Key Assumptions behind Sen Tester’s “Forest Jobs and Restoration Act”

The following commentary concerning Senator Jon Tester’s “Forest Jobs and Recreation Act” is from Dr. Thomas Power. Dr. Power is the former Chair of the Economics Department at the University of Montana, where he currently serves as a Research Professor. Dr. Power is widely considered one of the country’s leading natural resource-based economists. This commentary is only the first in a series of commentarys Dr. Power will devote to critically exploring the assumptions behind Sen. Tester’s bill. Please check back in a few weeks for the next in the series. – MK

“What I want to do here is simply outline the conventional wisdom from which Senator Tester appears to be operating. That will sound familiar, and, to many, convincing, but those assumptions are, in fact, highly debatable.  In commentaries over the next two months, I will then seek to critically explore each of those assumptions ….As common and familiar as all of these underlying assumptions are, they are far from being factual assumptions. They are a mix of folk wisdom, economic nostalgia, wishful thinking, and barely disguised commercial and bureaucratic government special interests. Before jumping onboard with Tester’s proposal, each has to be critically analyzed.”
- Dr. Thomas Power

The Key Assumptions behind Senator Tester’s “Forest Jobs and Restoration Act”
By Dr. Thomas Power

Montana’s Senator Tester is attempting to cut the Gordian knot that has tied up any action on the management of more than six million acres of roadless federal land in Montana. He has been praised by some for his courage and audacity while others have attacked him for not keeping faith with those who elected him and for selling out to one special interest group or another.

One reason for this mixed emotional reaction is that when it comes to the public dialogue about forest management there is no common agreement about the underlying facts and economic context. Senator Tester and his allies are operating from one set of what they believe to be factual assumptions while their critics begin with a quite different understanding of the facts on the ground.

What I want to do here is simply outline the conventional wisdom from which Senator Tester appears to be operating. That will sound familiar, and, to many, convincing, but those assumptions are, in fact, highly debatable.  In commentaries over the next two months, I will then seek to critically explore each of those assumptions before coming to any conclusion about whether Senator Tester is actually offering a viable solution to the paralysis that has kept a grip on Montana’s roadless wildlands for more than a quarter of a century.

The title of Senator Tester’s bill makes clear its primary focus: forest restoration. The basic assumption is a familiar one: The National Forests in Western Montana, as a result of a variety of human and non-human causes, are in poor, even dangerous, condition. They biologically are well beyond natural and sustainable conditions. As a result major human intervention is necessary to move these natural landscapes back to a healthy, safe, and sustainable condition. From this point of view, we cannot just stop stressing and damaging the forests and allow them to rest and recover on their own. That is why roadless area or wilderness protection for most of these lands will not solve the problems. We have to actively intervene with landscape-scale vegetative manipulation, including logging, thinning, prescribed burns, etc. Tester’s bill seeks to start doing exactly that.

This need to work the forests to move them back to safe and stable conditions is also why it is important for the region to maintain a functioning forest products industry. Without that, we will not have the commercial infrastructure to make use of the logs that need to be removed from our forests. Without a significant forest products industry, the wood fiber in our forests loses commercial value, and the harvest of trees from these unhealthy forests cannot help finance the forest restoration work that needs to be done. That is one of the reasons Tester’s bill seeks to prop up the region’s forest products industry.

The other reason that Tester proposes legally mandating the harvest of more timber from federal lands is the belief that the economies of Western Montana heavily depend on the forest products industry and those economies have been disrupted by the inability of the US Forest Service to maintain a flow of logs to our mills. Tester’s bill seeks to solve that problem by mandating a steady annual flow of logs. That, he believes, will help save those mills and stabilize our economies.

Landscape-scale forest restoration of the sort that would be mandated by Tester’s bill will cost a lot of money, money that the federal government does not really have. With existing large federal deficits and increasing demands on the federal budget for economic recovery, ongoing wars, medical insurance reform, and energy policy, it is unlikely that we can count on Congress to appropriate the money to fund all of the forest restoration work that we are told needs to be done. Senator Tester proposes to get around these funding limitations by paying private contractors with the harvest of commercially valuable logs to do the needed work. Instead of the US Forest Service selling the logs and sending the cash back to the US Treasury, the logs would be used to pay for the forest restoration work through what are called Stewardship Contracts.

The approach that Senator Tester has taken in developing his bill indicates his solution to the conflict among competing uses of National Forest land that has thus far led to paralysis and gridlock.  Senator Tester relied on having some of the competing interests sit down at the table and negotiate in a collaborative manner. That sort of negotiation allowed many parties to get part of what they wanted from the National Forests, producing what has been called a win-win-win outcome. The idea is that these competing uses can be balanced so that the forests can simultaneously support an expansion of the timber industry, more off road vehicle use, improved wildlife habitat, enhance non-motorized recreation, as well as the environmental services provided by natural forests and watersheds. Allowing such local and private negotiations over the management of our National Forests is seen as an appropriate decentralized solution to a broken centralized federal system.

Finally, the forested landscape of Western Montana is seen as so huge that significant timber harvests are possible without doing any serious environmental harm. With millions and millions of acres of federal forestland available, mandating the annual harvest of ten thousand acres or so of trees could not possibly do significant damage to the overall forest. In fact, we are told, that mandated logging, when carried out as part of a larger forest restoration effort, will actually improve the health of the forests.

As common and familiar as all of these underlying assumptions are, they are far from being factual assumptions. They are a mix of folk wisdom, economic nostalgia, wishful thinking, and barely disguised commercial and bureaucratic government special interests. Before jumping onboard with Tester’s proposal, each has to be critically analyzed.

Protecting America’s Public Lands a National Concern

The following perspective is from Keith Hammer. Mr. Hammer grew up hiking, skiing, camping, hunting, and fishing in the Swan Mountains of Northwest Montana. He has worked a number of jobs, from Forest Service trail worker to logger to backcountry guide, and currently works as an environmental consultant and head of the nonprofit Swan View Coalition, which he co-founded in 1984. Keith and Swan View Coalition have gotten over 600 miles of road decommissioned on the Flathead National Forest to restore fish and wildlife habitat.

Protecting America’s Public Lands a National Concern!
By Keith Hammer, Swan View Coalition

We can take much inspiration from Ken Burns’ film “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea” and readily extend its premise to the remainder of America’s public lands. Key take-home messages in Burns’ film are that threats to America’s wildlands never cease and that their protection is brought about through national concern and legislation, often over the objections of local politicians.

Indeed, as elk and bison were being slaughtered by commercial hunting in the West in the late 1800s, it was not the new states of Montana and Wyoming that put an end to it. It was Representative John Lacey of Iowa who prohibited the interstate transport of illegally killed wildlife when his “Lacey Act” was signed into law by President William McKinley in 1900.

Montana Senator Thomas Long objected to what is now Glacier National Park being designated a Forest Preserve in 1900, followed by the Kalispell Chamber of Commerce objecting to its designation as a National Park in 1910. Thank goodness for the persistence of Americans George Bird Grinnell and others, who had the foresight to see that the area needed better protection than that afforded the Forest Preserves (later known as National Forests) and convinced President Taft to designate Glacier as America’s 10th National Park!

