showdown with Congress on curbing Western wildfires by moving to speed up timber-cutting projects in overgrown national forests. The president's most controversial proposal would bar citizen appeals and lawsuits challenging such logging.

To the delight of his allies on Capitol Hill and in the timber industry, Bush traveled to fire-ravaged woodlands of southwestern Oregon to promote his ''healthy forests initiative.'' The goal, he said, is to expedite the massive task of thinning forests and protecting communities from fires that have burned more than 6 million acres this year.

''The forest policy of our government is misguided policy -- it doesn't work,'' Bush said at a fairground in Medford. ''We need to make our forests healthy by using some common sense.''

There is broad consensus that reducing the impact of Western fires will require thinning of forests crowded with kindling in the form of too many trees. But there is considerable debate about where and how the logging should be done.

The government overhauled its wildfire policy after devastating blazes two years ago, but implementation has been slow and major goals haven't been met. Some forests being thinned are far from communities at risk. And in some forests, timber companies are cutting down large, commercially valuable trees, not smaller ones that would likely ignite most easily in another fire.

Environmental groups have gone to court to block some timber projects, a practice Bush said the nation no longer can afford. ''There is a fine balance between people expressing themselves and their opinions and using litigation to keep the United States of America from enacting common sense forest policy,'' he said.

Bush is on a three-day trip that includes stops in California and New Mexico before he returns to his Texas ranch late Saturday. As Air Force One flew low over burning forest land, thick smoke sometimes obscured the landscape. Bush later inspected charred Douglas firs and ponderosa pines on Squires Peak, where a lightning bolt last month ignited a fire that threatened 200 homes.

To streamline logging efforts, the administration is proposing that key environmental laws dating to 1969 be waived temporarily. Conservation groups are gearing up to battle the plan when Congress returns next month.

''It's going to be a very difficult fight,'' said Michael Francis, who directs national forest programs for The Wilderness Society. ''I don't think Congress is going to enact this proposal.''

''They are proposing to lock out the public, waive environmental laws and hand the timber industry the keys to the kingdom,'' said Martin Hayden, legislative director of Earthjustice, which provides legal services for conservation groups.
Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., said few logging projects in national forests would be challenged if federal agencies targeted them better. ''The administration wants to use this as camouflage for a big timber sale program,'' Inslee said.

But Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, said the emergency facing the West justifies a short-term relaxation of the public's right to challenge timber projects. ''We are in a crisis,'' he said. ''What we are talking about is thinning and cleaning and the removal of smaller trees.''

Some in the timber industry envision more logging under the Bush plan than Craig does.

''We have to have a program where we can go in and thin all different sizes of vegetation,'' said Ross Mickey of the American Forest Resource Council, an industry trade group based in Oregon.

The last time the federal government suspended laws in the name of forest health was in 1995, when the Clinton administration -- to its later regret -- approved a timber salvage program after big fires. The law passed by Congress led to the cutting of large, healthy trees in the Pacific Northwest.