Keeping It Wild! In Defense of America’s Public Wildlands

United by our common understanding that Montana’s wild country is its greatest treasure;
And, that once degraded or impaired, this wild country can never be restored or replaced;
And, cognizant of Thoreau’s belief that “In wildness is the preservation of the world;”
And, schooled by Aldo Leopold who long ago warned that wilderness can only shrink and not grow;
And, keenly aware of the definition of wilderness in the Wilderness Act of 1964 as being “untrammeled by man,” where “man himself is a visitor who does not remain;”
And, fully recognizing that the Northern Rockies ecosystem is the only functioning ecosystem in the lower 48 states where all native species still reside;
And, being of one mind in our desire and determination to protect and preserve what remains of our public wildlands to the greatest extent possible;
We hereby state our intention to work together to achieve the most inclusive and comprehensive protection under the law for all remaining publicly-owned de facto wilderness in Montana.
In full affirmation of the above and, after having been unsuccessful in our earnest efforts to improve Sen. Tester’s so-called “Forest Jobs and Recreation Act,” or “S. 1470,” we must now unanimously oppose this bill.
The bases for our opposition are exhaustively catalogued in separate analyses and papers, but we submit this foundational document to concisely articulate our chief objections. They are as follows:

1. The Tester bill specifically eliminates from mandated protection large portions of the late Senator Lee Metcalf’s wildlands legacy, Congressionally designated as Wilderness Study Areas in 1977 by his farsighted bill, S. 393. By eliminating this protection, the Tester bill opens these priceless public wildlands for road building, logging, and other development.

2. The Tester bill undermines the overwhelmingly popular Clinton Roadless Rule and Obama Roadless Initiative. Over one million acres of federally-inventoried roadless wildlands protected under the Roadless Rule and the Roadless Initiative would be classified as “Timber Suitable or Open to Harvest.”

3. The Tester Bill surrenders decisions about our national forests to a handful of local bureaucrats and extraction-oriented corporations, thereby promoting fragmentation of America’s national public lands legacy into locally controlled fiefdoms.

4. The Tester bill undermines the National Environmental Policy Act by imposing unrealistic and arbitrary requirements that preclude the Forest Service from accurately assessing environmental impacts of road building, logging, habitat loss, water degradation, weed infestation, and other costs of developing public wildlands.

5. The Tester bill mandates unsustainable logging quotas regardless of environmental costs, thereby jeopardizing safeguards provided public lands by the Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, National Forest Management Act, Wilderness Act, and Federal Land Policy and Management Act.

6. In its effort to isolate decisions to log wildlands from national attention, the Tester bill disenfranchises public lands stakeholders, by overriding legitimate science-based forest planning that involves full public information and participation. It deprives the public of our rights to be included in irreversible decisions concerning our own land.

7. The Tester bill mandates cutting at least 100,000 acres over 10 years. It dictates at least 7,000 acres be logged per year for 10 years in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest. In recent years, the Forest Service has set its sustainable cut level for the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest at 500 acres per year. In past years, when the Forest Service was dedicated to “getting the cut out,” an average of 3,213 acres per year was logged, from 1954 to 1996, in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest. On the Three Rivers Ranger District of the Kootenai National Forest, Tester’s bill mandates logging of 3,000 acres per year for 10 years in fragile Yaak grizzly bear habitat, already severely damaged by decades of overcutting. While logging at least 100,000 acres would be compulsory, the Tester bill contains no accompanying mandates for restoration, leaving all post-logging reclamation and forest restoration optional.

8. The Tester bill fails to address at least $100 million in costs to U.S. taxpayers that would be incurred by the Forest Service for subsidizing “below-cost” timber sales and power plants for the few specially-privileged timber corporations involved. The bill interferes with free enterprise by mandating that five favored private mills be subsidized with perpetual supplies of national forest trees, at huge economic costs to taxpayers. The bill ignores the financial realities that the United States currently face: Economic crises and a lumber “depression,” with new home construction down 70 percent and demands for lumber down 55 percent.