Today, local communities thrive on tourists visiting Glacier National Park and the families and businesses choosing to locate near it! More recently, the town of Seward, Alaska was so dead-set against the designation of Kenai Fjords National Park that it passed two resolutions denouncing the idea. After the Park was designated in 1980 and Seward began to reap the rewards, however, it rescinded its previous resolutions and asked that the Park be expanded! President Carter, once burned in effigy in Alaska for his conservation initiatives there, nonetheless tripled the size of Denali National Park and designated most of it Wilderness for added protection.

For these reasons and more, we helped write and support the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act knowing it may not initially garner support from Congressional delegations in Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. It builds upon President Clinton’s – and now Obama’s – intention to protect roadless lands from development, sequestering carbon in roadless forests also serving as wildlife migration corridors. It also creates high-paying jobs restoring watersheds through road reclamation .

In contrast, Senator Tester’s (D-MT) wildlands logging bill (Links: here, here and here) would set dangerous precedent by mandating logging levels on two National Forests and subsidizing the burning of public forests as “biomass.” It would also release from protection numerous roadless lands and Wilderness Study Areas granted protection by the far-sighted Senator Lee Metcalf in 1977!

Sen Tester and His Logging Bill “Rack”-Up Major Endorsement

This just in:

Senator Tester and his mandated logging bill have “racked” up a major and important endorsement from the fine folks at “Outdoor Life,” who have named Senator Tester part of “The Outdoor Life 25.”

These are the same “Outdoor Life” folks that bring you:

“Rack Girls 2009“

“Fish N Chix 2010“

“Shed Hunting Babes“

Yep, those “Outdoor Life” folks are all about big rack collaboration. Clearly their support of Senator Tester’s logging bill means something…but what that is isn’t exactly clear.

Just read the entire “Outdoor Life” entry about Senator Tester and his logging bill and it’s very clear that “Outdoor Life” has a better handle on big racks hoisted in the air by bikini-clad women than they do on public lands and wilderness policy.

From Outdoor Life:

“For more than 25 years, some 600,000 acres of Montana backcountry have been lost in bureaucratic limbo, legal leftovers from pitched battles between wilderness zealots and timber barons. Described on maps as “wilderness study areas,” these alpine peaks, timbered slopes and foothills grasslands have been off-limits to logging and mining, but have also been a sort of no-man’s land for hunters, anglers and landscape preservationists [Totally not true as every single Wilderness Study Area is currently open to hunting and fishing. - MK]

Are “study areas” open to resource development, or are they locked up in wilderness? Every Montana politician for a generation has tried to untangle the land-use stalemate before being cowed by one interest group or another. Now, thanks to a U.S. senator with a flat-top haircut and a butcher’s build, hunters will be able to access these lands, watersheds will be preserved and unemployed loggers and mill workers will go back to work. Jon Tester crafted his landmark “Forest Jobs and Recreation Act” to preserve the majority of land as wilderness, but require sustainable timber harvest on much of the rest.

There’s something for everyone, but not enough for a single group to claim victory. The collaborative agreement is being eyed by conservationists across the nation as a model for resolving similarly intractable issues.” [Not true...but it sure sounds nice!  Fact is "conservationists across the nation" are pretty much in agreement about their opposition to Senator Tester's Mandated Logging Bill and the sloppy, bad-precedent-setting Wilderness language contained in the bill. - MK]

Report: Ten Solutions to Curb Forest Fire Costs, Currently $3 Billion Per Year

Note: The following press release was issued today from Headwaters Economics, a Montana-based independent, nonprofit research group. The press release is to draw attention to their new report titled, “Solutions to the Rising Costs of Fighting Fires in the Wildland-Urban Interface.” - MK

Report Promotes Ten Solutions to Curb Forest Fire Costs, Currently $3 Billion Per Year

BOZEMAN, MT. – A report released today by Headwaters Economics outlines ten proposals to help curb the rising expense of fighting forest fires—which already costs taxpayers $3 billion annually or roughly half the Forest Service’s budget. The new report shows that, unless action is taken, firefighting costs could at least double in the next 15 years because of expanding residential development on fire-prone lands along with the increasing temperatures associated with climate change.

“The current policy of looking the other way while more and more homes are built on dangerous, fire-prone lands is not sustainable,” said Ray Rasker, the report’s author. “This report shows that we have the knowledge and solutions needed to address this problem. Now is the time to implement responsible, accountable steps that can help hold the line on future fire costs.”

The report, Solutions to the Rising Costs of Fighting Fires in the Wildland-Urban Interface, was completed by Headwaters Economics, a Montana-based independent, nonprofit research group.

The fire cost research paper enjoys the support of Dale Bosworth, former Chief of the Forest Service, and Roger Kennedy, former Director of the National Park Service and author of Wildfire and Americans.

The research paper outlines ten possible solutions, ranging from increased education to changes in insurance or mortgage laws. Addressing the issue of ever-escalating fire suppression expenses could achieve a number of related public policy goals: fiscal responsibility, a fairer and more equitable distribution of costs among those benefiting from wildfire protection, and increased safety for future homeowners and wildland firefighters.

Even though less than four percent of homes in the West are located within this wildland-urban interface (WUI), a number of studies have show that these residences are a significant contributor to the rising costs of fighting wildfires.

Yet, the cost of protecting these homes is spread among all taxpayers and little has been done to address the pace, scale and pattern of development in the WUI. In this context, the current approach to fire suppression has perverse incentives and lacks accountability. People who develop in forested areas, and local governments that allow such new subdivisions, do not pay their share of fire fighting costs. The majority of firefighting expenses instead are paid by the Forest Service, BLM, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Across the West today, only 14 percent of forested private lands near fire-prone public lands has homes on it. Using Montana as a case study, Headwaters Economics found protecting the average home from a wildfire event costs roughly $8,000. Statewide, the cost of protecting homes from forest fires averages $28 million annually. If development on private land near fire-prone forests continues, costs associated with home protection likely will rise to $40 million by 2025.

Climate change would increase costs even further.  A one-degree increase in average summer temperatures in Montana would at least double home protection costs, and the combination of additional development and hotter summers could push the average annual cost of protecting homes from forest fires to exceed $80 million by 2025.

“Unless we address one of the root causes of the problem—home building in wildfire prone areas—the costs of fighting forest fires will continue to escalate,” noted Rasker.

The report outlines ten possible solutions. Headwaters Economics does not advocate one solution over another. Rather, all are presented, with background, to explain how each idea could work along with its pros and cons.
1. MAPPING: Publish maps identifying areas with high probability of wildland fires;
2. EDUCATION: Increase awareness of the financial consequences of home building in fire-prone areas;
3. REDIRECT FEDERAL AID TOWARD LAND USE PLANNING: Provide technical assistance and financial incentives to help local governments direct future development away from the wildland-urban interface;
4. COST SHARE AGREEMENTS: Add incentives for counties to sign agreements that share the costs of wildland firefighting between local and federal entities;
5. LAND ACQUISITION: Purchase lands or easements on lands that are fire-prone and at risk of conversion to development;
6. A NATIONAL FIRE INSURANCE AND MORTGAGE PROGRAM: Apply lessons from efforts to prevent development in floodplains;
7. INSURANCE: Allow insurance companies to charge higher premiums in fire-prone areas;
8. ZONING: Limit development in the wildland-urban Interface with local planning and zoning ordinances;
9. ELIMINATE MORTGAGE INTEREST DEDUCTIONS: Eliminate home interest mortgage deductions for new homes in the wildland-urban interface;
10. REDUCE FEDERAL FIREFIGHTING BUDGETS: Induce federal land managers to shift more of the cost of wildland firefighting to local governments.

