Bush: Ease forest restriction.

Byline: SCOTT MABEN The Register-Guard

CORRECTION (ran 8/27/02): A story in Friday's newspaper about President Bush's timber policy announcement in Central Point misspelled the name of a Eugene-based environmental group, Cascadia Wildlands Project.

CENTRAL POINT - Federal land management agencies must have a freer hand in reviewing and approving plans to thin and selectively log national forests if the country is to stem the rise in catastrophic wildfires, President Bush said Thursday in fire-ravaged Southern Oregon.

Accompanied by his top natural resources managers, Bush said he wants to ease restrictions on noncommercial thinning and commercial logging in forests managed by the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management.

"I think we need to be honest with the American people. The forest policy of our government is misguided policy," the president told several thousand hand-picked guests in a stuffy indoor rodeo arena at the Jackson County Fairgrounds.

"We need to thin. We need to make our forests healthy by using some common sense. We need to understand, you let kindling build up and there's a lightning strike, you're going to get yourself a big fire," he said.

The United States has failed to ensure that its forests are protected from fire, "and we're now paying the price," Bush said.

He also lamented that projects designed to remove small-diameter trees, dead wood and brush from unnaturally thick, fire-prone stands of timber too often are slowed or blocked by environmental reviews, appeals and lawsuits.

"There's just too many lawsuits. There's endless litigation," Bush said, prompting cheers from an audience that included stalwart Republican supporters, Nomex-clad firefighters, local business leaders and elementary school students.

"We want to make sure our citizens have the right to the courthouse. People ought to have a right to express themselves, no question about it," he said.

The president's plan sparked a firestorm of criticism from environmentalists who claim that the administration wants to strip important safeguards for wildlife, water, old growth trees and ecological diversity to feed the timber industry more wood.

"It's clear that the Bush administration intends to use the fire hysteria to streamline environmental law and increase logging in mature and old growth forests," said Josh Laughlin, spokesman for Cascadia Wildlands Project, a Eugene-based conservation group.

"I see this as payback to the timber industry for putting $1 million in his back pocket when he was campaigning in the West," Laughlin said, referring to contributions from timber concerns for Bush's 2000 election bid.

But administration officials said the proposal wouldn't expose federal forests to widespread commercial logging.

"The main emphasis is not on old growth forests," Interior Secretary Gale Norton told The Register-Guard in an interview after the president spoke. "What we are trying to do is improve the overall health of our forests. The problems come largely from trees that have grown up after we began the fire-suppression policy" in the early part of the past century.

Norton conceded that some large, commercially desirable trees could be targeted under the new approach, but she noted that some cutting of older trees already is allowed under the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan adopted by President Clinton in an effort to resolve disputes over logging in habitat of the threatened northern spotted owl.

Timber interests complain that the 8-year-old forest plan has failed to produce anywhere near the volume of timber from national forestlands that it promised, and they blame time-consuming environmental reviews and appeals by environmental groups.

Bush said he strongly supports the Northwest Forest Plan, "a plan which should allow the production of a billion board feet of timber a year" and provide for 100,000 jobs.

"Congress needs to pass the law necessary to implement the plan," he said.

That's what Gordon Culbertson, a timber official from the Grants Pass area, came to hear.

"I was really encouraged that the president is going to make an effort to make the promises of the Northwest Forest Plan mean something," said Culbertson, vice president of resources for Swanson Group Inc., a Glendale-based company with mills there and in Roseburg and Noti.

Forest managers, hamstrung by red tape and litigation, have been unable to offer many timber sales and thinning projects in the past decade, and that has made forest health and fire danger worse, he said. At the same time, local communities have seen jobs disappear and economies turn sour, he said.

"So I'm very optimistic that we'll finally see this logjam freed up," Culbertson said.

But others, including several dozen environmental activists, protested Bush's appearance, which included a quick tour of a 3,000-acre blaze extinguished last month in the dry hills near Ruch, a rural hamlet west of Medford. Some demonstrated on the road leading to the fairgrounds, waving signs at traffic.

"The president is trying to gut environmental laws and increase logging in our national forests and public lands," said Brenna Bell, a Southern Oregon resident. "What we want to see is community protection, funding of the National Fire Plan, real fuels reduction in the (urban-forest) interface and no more corporate private profit from our public land."

That echoes a proposal this week by several large environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and Wilderness Society, to reduce forest fire damage. The five-year, $10 billion plan emphasizes clearing brush and thinning trees close to homes, rather than in the back country.

But supporters of the Bush plan argue that the underbrush and dead wood choking vast forest landscapes increase the risk of devastating fires that threaten not only homes and the lives of firefighters but also wildlife habitat and stream quality in remote areas.

They point to Southern Oregon's Biscuit fire.

"It's just crazy," Culbertson said. "We're looking at these fires and they're costing us $1,000 an acre to put out when we could have cut sensibly on many of these forestlands and returned money to the federal government and the state."

Oregon's senators, Republican Gordon Smith and Democrat Ron Wyden, joined Bush for his visit.

Wyden said he told the president that people have a constitutional right to participate in forest policy, but not a right to delay important thinning work for years. Addressing such delays will be a major part of what Congress must tackle when it takes up new legislation in the coming year, he said.

"I'm not going to support throwing environmental laws in the trash can," Wyden said. "I said (to Bush) you've got a real opportunity by focusing on a balanced approach that incorporates the environmental concerns along with thinning and fire prevention, and bring people together."

One way to do that, Norton said, is through the president's proposed "stewardship contracts" with the private sector, nonprofit organizations and local communities. Contractors would be able to keep wood products in exchange for the service of thinning trees and brush and removing dead wood, she said.

Bush, who flew to Oregon from his Crawford, Texas, ranch in the morning, proceeded to Portland for a round-table discussion with community leaders and later a fund-raising event for Smith, who is seeking re-election in the November general election.

CAPTION(S):

President George W. Bush speaks to an enthusiastic crowd at the Jackson County Fairgrounds in Medford on Thursday about his plan to draft commercial loggers to thin fire-prone Western forests while seeking ways around regulatory hurdles that might slow cutting. THOMAS BOYD / The Register-Guard HEALTHY FORESTS INITIATIVE Streamline the process for developing and implementing fuels treatment and forest restoration projects in priority forests and rangelands. Reduce overlapping environmental reviews by combining project analysis and establishing a process for concurrent project clearance by federal agencies. Weigh short-term risks against long-term benefits of fuels treatment and restoration projects. Ensure consistent environmental policy procedures for fuels treatment and restoration activities, including development of a model Environmental Assessment for these types of projects. LEGISLATIVE GOALS Authorize agencies to enter into long-term stewardship contracts with the private sector, non-profit organizations and local communities. Contractors could keep wood products in exchange for thinning trees and brush and removing dead wood. Expedite fuels reduction and forest restoration projects, particularly in high-priority areas. Ensure that judges consider long-term risks of harm to people, property and the environment in challenges based on short-term risks of forest health projects. Remove a rider that imposed extraordinary procedural requirements on Forest Service appeals that are inconsistent with pre-existing requirements of law. Supplement the Agriculture and Interior departments' effort to fulfill the original promise of the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan by removing needless administrative obstacles and providing authority to allow timber projects to proceed without delay when consistent with the Northwest Forest Plan. Renew the commitment to a balanced conservation strategy in the Pacific Northwest that reflects the needs of both local communities and the environment.