9. By forcing unsustainable industrial-scale logging upon our public lands, the Tester bill would irrevocably harm essential habitat of species that characterize the wild nature of the northern Rockies, such as the gray wolf, bull trout, cutthroat trout (Montana’s official state fish), otter, mountain goat, mountain sheep, elk, arctic grayling, northern goshawk, boreal owl, pileated woodpecker, ferruginous hawk, Montana vole, sage thrasher, wild bison, peregrine falcon, bald eagle, pine marten, fisher, lynx, wolverine, and grizzly bear (Montana’s official state animal).

10. The “wilderness” areas in the Tester bill are fragmented and unconnected islands of largely “rocks and ice,” with limited biological integrity and no potential for sustaining biodiversity. The minimal “wilderness” designated in the bill fails to protect different elevation habitats and their dependent species with core areas, buffer zones, and connecting biological corridors. The bill promotes numerous abuses that are clearly in violation of the 1964 Wilderness Act, including motorized access into and through “wilderness,” military aircraft landings in “wilderness,” possible “wilderness” logging, and other intrusions that violate the principles of Wilderness.

Due to these severe deficiencies, we intend to see that the Tester bill is not endorsed by Congress. Instead, we will constructively stand for a scientifically-sound, ecologically-based Wilderness Bill that preserves the greatest amount of our priceless and rapidly-vanishing public roadless wildlands in Montana.

We, the following, are conservation organizations and citizens dedicated to wildlands protection, Wilderness preservation, and the sound long-term management of our federal public lands legacy. Our coalition includes small-business owners, scientists, educators and teachers, health care practitioners, hikers and backpackers, hunters and anglers, wildlife viewers, outfitters and guides, veterans, retired Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management officials, ranchers and farmers, craftspersons, and community leaders – all stakeholders committed to America’s public wildlands legacy.

Note: Individual citizens can sign onto this, by clicking here. For more information visit: http://testerloggingbilltruths.wordpress.com.

Alliance for the Wild Rockies (MT)
Big Wild Advocates (MT)
Buffalo Field Campaign (MT)
Conservation Congress (MT)
Deerlodge Forest Defense Fund (MT)
Friends of the Bitterroot (MT)
Friends of the Rattlesnake (MT)
Friends of the Wild Swan (MT)
Swan View Coalition (MT)
Western Montana Mycological Association (MT)
Western Watersheds Project (MT)
Wilderness Watch (MT)
WildWest Institute (MT)
Allegheny Defense Project (PA)
Bark (OR)
Big Wildlife (OR)
Biodiversity Conservation Alliance (WY)
Buckeye Forest Council (OH)
Caney Fork Headwaters Association (TN)
Cascadia Wildlands (OR)
Center for Biological Diversity (AZ)
Center for Sustainable Living (IN)
Citizens for Better Forestry (CA)
Clearwater Biodiversity Project (ID)
Cumberland Countians for Peace & Justice (TN)
Dogwood Alliance (NC)
EcoLaw Massachusetts (MA)
Ecosystem Advocates (OR)
Environmental Action Committee of West Marin (CA)
Green Press Initiative (MI)
Friends of Bell Smith Springs (IL)
Friends of the Breitenbush Cascades (OR)
Friends of the Clearwater (ID)
Heartwood (IN)
Hells Canyon Preservation Council (OR)
John Muir Project (CA)
Kentucky Heartwood (CA)
League of Wilderness Defenders (OR)
Native Forest Council (OR)
Network for Environmental & Economic Responsibility, United Church of Christ (TN)
Protect Arkansas Wilderness! (AR)
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) (DC)
RESTORE the North Woods (ME)
Save America’s Forests (DC)
Selkirk Conservation Alliance (WA)
Umpqua Watersheds (OR)
Utah Environmental Congress (UT)
Western Lands Project (WA)
WildEarth Guardians (NM)
WildSouth (NC)

Dr. Power: Two Views of the Tester Forest Jobs and Recreation Bill

Note: The following commentary from economist Dr. Thomas Michael Power was presented on Montana Public Radio December 7, 2009. – MK

Two Views of the Tester Forest Jobs and Recreation Bill
By Thomas Michael Power

(Dr. Thomas Michael Power is the former Chair of the Economics Department at the University of Montana, where he currently serves as a Research Professor)

The controversy over Senator Tester’s Forest Jobs and Recreation Bill is likely to get some national attention in a week or so as the bill receives its first hearing before the Senate Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests in the our nation’s capitol. That bill has been called both Tester’s “logging bill” as well as Tester’s “wilderness bill.” Critics point out that the title of the bill mentions “forest jobs” but does not mention “wilderness” at all, leaving some suspicion as to what the main purpose of the bill is.