A newsletter summary is also available here.

Strategic Weaknesses of Sen. Tester’s Wildlands Logging Bill

Note: The following perspective is from Paul Richards. Mr. Richards is a Boulder, Montana area businessman and a former member of the Montana House of Representatives and of the Deerlodge National Forest’s Technical Advisory Committee.  In 2006, he was a candidate for the U.S. Senate.

PITFALLS AND PRATFALLS
Strategic Weaknesses of Sen. Jon Tester’s Wildlands Logging Bill
Analysis by Paul Richards, PR Media Consultants®
November 17, 2009

All of the following angles were covered in my July 17, 2009, in-depth analysis of the Tester Widlands Logging Bill, posted the day that Tester announced his legislation at a Townsend saw mill .

As this piece was assembled on a very quick deadline, it is not exhaustive or complete. I present the following information as starting points for discussion. Many of these points deserve to be fully fleshed out by attorneys and specialists better versed in federal lands law than I. Much to my surprise, this has not yet happened. Nonetheless, I welcome further information, corrections, and additions.

In that light, on July 17, 2009, NewWest.Net offered Tester’s communications staff an opportunity to rebut these points. As of this writing, they are still “considering it.” It should be noted that, on July 17, 2009, Peter Aengst of the Wilderness Society did issue statements calling this NewWest.Net investigative piece a “rant,” while refraining from addressing specifics.

1. The public was completely shut out. The bill was drafted in an underhanded manner by a handful of insiders, sworn to secrecy. Rather than incorporating meaningful public involvement, Tester chose the path of “fait accompli.” This has created enormous resentment from all quarters.

DETAILS: I, for example, am a member of the National Wildlife Federation, Trout Unlimited, and Montana Wilderness Association. I served on the board of the Montana Wilderness Association and have received the organization’s “Brass Lantern” Award. Years ago, when these three conservation groups and the timber industry first formed the “Beaverhead-Deerlodge Partnership,” I approached the players. As one who had been involved at the grassroots level with the Deerlodge National Forest for over 27 years, and as an official member of the Deerlodge National Forest Technical Advisory Committee, I thought my presence might be an asset during negotiations. I had been involved with the successful appeal and resultant “Settlement Agreement” of the Deerlodge Forest Plan, which had been heralded region-wide as a model for citizen participation.

Over a two-year period, I sent numerous e-mails and made numerous phone calls, trying to get into the negotiations or at least monitor them. All my attempts were rebuffed, as were all attempts by many other members of the public. We, as members of the National Wildlife Federation, Trout Unlimited, and Montana Wilderness Association, were kept in the dark as our organizations’ staff compromised away our public wildlands. I have been a member of the Wilderness Society for 40 years. At no time were Wilderness Society members appraised as to trade-offs being made by Wilderness Society staffers regarding the Tester bill.

Wildlands proponents weren’t the only ones excluded. People in favor of resource development were also kept in the dark. There was no public information and no public discussion. Instead being forged by well-informed public debate and exposed to the healing properties of disinfecting sunlight, the Tester bill was clandestinely and sloppily cobbled together behind-the-scenes. Countless interest groups and individuals were surgically removed from every major decision regarding their own public lands.

2. The Tester Wildlands Logging Bill violates Tester’s 2006 campaign promise “to protect all of Montana’s remaining roadless areas.”

DETAILS: With only a week to go, polls showed State Sen. Jon Tester and State Auditor John Morrison at a dead heat in the June 2006 Democratic primary race for U.S. Senate. Tester operative Missoula attorney Pat Smith directly contacted former state Rep. Paul Richards, who was running third of five candidates in the race, concerning Richards’ possible endorsement of Tester. Richards agreed to meet twice with Tester on Tuesday, May 30, 2006, to see if terms could be worked out for this endorsement.

Tester agreed to seven terms (detailed at www.Richards2006.us ), including the specific promise that: “If elected, Jon Tester will work to protect all of Montana’s remaining roadless areas.” In exchange for these mutually-agreed-upon-with-witnesses terms, Paul Richards agreed to withdraw from the race for U.S. Senate and publicly ask his supporters to vote for Jon Tester. News of this endorsement appeared on front pages of most Montana daily newspapers and was prominent in other media the final week before the election. Tester and Richards celebrated the win jointly at a June 6, 2006, election night party in Missoula, MT.

3. The Tester Wildlands Logging Bill alienates Tester’s main supporters from the 2006 election.

DETAILS: Conservationists provided the margin of victory that allowed Tester to defeat incumbent Sen. Conrad Burns. In tacking solely towards the timber industry, moneyed interests that never previously supported him in any fashion, Tester has abandoned his true constituency. To date, due to the many public relations specialists of the “conservation” collaborationists/timber industry and the laziness of reporters, Tester is getting away with murder. The actual implications of the Tester Wildlands Logging Bill are not yet known to the public, particularly public lands stakeholders throughout the nation. As the actual realities of the Tester Wildlands Logging Bill are investigated and publicized, Tester’s credibility among public lands advocates and conservationists will suffer accordingly.

4. The Tester Wildlands Logging Bill “Undesignates” S 393 wildlands and loots the wildlands legacy of former Sen. Lee Metcalf – Montana’s greatest conservationist.

DETAILS: Tester’s bill is a full-scale pillaging of the legacy of Montana’s greatest conservationist, U.S. Senator Lee Metcalf. In 1977, Metcalf, only a year before he died, worked tirelessly to pass Senate Bill 393, the Montana Wilderness Study Act. Metcalf’s magnificent legacy protected nine roadless wildland areas, while they were studied for official designation as wilderness under the Wilderness Act of 1964, a bill which Metcalf had earlier personally shepherded through Congress with the help of Wilderness Society Executive Director Stewart Brandborg of Montana and Wilderness Society Field Director Clif Merritt, also a Montana native.

Tester’s bill removes the Sapphire Wilderness Study Area and the West Pioneers Wilderness Study Area from the Congressional protection of Metcalf’s Senate Bill 393 and opens them to logging. Only high-elevation “rocks and ice” non-timber producing tracts would be designated wilderness. Of the 94,000 acres of public roadless wildlands currently in the Sapphire Wilderness Study Area, only 53,000 acres would be protected from development. Of the 151,000 acres of public roadless wildlands currently in the West Pioneers Wilderness Study Area, only 26,000 acres would be protected from development.

Tester’s bill “undesignates” the Axolotl Lakes Wilderness Study Area, Bell/Limekiln Canyons Wilderness Study Area, East Fork Blacktail Wilderness Study Area, Henneberry Ridge Wilderness Study Area, and Hidden Pasture Wilderness Study Area. These roadless wildlands could be subjected to “logging without laws,” as Tester’s bill excludes logging these areas from provisions of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act.

5. The Tester Wildlands Logging Bill pulls roadless areas out from the protection of the Clinton Roadless Rule and the Obama Roadless Initiative.

DETAILS: Tester’s bill withdraws around one million acres of public roadless wildlands on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest from the protection of the Clinton Roadless Rule and the Obama Roadless Initiative and opens them to roading and logging. You won’t find this in the bill. You have to go to the maps that accompany the bill, maps to which courts will undoubtedly refer, if this misguided legislation actually passes. The maps are very specific in reclassifying the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest’s currently protected roadless wildlands to a new category, officially designated “Timber Suitable or Open to Harvest.”

