Washington Outlook.

During the summer Congress debated several exciting forestry initiatives. But as it takes its August recess the fate of those proposals remains uncertain.

The Forest Service's roadless area proposal is generating both intense support and severe opposition in Congress. The proposal would:

* Prohibit road construction in inventoried roadless areas on the national forests. These 5,000-acre-or-more areas cover a total of 43 million acres, excluding Alaska's Tongass National Forest.

* Establish procedures for local decisionmakers to consider additional management of inventoried and other smaller roadless areas.

* Postpone a decision about whether to apply the prohibitions to the Tongass National Forest until 2004, the next 5-year Tongass management plan.

Based on the values and goals in our ecosystem restoration and maintenance agenda (Washington Outlook, Spring 2000), AMERICAN FORESTS supports the administration's efforts to provide greater long-term protection for inventoried roadless areas in national forests. These areas need increased protection because they provide important ecological services that are poorly documented and undervalued.

However, we believe the Forest Service proposal needs to do a better job of ensuring open and inclusive planning processes, promoting collaborative stewardship of national forests, and helping build the capacity of rural communities to develop and sustain vital local economies, based on restoration and long-term stewardship. To do these things, the Forest Service needs to integrate its roadless area proposal with its new transportation and national forest planning proposals to speak coherently to the larger transition taking place in forests and communities. This is a transition to ecosystem management and a restoration-based economy. The agency also needs to urge greater investments in restoration and maintenance programs for the national forests and financial and technical assistance to help communities build the capacity to be good partners and stewards of the national forests (see our complete comments at www.americanforests.org).

Just prior to its summer recess, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee cleared the Conservation and Reinvestment Act or CARA (H.R. 701) and sent it to the Senate floor, where we hope it will pass in the few remaining weeks of this Congress. This historic piece of conservation legislation would provide $3 billion in funding annually for federal land acquisition and conservation programs.

Committee Chairman Senator Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska) and ranking minority member Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M) negotiated a version of CARA that achieved bipartisan support. Their bill includes $50 million per year for each of three Forest Service stewardship programs that AMERICAN FORESTS supports: Urban and Community Forestry, Forest Legacy, and Rural Development-Rural Community Assistance. These programs will help build community capacity to work collaboratively with public agencies in caring for public and private lands.

The fiscal year 2001 Interior Appropriations bill (H.R. 4578), which funds Forest Service programs, cleared the Senate on July 18, after passing the House on June 1. A HouseSenate conference committee will work to reconcile differences in their respective bills by September 30, the close of fiscal year 2000.

Both the House and Senate recommend funding levels significantly below President Clinton's requests, particularly for his Lands Legacy initiative. Those reductions would significantly affect Forest Legacy and Urban and Community Forestry, two programs AMERICAN FORESTS supports. The president proposed $60 million for Forest Legacy; the House recommended $10 million and the Senate, $30 million. The president's request for $40 million for Urban and Community Forestry was reduced to about $31 million by both the House and Senate. For rural Economic Action Programs, the House and Senate recommended $14 million and $24 million, respectively; the president requested $17 million. It is very possible that Congress will break its self-imposed spending caps and increase funding for the Lands Legacy initiative when it negotiates a final bill with the president.

Finally, the Senate Interior Appropriations bill includes $240 million in emergency funds for the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to reduce hazardous fuels in urban wildland interface areas. Senator Pete Domenici (R-New Mexico) offered this unexpected amendment and received bipartisan support from western senators concerned about wildfire threats. The amendment directs the Forest Service to use its share ($120 million) to promote skill training, job opportunities, and business development in rural communities. It includes language and ideas that AMERICAN FORESTS and many of our community-based partners have been promoting to help communities build capacity and move toward a restoration-based economy.