NATIONAL FORESTS: Senators seek solutions for ‘broken’ timber program

Phil Taylor, E&E reporter

Published: Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Congress should pass legislation streamlining logging and restoration projects on national forests to create rural jobs and reduce wildfire risks, logging officials told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee yesterday. But a top Obama administration official said the Forest Service lacks the staff to significantly increase forestry work as more of its resources get siphoned off to fight wildfires in a hotter and drier West. There was broad agreement at yesterday’s hearing that the Forest Service needs to increase the amount of timber cut on national forests but little consensus on how to do that. The hearing on “management reforms to improve forest health and socioeconomic opportunities” aimed to inform Congress as key Western lawmakers explore legislation to overhaul the Forest Service’s timber program. “This is not just about wildfire suppression costs affecting budgets,” said Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). “The management structure itself is broken, strangled by an endless maze of process requirements and without clear direction or sense of how to prioritize work that is necessary to achieve real, measurable gains on the ground.” Murkowski blasted federal laws and regulations that have created “a minefield of litigation opportunity some have been only too eager to exploit.” Duane Vaagen, president of Vaagen Brothers Lumber Inc., in Colville, Wash., testified on behalf of the American Forest Resource Council and the Federal Forest Resource Coalition, two of the nation’s largest logging advocacy groups. He said the number of lumber mills in the West has fallen from 700 to roughly 120 over the past three decades.  He recommended that Congress establish timber trusts in areas suitable for logging and that it clarify that “timber management is the primary objective on this relatively small portion of the National Forest System, not one use among many.” Congress should streamline the National Environmental Policy Act and Endangered Species Act in these areas and dedicate a portion of timber revenues to help expedite future NEPA and ESA reviews, he said. Another timber industry witness, Brian Brown of Alcan Forest Products in Alaska, said federal forestry policy is deterring investment in the United States. “Federal timber policy increasingly forces us to look to [British Columbia] for our operational investment future,” he said. Robert Bonnie, the Agriculture Department’s undersecretary for natural resources and the environment, acknowledged that “we need to get more work done,” but he warned that the Forest Service has fewer staff members available to prepare timber projects. Since 1998, national forest system staff has been reduced by over one-third as the cost and complexity of wildfire fighting has risen, Bonnie said. Wildfire seasons are now 78 days longer than in the 1970s, possibly due to rising spring and summer temperatures and the timing of snowmelt, he said. Timber harvests on national forests have increased 18 percent since 2008, he said. The pace of forestry work “is not a matter of will; it is a matter of capacity,” he said, noting that wildfire budgeting is “crippling the agency.” Bonnie urged the committee to pass a bipartisan proposal to allow some wildfires to be funded outside the Forest Service budget, which would allow more resources to be invested in forestry work. With the West Coast facing drought and historically low snowpack levels, Bonnie said the agency is anticipating a “very active” fire season in 2015. It expects to have to spend $1.12 billion fighting fires, which is about $100 million more than it was appropriated for fiscal 2015, he said. Bonnie touted the Forest Service’s Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program, which provides long-term funding to larger-scale projects that are informed by diverse stakeholders and science. “To be sure, these collaborative approaches are not a panacea,” Bonnie said, but with “patience and commitment,” they are paying dividends. Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington, the committee’s top Democrat, said national forests are “in pretty bad shape” after a century of wildfire suppression and tens of millions of acres affected by pine beetles. She said it is important to determine the extent to which forest conditions are related to lack of management compared to a changing climate. In addition to better management policies, forest restoration will depend heavily on how much funding the Forest Service receives and the extent to which there are markets for lower-value timber such as for cross-laminated timber and wood pellets, she said. Senate Republicans said management reforms are still a key step. Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said that later this spring, he will be introducing an updated version ofS. 1966, which he introduced last Congress, which would require the Forest Service to log or thin at least 7.5 million acres of national forests within the next 15 years using expedited NEPA and ESA reviews. “The agency is guilty of malpractice,” Barrasso said. “If we’re going to save our forests, Congress must direct and mandate results and outcomes.” Vaagen said his industry is not expecting harvest levels to return to historic highs in the 1980s of more than 12 billion board feet, but “somewhere in the neighborhood of 6.2 billion” would be reasonable, he said. Republicans and industry leaders have supported national management quotas, but Democrats and environmentalists have historically only supported such provisions on much smaller scales.