6. The Tester Wildlands Logging Bill congressionally overrides legitimate forest planning processes that involve full public information and participation.

DETAILS: Tester’s bill circumvents National Forest planning laws, procedures, and regulations. Currently, the Forest Service is required to honestly evaluate “site-specific impacts” of proposed logging. Under Tester’s bill, these requirements would be supplanted by a new system of “Landscape Scale Restoration Projects” where mandated logging takes place in the absence of well-established forest planning procedures that require state-of-the art science, public information, and public involvement.

Tester’s bill congressionally mandates cut levels, damn the environmental and financial costs. Instead of decisions being made at the local level by informed forest science professionals, Tester’s bill dictates a one-size-fits-all prescription that prioritizes logging above all other uses. Under the bill, taxpayer subsidies to timber corporations are more important than anything, be it elk hunting (which would diminish as elk security is logged away by mandated timber cutting), fishing (radically lessened by the effects of unsustainable logging), clean water, wildlife habitat, you name it.

7. The Tester Wildlands Logging Bill promotes “logging without laws.”

DETAILS: By mandating timber cuts be placed above all other concerns, Tester’s bill could statutorily exempt timber cutting from the Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act (which Tester’s bill mistakenly calls the “National Environmental Protection Act”), National Forest Management Act, and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act. This is a point of contention. Tester claims environmental laws will be adhered to. To the uninitiated, that sounds just great! The initiated know full well that when Congress mandates timber cutting quotas, federal courts have consistently held that the Congressional mandate to cut down the public’s trees trumps federal environmental and land use laws.

We’ve been through all this before. For over 20 years, politicians have claimed environmental laws would be followed, at the same time that they have imposed mandatory cutting quotas on public lands. While Tester’s public relations have lulled gullible “conservationists” into believing we can get the cut out and follow environmental laws, the courts consistently rule that the mandated cuts are paramount and that environmental laws don’t have to be respected.

The legal track record is available to anyone that can Google. The court precedents have already been established: If you have a conflict in law, “the specific overrides the general.” That is, Congressionally-mandated cuts preempt such laws as the Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act, National Forest Management Act, and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act. Thus, despite proclamations to the contrary from Tester’s “conservation” collaborationists, if the Tester bill’s forced cutting quotas are approved by Congress, environmental laws could likely fall helplessly by the wayside.

8. The Tester Wildlands Logging Bill mandates a cut of 7,000 acres a year for 10 years on a forest that sustainably produces, according to Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest officials, only between 500 and 2800 acres a year.

DETAILS: As a lifelong resident of the area and as a long-time member of the Forest Service’s Technical Advisory Committee, I know full well that the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest is not productive timberland. Much of the forest is east of the Continental Divide, receives little precipitation, and has an extremely short growing season, due to its high altitude. Due to these limiting factors, it costs the public at least $1,400 per acre to log in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest.

Tester claims the mandated cut will come from the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest’s suitable timber base and that inventoried roadless areas are not threatened. But, Tester is ignoring reality. In recent years, logging professionals with the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest have established the Forest’s sustainable yearly harvest at 500 acres. The most they’ve cut, even during the years of the housing boom, is 2,800 acres a year.

Can Tester mandate a cut of 70,000 acres (7,000 acres a year for 10 years) on a forest that is not productive timberland, without entering and developing undeveloped (roadless) lands? For a clue, review the maps and note that, under the Tester bill, the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest’s inventoried roadless wildlands are officially re-designated as “Timber Suitable or Open to Harvest.”

9. The Tester Wildlands Logging Bill mandates a cut of 30,000 acres of grizzly bear habitat on the Kootenai National Forest, causing distress and disturbance that some biologists say will force the dwindling Yaak grizzly bears into insecure habitat and ultimately extinction.

DETAILS: Wildlife consultant Brian Peck reports, “I have worked for 15 years to try and save the imperiled 30-40 grizzlies in the Cabinet-Yaak Ecosystem in a landscape where the “Cores” are too small, the “Buffers” are over-logged and roaded, and the “Linkages” are non-existent. Tester’s bill mandates the cutting of 3,000 acres per year for ten years on the Kootenai National Forest, a forest that already looks like a moonscape in many areas from decades of Forest Service abuse. How is another 30,000 acres of logging not going to be the last nail in these bear’s coffin?”

10. The Tester Wildlands Logging Bill could have a severe adverse impact upon rare, threatened, and endangered species.

DETAILS: Since the Tester bill congressionally-mandates timber cuts, curtails forest planning, and severely restricts the Forest Service from accurately assessing logging’s impacts, environmental protections provided by the Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act (mistakenly called the “National Environmental Protection Act” by the Tester bill), National Forest Management Act, and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act will likely be preempted. If this scenario plays out, the public will never know the full extent to which rare, threatened, and endangered species (such as grizzlies, bull trout, westslope cutthroat trout (pending), lynx, and wolverine (pending) will be adversely impacted, particularly in the Kootenai National Forest and the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest.

11. The Tester Wildlands Logging Bill ignores the scientific need to protect different elevation habitats and their dependent species.

DETAILS: Conservation biologists have long understood the need to protect different elevation habitats and their dependent species, with core areas, buffer zones, and connecting biological corridors, or linkages. More recently, scientists have documented that forest habitats are changing radically. Their dependent species are increasingly stressed by global climate change and are increasingly in need of broader migration opportunities.

The “conservation” collaborationists (Wilderness Society, National Wildlife Federation, Trout Unlimited, and Montana Wilderness Association) publicly boast that, by supporting the Tester bill, they are “creating” new wilderness areas. These areas fail to pass scientific muster. A handful of nonproductive, high-altitude, limited-habitat “rocks and ice” wilderness areas, allocated to human recreational enjoyment does nothing for the vast majority of forest species.

12. The Tester Wildlands Logging Bill costs over $100 million for taxpayer-subsidized timber sales and lavish new sawmill power plants.

DETAILS: It costs the public at least $1,400 per acre to log in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest. Mandating logging of 7,000 acres will cost the public $9,800,000 a year. Mandating this level of cutting for 10 years, as Tester proposes, will cost taxpayers at least $98 million dollars.

In fact, the cost of these timber industry subsidies will be considerably higher, as the above economic figures date from the housing boom, three-to-four years ago. Now, that we are in economic depression, there is no housing construction and hardly anyone is buying timber. In today’s depressed market for timber, the “hard money” subsidies for loggers that the Tester bill mandates will likely reach into the hundreds of millions of dollars over the next 10 years.

Instead of providing power for Montana communities, Tester wants additional untold millions in taxpayer subsidies to build costly on-site power plants for the timber corporations promoting his bill. It is more corporate pork, plain and simple. And, it makes absolutely no sense. Trucking biomass to large, centralized power plants is grossly inefficient, when compared to utilizing numerous small-scale portable decentralized facilities. It is far more practical to truck numerous inexpensive portable generators to the biomass, than to truck the biomass increasingly long distances to expensive and instantaneously obsolete centralized power facilities at sawmills.

