The new blueprint will cut fire risk, officials say, but foes claim it is driven by logging interests
Sacramento Bee
Published Friday, January 23, 2004
By Dorothy Korber
The U.S. Forest Service rolled out revisions Thursday to its plan for managing 11 million acres of Sierra Nevada woodlands, saying the changes will reduce wildfire danger and protect old-growth forests.
Those contentions were instantly rebutted by environmental activists, who say the new plan is driven by logging interests and will gut ancient woodlands.
The revisions amend the Sierra Nevada Framework, a forest management plan approved in 2001. The changes aim to head off the kind of catastrophic fires that swept Southern California last year, said Jack Blackwell, the Forest Service's chief forester for its Pacific Southwest Region.
He called the original Sierra Nevada Framework overly restrictive.
"The rules were incredibly complex," he said. "They were just impossible in terms of effective fire suppression, and there is tremendous danger in these densely crowded forests."
Speaking at a Sacramento press conference, Blackwell unveiled what he called an action campaign -- "Forests with a Future" -- that allows for removing fire-prone undergrowth on 115,000 acres each year, as well as the logging of selected trees up to 30 inches in diameter.
The lumber from those big trees will help underwrite the costs of thinning the Sierra's overgrown forests, Blackwell said, as well as supporting the state's struggling timber business.
Previously, the framework limited logging to trees 12 inches and under. Blackwell said the timber harvest will be triple what it was under the original framework.
Still, he said, the number of trees cut will be relatively small.
"There are 90 million trees between 20 and 30 inches in diameter in these forests, and we plan to thin just one-fifth of 1 percent of them," Blackwell said.
He projected that the action campaign -- and the changes to the Sierra Nevada Framework -- would reduce the acres burned by severe wildfires by more than 30 percent over the next 50 years. At the same time, he said, forest communities will be protected from devastating blazes, and the acreage of old-growth forests will double.
Environmental activists attending the press conference scoffed at Blackwell's projections and questioned the motives of the Forest Service. They were especially outraged by plans to cut large trees.
"The ancient forests of the Sierra Nevada are now threatened when we thought they were safe," said Barbara Boyle of the Sierra Club. "This is a radical revision to the Sierra framework, a drastic change."
Jay Watson of the Wilderness Society agreed.
"The original framework recognized old-growth forests as a special resource, 4 million acres out of the 11 million," Watson said. "It was treated with a soft touch. The new plan abandons that -- the philosophy now is that one size fits all. But you can't make sweeping statements about what's best for a diverse mountain range. They're homogenizing the forest."
Others questioned the scientific foundation underlying the Forest Service's new plan.
"There's no fire scientist on Earth who would say that there is justification for cutting a 30-inch tree," said Craig Thomas of the Sierra Forest Legacy. "It's strictly being done for the money."
Susannah Churchill of Environment California also said private profit is the underlying motive for the changes. "Under all the pretty rhetoric, the basis of the new plan is to provide the timber companies with bigger trees to log," she said.
Blackwell denied that timber interests dictated the amendment, although he acknowledged that revenue from logging was an important component.
"Revenue is not the driving factor here," Blackwell said. "It's the fire danger. What happened in Southern California last fall is really illustrative of what could happen here. What more wake-up call do you need?"
A spokesman for a timber trade group described as "ludicrous" the idea that loggers were driving the Forest Service plan.
"There is this image of a monolithic timber industry," said David A. Bischel, president of the California Forestry Association. "Well, there are eight small sawmills left on the west side of the Sierra. The last one on the east side is closing. Truth is, we're very close to not being able to manage the amount of timber this plan would provide."
Each side -- the Forest Service and the environmentalists -- claim that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger supports its position.
Mike Chrisman, the governor's resources secretary, said he does endorse the Forest Service's commitment to fire suppression, but he has some reservations about the amendment to the Sierra Nevada Framework.
"We commend the Forest Service in initiating the Forest with a Future campaign," Chrisman said in an interview Thursday. "We're really committed to reducing the fire risk to communities in the Sierra.
"That said, the governor has expressed his support for the existing Sierra Nevada Framework, and he opposes changes not made in an open, collaborative process. We're concerned that this amendment was done with very little substantive collaboration with the state between the draft and final form."
Chrisman said he wasn't ready to comment on the controversy over logging large trees. "We're still taking a close look at the final framework," he said. "We'll be working to try to improve it."
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