13. The Tester Wildlands Logging Bill negligently ignores the fact that there is no current demand for timber.

DETAILS: Since there is no demand for the saw mills’ lumber, Tester’s bill defies basic common sense. The legislation is blatantly undisguised in its privatization of public resources and its forcing the public assumption of lumber mills’ private debt. A mere five corporations: Pyramid Mountain Lumber (Seeley Lake), Roseburg Lumber (Missoula), RY Timber (Townsend and Livingston), Smurfit-Stone Container (Missoula), and Sun Mountain Lumber (Deerlodge) will receive over $100 million courtesy of the kind Senator, with taxpayers picking up the tab in both tax dollars spent and public wildlands lost.

14. The Tester Wildlands Logging Bill mandates timber cutting, while leaving ensuing forest restoration optional.

DETAILS: This is the elephant in the living room. If Tester’s bill passes, by congressional mandate, public wildlands will be roaded and their trees cut down. Then, after the trees are long gone, there will be no forest restoration. Tester’s bill contains absolutely NO restoration mandates.

National Forests are littered with giant messes of logging restoration left unfunded and undone. It’s the Forest Service’s dirtiest secret: After the public’s trees are cut down and the logs hauled out, somehow, the agency just never seems to be able to find the money to honor its once-so-earnest promises of restoration. There isn’t a national forest in the country that has actually delivered on its past commitments to restore public lands and watersheds wounded by logging. When it comes to budget priorities, post-logging forest restoration is always the Forest Service’s neglected and unwanted step-child.

Maintaining a brave posture in the face of this undeniable track record, Tester claims that revenues from mandated logging will pay for forest restoration projects. But, inconvenient truth again rears its ugly head: In lodgepole pine-dominant forests, there simply won’t be any revenues! At taxpayer-subsidies of $1,400 for every acre logged, just how will Tester’s restoration funds be magically generated?

This giant Ponzi scheme will likely be the undoing of the Tester Wildlands Logging Bill.

15. “Conservation” collaborationists supporting the Tester Logging Bill have all received massive funding from the Pew Charitable Trusts. Pew works to “confine wilderness legislation to rocks-and-ice regions by co-opting gullible or calculating people in the wilderness movement,” according to former Montana Wilderness Association President Elaine Snyder and former MWA Board Member Ross Titus.

DETAILS: The Pew Charitable Trusts are an independent nonprofit organization–the sole beneficiary of seven individual charitable funds, with assets of $5.2 billion at the end of June 2008, established by two sons and two daughters of Sun Oil Company founder, Joseph N. Pew, and his wife, Mary Anderson Pew. “Organizations that have gained access to Pew money are expected to show short-term gains in wilderness protection regardless of the cost to other public resources and political efforts,” according to Snyder and Titus.

The Montana Wilderness Association has received tens of thousands of dollars of Pew money. The National Wildlife Federation, Trout Unlimited, and the Wilderness Society have each received many millions of dollars from the Pew Charitable Trusts. National Wildlife Federation staffers are even housed at Pew’s Washington, D.C. headquarters.

Pew tipped its hand concerning the Tester Wildlands Logging Bill with a preemptive Thursday, July 9, 2009, e-mail “Alert” entitled “Sen. Tester Leads on Wilderness” from Mike Matz, executive director of the Pew-funded “Campaign for America’s Wilderness” (formerly known as the “Pew Wilderness Center”). “We need to THANK Senator Tester for showing positive leadership to protect the best of Montana’s pristine national forests,” Matz wrote. “His bill would add the first new wilderness in Montana in more than a quarter of a century,” Matz continued. “Sen. Tester needs to hear that Montanans want to protect their special places as wilderness, for Montana families, clean water and wildlife. Please
take a moment to call Senator Tester today and make a difference for Montana’s wilderness. Dial the nearest local office now and tell them you appreciate Sen. Tester’s leadership on wilderness,” Matz concluded. Matz then listed the telephone number for each of Tester’s eight Montana field offices.

Matz was asking well-intentioned wilderness advocates, who don’t know the funding sources of the “Campaign for America’s Wilderness,” to praise Tester for a wildlands logging bill that Tester refused to allow the public to see!

On the same afternoon, the Wilderness Society, sent out its own “Wild Alert,” under the name of Kathy Kilmer. “Montana’s Sen. Jon Tester is considering legislation that would give Montana its first new wilderness designations in decades,” Kilmer wrote. “Sen. Tester needs to hear that Montanans want to protect their special places as wilderness, for Montana families, clean water and wildlife. Please call Sen. Tester and thank him for showing positive leadership to protect the best of Montana’s pristine national forests,” Kilmer concluded. The Wilderness Society used the exact same non-alphabetical listing of Tester’s eight Montana field offices as Matz.

Besides the eeriness of identical non-alphabetical listings and the same language (“Sen. Tester needs to hear that Montanans want to protect their special places as wilderness, for Montana families, clean water and wildlife.”), the incredible thing about the preemptive Pew-funded e-mail campaigns of July 9, 2009, was that no one anywhere had actually seen the Tester Wildlands Logging Bill, other than the timber industry and its collaborationists. Yet, we grassroots wildlands supporters were supposed to sign a blank check, call Tester, and thank him for drafting a public lands bill in secret.

When I reported the Pew-orchestrated campaign, Peter Aengst of the Wilderness Society wrote the following to Jared White of the Wilderness Society: “Can you check with Kathy Kilmer and see if it is possible to remove certain unsupportive people from our Wild Alert lists? Like Paul Richards (see his direct quoting of our alert).”

How dramatically have millions of Pew dollars caused the Wilderness Society to stray from its original mission, once pursued so faithfully by such courageous stalwarts as Robert Sterling Yard, Benton MacKaye, Robert Marshall, Aldo Leopold, Howard Zahniser, Stewart Brandborg, and Clif Merritt? How could today’s Pew-funded Wilderness Society take a member of 40-years-standing off of its mailing lists for being pro-wildlands and pro-wilderness? How could today’s Wilderness Society exclude the public from public land decisions, support throwing away untold millions of dollars of pork for taxpayer-subsidized timber sales and lavish new sawmill power plants, exempting public wildlands from federal laws and the protection of a new earnest President, “undesignating” the legacy of Montana’s greatest conservationist, and destroying an irretrievable portion of Montana’s priceless roadless wildlands heritage?

16. The Tester Wildlands Logging Bill fragments the Northern Rockies Ecosystem, the ONLY functioning ecosystem in the lower 48 states where all native species still reside.

DETAILS: Twenty-three years ago, after talking with our region’s leading scientists and conservationists, I wrote the first draft of what was-to-become the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act (NREPA). To preserve the biological integrity of the Northern Rockies ecosystem, NREPA designates as wilderness nearly 7 million acres of public wildlands in Montana, 9.5 million acres in Idaho, 5 million acres in Wyoming, 750,000 acres in eastern Oregon, and 500,000 acres in eastern Washington. Included in this total are over 3 million acres of backcountry wilderness in Yellowstone, Glacier and Grand Teton National Parks.

Northern Rockies wildlands are the only place in the lower 48 states where all native species and wildlife remain. These are our public wildlands, belonging to all Americans. By officially designating these remaining roadless areas as wilderness, NREPA provides the strongest protection that the federal government can confer on public wildlands and dependent species.

By fragmenting the Northern Rockies Ecosystem, the Tester Wildlands Logging Bill is a direct assault on the scientific principles of biodiversity and biological integrity for which so many dedicated citizens have worked so hard for the last 23 years.

It is time to compare the Tester Wildlands Logging Bill (the Senate bill) to the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act (the House bill). We must look at each bill’s compatibility or incompatibility with the 1964 Wilderness Act. NREPA, for example, carefully crafted over the last 23 years to ensure compatibility with the Wilderness Act, has consistently been supported by the Act’s leading original proponents, former Wilderness Society Executive Director Stewart Brandborg and former Wilderness Society Field Director Clif Merritt, both Montana natives.

On the other hand, the Tester Wildlands Logging Bill promotes numerous abuses and violations that are clearly incompatible with the 1964 Wilderness Act, including motorized access into and through “wilderness,” low-level military overflights of “wilderness,” military aircraft landings in “wilderness,” possible “wilderness” logging, and etcetera.
The Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act is supported by over 100 grassroots groups, contrasted to only a handful of top-heavy outsider-funded Beltway-based Big Green “collaborationists” that support the Tester Wildlands Logging Bill.

NREPA Petition and On-Line Action Center:  Those engaged in public outreach concerning the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act are encouraged to publicize the NREPA Petition and contact their congressional representatives to express support for NREPA.

I offer the above information with hope that it helps stimulate discussion, activism, and lasting protection for our priceless public wildlands legacy.

Respectfully submitted,

Paul Richards
PR Media Consultants®
Public Interest Media Since 1968
406-225-4235
www.PRMediaConsultants.com

“In wildness is the preservation of the world.”
Henry David Thoreau

Put Bluntly and Country, Tester’s Logging Bill is a Dog that Won’t Hunt

Note: The following guest column appeared today in the Great Falls Tribune.

It’s written by Paul Edwards, a former Montana Wilderness Association board member who ended up resigning from MWA’s Board shortly after the Beaverhead Partnership was announced in spring of 2006. Amazingly, even though Edwards was the chair of MWA’s Wilderness Committee, he and other Board members were kept completely in the dark about MWA’s secret, closed-door negotiations with the timber industry, the results of which now makes up the bulk of Tester’s Logging Bill.

It’s also interesting to note that if Edwards supported the Tester Logging Bill, he would be hailed by the Beaverhead Partnership and supporters of Tester’s Logging Bill as a “non-traditional ally” because of his remarkably diverse background.

You see, Edwards worked as a young man as a pea-pitcher, header-puncher, roustabout, wild animal trainer’s assistant, high-steel man, able seaman, movie actor, and NGO rep in I Corps, during the Vietnam War. Edwards also put in 25 years as a writer, director and producer in Hollywood film and television (including serving as a writer for the hit TV show Gunsmoke) before fleeing for his life and what remained of his sanity to his ranch on the Rocky Mountain Front at the edge of the Bob Marshall Wilderness.

However, since Edwards is willing to stand up for Wilderness, public lands, sane economic policy and open and transparent public processes, he’s more likely to be labeled an extremist by supporters of Tester’s Logging Bill. Go figure…

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Tester Forest Jobs, Recreation Act is a dog that won’t hunt
By PAUL EDWARDS

Well, finally … Sen. Tester and a few strange bedfellows have floated a logging bill that everyone who works, has worked, or hopes to work, for one of four struggling lumber mills or one bankrupt cardboard box maker can wholeheartedly endorse.

Letters to the papers from such folks, including owners and employees of the mills and their “environmental partners,” express boundless joy we’ve all agreed to this federal welfare proposal to bail them out before they perish by the Invisible Hand of the Market.

You know, The Hand that regulates commerce in our American Free Market system and separates businesses that can compete from those can’t and will fail. That’s private enterprise: Some got to win, some got to lose. Tough noogies – the Hand has no pity.

But our big-hearted feds do. Because even though the Greenspans, Bernankes and Geithners who manipulate our money are sworn hardcore believers in free market capitalism, they think some outfits – doggone it – are … well, to big to fail.

Evidently, Tester feels the same about these mills. It’s not that they’re too big, though; it’s that they’re too important to Montana, so he has to bail ‘em out with our money. Like the feds did AIG and Goldman Sachs, B of A and Chase, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It’s the new thing in Free Market Economics: The Invisible Hand’s been replaced by The Visible Handout. That’s what Tester’s Logging Welfare Bill is all about.

What makes these mills so important? Will a bailout create thousands of jobs, pump millions into our economy?

Well, no, its effect would be negligible even in boom times and lumber demand is down 55 percent with prices at modern historic lows. So what, then? Why is Tester pushing this deal?

It’s symbolism. There’s this weird perception rooted deep in our mythology that because extractive industries like mining and logging were once drivers of our economy that they still are; or ought to be; or will be again. The reality is that they can’t hack it in the world market even with the huge subsidies the U. S. industrial welfare program hands them.

But let’s say it was worth giving them a fat pork-barrel deal. What will it look like?

At an estimated taxpayer hit of $100 million from Forest Service losses on these below-cost sales, they get a mandated cut of 100,000 acres over 10 years: 30K in the brutally overcut Yaak and a staggering70K in the bone-dry Beaverhead/Deer Lodge where the Forest Service never allowed more than 2,800 acres cut, even in boom lumbering years.

In addition, more than 1 million acres of inventoried roadless wildland, including most of several of Lee Metcalf’s Wilderness Study Areas, will lose their protection and be opened to “management.”

And what’s the payoff for us Americans who own the forests for keeping these icons of yesteryear on life support? 600,000 acres of rocks and ice wilderness in scattered, widely separated patches with no connectivity, including one tiny island in the hammered Yaak.

For outdoor folks, hunters, anglers, horsemen and seekers after peace and solitude, any wilderness is good wilderness, and after decades without any preservation of Montana wildlands – as fine and whole as any left anywhere – the yearning for it that all of us feel who love and use the outdoors without smog-machines is tremendous.

That said, this bill is a visionless, wholly inadequate wildlands proposal – a fact made obvious by the absence of the word wilderness in its title – that simply gives away far too much to protect far too little. It shows very clearly how little regard Tester and Max Come-Lately have for our irreplaceable wilderness, in spite of phony chin music.

This plan – secretly concocted by its “partners” – is not only a terrible wilderness bill (which it unquestionably is) it’s also a terrible logging bill for everyone but the little mill owners. Since they don’t represent 1 percent of Montana’s working people, you have to wonder how such a sorry, deformed, ugly hash could ever have been sold to Tester.

It will be interesting to watch it in Congress. Word is the “partners” think they have the skids greased. Maybe so, but they may find that in the big federal meat grinder this particular batch of raw pork will be judged too gamy to make acceptable sausage.

Over half a century ago the wise and visionary Aldo Leopold, speaking of a public Land Ethic, said, “A thing is right when it preserves the integrity, beauty and stability of the biotic community. It is wrong when it does otherwise.” No one has ever said it better.

There is just no way to craft a national welfare bill for a few small, desperate lumber mills at the price of so much irreplaceable wild country and sell it to Congress as a grand boon to Montana and America. To put it bluntly and country, Tester’s dog won’t hunt.

Senator Tester Betrays Montana Wilderness

NOTE: The following perspective is from Brian Peck, an Independent Wildlife Consultant and grizzly bear expert, from Columbia Falls, Montana.

More than 70 years ago Aldo Leopold, one of the founders of modern ecological principles had the following to say about Wilderness:

“Wilderness is a resource which can shrink, but not grow. Invasions can be arrested or modified in a manner to keep an area useable for recreation, or for science, or for wildlife, but the creation of new wilderness in the full sense of the word is impossible. It follows, then, that any wilderness program is a rearguard action, through which retreats are reduced to a minimum…

Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and aesthetically right… A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”

Unfortunately, these foundational ecological principles have either been forgotten or ignored by Senator Tester and those who support his ill-advised and destructive S. 1470, the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act of 2009. This dangerous anti-conservation measure is misguided both for the immediate damage it would do, and for the damaging precedents it would set for the future.

Specific Concerns & Comments:

1. In its development, the Tester Logging Without Laws Bill bypasses the National Environmental Policy Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, National Forest Management Act, and Federal Land Policy and Management Act. Thus, while all federal agencies are required to abide by these laws in developing a land management plan, Senator Tester’s bill essentially says, “Close enough for government work.”

Nor does the provision that later site specific projects must comply with all laws help much, since that’s a bit like trying to close the barn door after the horse has already escaped – and the precedent of looking the other way if you’re a U.S. Senator pandering for votes, has been set.

2. If approved, this bill would set aside just over 600,000 acres of Wilderness, withdraw current protection from nearly 250,000 acres, and require that 100,000 acres be made available for logging and roading in an already fractured landscape. This is a “deal with the Devil” that we will regret, and have to fight to overcome, for years, if not decades.

The Tester bill mandates the logging of 7000 acres per year (X 10 years) on the Beaverhead Deerlodge National Forest (BDNF) despite the fact that the Forest Plan currently sets 500 acres as the sustainable cut, and the forest has never cut more than 2800 acres in a year. Why would any environmental group in their right mind sanction a cut of 14 times the sustainable level? The Tester bill mandates the cutting of 3000 acres per year (X 10 years) in the Yaak portion of the Kootenai National Forest, a forest that already looks like a moonscape in many areas from decades of USFS abuse. I have worked for 15 years to try and save the imperiled 30-40 grizzlies in the Cabinet-Yaak Ecosystem in a landscape where the Cores are too small, the Buffers are over-logged and roaded, and the Linkages are non-existent. How is another 30,000 acres of logging not going to be the last nail in this grizzly population’s coffin?

The absurd inclusion of 100,000 acres of mandated logging suggests that Tester, and some “environmental” groups, believe that Congress can mandate an area’s ecology. If Plum Creek Timber were spouting such nonsense, we’d be howling in protest. And in fact, some real environmental groups have been fighting such congressionally mandated logging for 30 years. Now their efforts will be sabotaged by Tester and his “collaborators.” Disgraceful.

Some have suggested that the lack of funding and merchantable timber on the BDNF means these acres will not be cut, and so it’s no big deal. However, they miss the fundamental point that a damaging precedent of lawless logging, devoid of science will have been set, and the environmental community’s fingerprints will be all over it.

Others claim that the bill focuses logging and roading on forest landscapes that have already been entered in previous decades. But, if this is true, then why is there any need to strip Roadless or Wilderness Study Area of their current protection? The answer should be obvious. The lumber companies aren’t cheering this bill because they hope to harvest a bunch of 40 year-old toothpicks, and the USFS/BLM tend to deliver what the logging companies want.

Finally, even the 600,000+ acres theoretically protected by this bill are WINO – Wilderness In Name Only. Tester’s bill contains loophole language that would allow motorized use for “wildlife management” – known as the “Wolf Control Clause” in Idaho – and for the herding of livestock; and military operations and low elevation flights in and over “wilderness.” And in Special Recreation Management Areas, timber harvest “consistent with the Wilderness Act.” There’s no such thing – until now.

3. Apologists for the Tester bill note that road densities on the BDNF will drop from the current 4-5 miles per square mile to 1.5 miles per square mile. While this is certainly an improvement, those of us who’ve spent 15-20 years working on wolf and grizzly conservation know that entire landscapes at 1.5 mi./sq.mi. are simply not survivable by either species. But, since the primary goals of the Tester bill are logging, jobs, and motorized recreation, who cares what actual science shows.

4. Those touting this giveaway to industrial and motorized interests are quick to trumpet the Wilderness acres protected, but nowhere do we find a similar honest accounting of the WSA/Roadless acres to be sacrificed. Nonetheless, it’s clear that releases in just three areas will total more than 200,000 acres. For example, although the West Pioneers WSA totals 151,000 acres, 125,000 acres (83%) will be released, while a paltry 26,000 will become Wilderness. And, on Bureau of Land Management WSA’s, another 76,000 acres will be released, while in the Sapphire Mountains WSA, 8,000 acres will be lost. And once they’re gone, these acres will never again be Roadless, WSA’s, or Wilderness – “Wilderness is a resource that can shrink, but not grow…”

In addition, Tester’s Logging Without Laws Bill would override and remove the current protections of the Clinton Roadless Rule and the Obama Roadless Initiative, with the bill’s maps indicating that about 1 million acres on the BDNF alone would be classified as “suitable for timber development.”

To make matters worse, these abandoned protected areas are part of the absolutely critical linkage zones spanning the gap between the Greater Salmon Selway Ecosystem and Greater Yellowstone. For two decades, these public lands have been repeatedly identified by NGO’s, USFS, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as key to reweaving the ecological web between wolf and grizzly recovery areas, and breaking their genetic and demographic isolation. When Yellowstone to Yukon talks about connecting Cores and Buffers with landscape level Linkage Zones, these are some of the lands they’re specifically talking about – lands some “conservationists” are now willing to sacrifice. When wolves were recently relisted by federal court order, one of the reasons was the lack of movement between the three wolf recovery areas – something that Tester’s bill is about to make even more difficult.

5. Bob Wolf who helped write NFMA, and Paul Richards, an area native, former state legislator, and long-time member of the Deerlodge National Forest Technical Advisory Committee have noted that most of the BDNF has little commercially viable timber, and requires an average subsidy of $1400 per acre to get lumber companies to cut there. Yet the Tester bill requires the forest to cut 7000 acres per year for ten years in the middle of a massive recession, with a decimated housing market, and a glut of unsold timber already available. At $1400 per acre, that’s a cost to you and me, the taxpayer, of $98,000,000 for lumber no one wants, with the dollars going straight into the pockets of logging companies that have fought Wilderness for decades. What we have in the Tester bill, therefore, is a misguided plan that is economically, scientifically, and environmentally bankrupt. What are “conservationists” doing supporting far-reaching legislation that simultaneously undermines ecosystem health, undermines real Wilderness protection, and funds traditional Wilderness opponents in the process??

6. Tester would have us believe that most logging would take place in areas that have been previously entered, and use primarily “temporary” roads. However, as someone who has worked on wolf and grizzly conservation for more than 15 years, I can tell you that such claims are pure delusion. First, as we all know, “temporary” roads on USFS/BLM lands have a way of becoming permanent. Second, there’s no limit on the miles of temporary road that can be built. How many miles of roads do you think it will take to conduct logging on the required 100,000 acres, or enter the additional 200,000 WSA acres about to be released? Third, 20 years of research in the Rockies clearly demonstrates that even “temporary” roads result in long-term displacement of grizzlies from key habitats, or their mortality in proximity to those roads. Same thing for wolves. Same thing for elk. Finally, decades of hard experience throughout Montana has repeatedly shown that in “Stewardship” projects of this type, the logging gets funded, but the restoration never happens. Not surprisingly, the Tester bill only mandates the logging – not the restoration.

7. Under the Montana Wilderness Study Act of 1977 (S. 393) WSA’s are to be managed in such a manner as to preserve their Wilderness characteristics. Any existing motorized use, for example, is to stay at the same numbers and geographic scope as before the WSA designation. However, as most of you know, the U.S. Forest Service over the last 30+ years has looked the other way as one illegal expansion of motorized use after another took place.

The solution, for those guided by ecological principles rather than political expediency, is to stop these intrusions, roll them back to legal 1977 levels, and restore the integrity of the WSA’s. However, the Tester bill, and the “conservationists” who support it, would grandfather in the law breaking and ecological damage, and enshrine their capitulation in a 129,252 acre National Recreation Area in the West Pioneers open to mountain bikes and motorized use. If environmental groups won’t stand up for environmental protection and environmental laws, then who will??

8. At a recent meeting of the Flathead Conservation Roundtable, a representative of Trout Unlimited made the amazing statement that “It’s really important that ‘Jon’ (Tester) succeed with this bill”, presumably so that environmentalists could have a chance at real Wilderness at some unspecified point in the future – maybe – someday – trust us.

After nearly 40 years of working in the environmental field, I was under the impression (apparently wrong) that our job was to stand up for ecosystem integrity, maximize Wilderness protection, and minimize habitat destroying retreats – Not to put one in Senator Tester’s “win column.”

Senators and Representatives respond to groups that they respect, desperately need for re-election, or fear. The capitulation of some “conservationists” on the Tester bill promotes none of the above, but rather, suggests that we’re weak, won’t stand up for our principles, and can be bought off with a few crumbs swept from the Wilderness table. Why would any Senator in his right mind stick his neck out later to produce a real Wilderness bill for such groups? By signing on to the Tester bill, “conservationists” are telling him that he’s got us in the bag; that we feel we have no choice but to support him; and that he has nothing to fear from us come election time – All death sentences for any chance of true Wilderness down the road.

Environmental writer Ed Abbey once said, “Wilderness needs no defense, only more defenders”, and Brock Evans with the Endangered Species Coalition advised that the secret to winning “impossible” environmental battles was “Endless pressure, endlessly applied.” For those who seem to have missed this wisdom and who are enamored with the Tester bill, I wish you a speedy and early return to ecological sanity.

Brian Peck is an Independent Wildlife Consultant and grizzly bear expert. He writes from Columbia Falls, Montana.

Lumber Demand Drops 55%…So Some Call for More Public Lands Logging?

A few days ago, the Missoulian ran an article titled, “Battered and Boarded: Recession rattles timber industry to its core.”

Here are some quick snips from that article:

“The Western Wood Products Association estimates that 45 percent of all lumber goes to new home construction. But new home starts have been more than halved since reaching a high of more than 2 million in 2005. Since that year, the nation’s demand for lumber has dropped 55 percent, the steepest decline in industry history.”

“National demand for lumber, which pegged 64.3 billion board feet in 2005, is predicted to fall below 30 billion board feet this year, with the amount of lumber used to build new homes dropping from 28 billion board feet to about 5 billion board feet. Making matters worse is the fact that log prices have not fallen at the same rate, meaning mills are paying more for raw materials while selling product for less.”

It’s interesting to note that all the economic reality contained in this article has been systematically ignored by Senator Jon Tester, his staff and those three or four conservation groups who actually support Tester’s Mandated Logging Bill. For more info on Tester’s Logging Bill, check out these links here,  here,  here and here.

Just imagine, after decades and decades of over-consumption and over-development (which have caused a host of environmental and social problems in our country) we’ve come to a point in the public lands forest/wilderness movement where groups such as Montana Wilderness Association, National Wildlife Federation and Montana Trout Unlimited are actually looking to use their political connections to mandate more logging on public lands, despite the steepest decline in demand for lumber in our nation’s history.

With demand for lumber, excess packaging and disposable paper products (thankfully) in such a steep decline (and not expected to rebound anytime soon) wouldn’t sensible conservationists and progressives, if anything, advocate for less public lands logging at this very important point in our nation’s history?

Video Clips: Ecological Role of Insects and Fire in Our Forests

I work for a non-profit forest and wilderness protection organization called the WildWest Institute. Over the years we’ve spent more than our fair share of time in the public forests and wildlands of the northern Rockies.  We’re monitored countless timber sales and so-called “forest health restoration” projects. We’re documented illegal ATV and snowmobile trespass. And we’ve lead public field trips to the deep silence of ancient cedar groves in western Montana, as well as to the tops of peaks affording 360 degree views of unbroken expanses of wild forests.

Through all of these adventures, we’re also managed to also take our fair share of (amateur quality) pictures and video clips as part of our effort to educate the public about the management of their public lands and wildlife.

Occasionally, I’ll be sharing some of these clips and photos on this site. To start us off, I’ll post two video clips that were shot in January 2005 as part of our monitoring efforts of the Middle East Fork Heathy Forest Restoration Act project on the Bitterroot National Forest in Montana.  This project was one of the first timber sales out-of-the-gate after the Bush Administration passed their Orwellian-inspired Healthy Forest Initiative.

Originally, the project called for cutting down almost 6,000 acres of some of the best remaining unlogged old-growth forests up the East Fork of the Bitterroot River, a drainage that was so heavily clearcut and roaded during the 1960s and early 70s that it lead directly to the US Congress passing the National Forest Management Act.

Fortunately, in 2006 we were able to save over 2,000 acres of some of the best unlogged, old-growth from being cut down, but the rest of the project (which we still had some serious concerns with) went forward. Ironically, because of the collapse of the housing market and the subsequent plummeting of lumber demand in the US, all logging on this project stopped in 2008 and 2009, until $1 million in federal stimulus (taxpayer) money was given to subsidize a helicopter logging operation to finish the logging.

In the first video clip, a field introduction to the Middle East Fork project is given.

The second clip includes a short talk about the important ecological role that insects, fire and disease play in the overall health of our forests, as well as how these natural processes affect fire risk in the short and long-term.

President Obama sets sustainability goals for federal agencies

From the White House:

WASHINGTON, DC – Demonstrating a commitment to lead by example, President Obama signed an Executive Order today that sets sustainability goals for Federal agencies and focuses on making improvements in their environmental, energy and economic performance. The Executive Order requires Federal agencies to set a 2020 greenhouse gas emissions reduction target within 90 days; increase energy efficiency; reduce fleet petroleum consumption; conserve water; reduce waste; support sustainable communities; and leverage Federal purchasing power to promote environmentally-responsible products and technologies.

“As the largest consumer of energy in the U.S. economy, the Federal government can and should lead by example when it comes to creating innovative ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, increase energy efficiency, conserve water, reduce waste, and use environmentally-responsible products and technologies,” said President Obama.

The Federal government occupies nearly 500,000 buildings, operates more than 600,000 vehicles, employs more than 1.8 million civilians, and purchases more than $500 billion per year in goods and services.

The Executive Order also requires federal agencies to meet a number of energy, water, and waste reduction targets, including:

• 30% reduction in vehicle fleet petroleum use by 2020;
• 26% improvement in water efficiency by 2020;
• 50% recycling and waste diversion by 2015;
• 95% of all applicable contracts will meet sustainability requirements;
• Implementation of the 2030 net-zero-energy building requirement;

Click here to read the entire executive order.

This is a good step in the right direction and, quite frankly, it’s about time. I have a previous post up about something similar, which I called the “sustainability filter.”