Wilderness advocates who support the bill point out that the bill would add 670,000 acres of wilderness and another 225,000 acres of National Recreation Areas where timber harvest will be prohibited. That’s approaching a million acres of protected land, clearly an admirable goal.

The critics, also wilderness advocates, shake their heads in dismay because at the same time that bill appears to open so much roadless wild land to potential logging. Consider the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest, Montana’s largest National Forest. It contains 3.3 million acres of land, mostly undeveloped, high lodgepole pine forest. Forest managers there have classified less than ten percent of that land as suitable for commercial timber management. Yet, Tester’s bill would classify 1.9 million acres of land as “suitable for timber production” where “timber harvest is allowed.” The 500,000 acres of new wilderness that Tester’s bill would create in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest somewhat shrinks in significance compared to the area four times as large that appears to be declared open for timber harvest. That is especially shocking since the area now declared open to logging is over eight times larger than what had previously been deemed suitable for timber harvest.

This may just be the result of bad horse trading and a conscious gamble on the part of the collaborative that originally negotiated this proposal. The fact is that the vast majority of the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest is likely to remain unroaded and unlogged indefinitely into the future, primarily protected by economics. It is far too costly to go after most of the standing inventory of trees there and those trees have little commercial value, at least for now.

Tester’s bill actually attempts to steer the logging that the bill mandates away from the backcountry and limit it to the already human dominated edges of the forest. The bill orders the Forest Service, when choosing the lands where the timber harvest is to take place, to give “priority” to lands that already have high densities of roads, have already been relatively heavily logged, and contain forests that are at high risk for insect epidemics or high-severity wildfires.

The actual meaning of these limits, however, may hinge on whether all of these criteria have to apply or whether only one of them need apply. That last criteria is loose enough that it by itself could open the entire Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest to timber harvest since lodgepole pine forests naturally tend to experience large stand-replacing fires.

The level of timber harvest that would be annually mandated on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest under Tester’s bill can also be read in either comforting or alarming terms. The bill requires 7,000 acres a year to be harvested. To supporters of the bill, this is a tiny acreage of harvest, a tiny fraction of one percent of the huge 3.3 million acre forest.

To critics, although 7,000 acres appears trivially small compared to the total size of the forest, it is not so small compared to the part of the forest deemed suitable for commercial timber harvest, 300,000 acres, of which the 7,000 acres are 2.3 percent. That level of harvest would be sustainable only if new trees grew to commercial size in about 40 years, an unlikely event in a high, cold, lodgepole pine forest in Montana.

To critics, this is simply an unsustainable level of harvest. Looking back over 40 years of timber harvest on that forest, 7,000 acres of timber harvest was reached only once, in 1971, in the heyday of aggressive Forest Service harvests across the nation. That level of harvest was once again approached in the last peak harvest year on Forest Service lands in the late 1980s when 6,000 acres were harvested. Between 1967 and 1989, when the Forest Service was still largely unhindered by environmental concerns and harvested record numbers of trees, the average acreage harvested on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest was about 4,000 acres. The Tester bill would seek to force a harvest level two-thirds higher than that previous unfettered average harvest level.

Supporters of Tester’s bill insist that the intent is not to open up most of the forest to timber harvest but quite the opposite: to support modest timber harvests where they would do the most good and the least harm. If that is the case, the language of the bill should be tightened up to accomplish exactly that by limiting the areas open to potential timber harvests to a much smaller portion of the forest and by making clear that the “priority” areas for timber harvest are in fact those areas that have already been roaded and open to logging and where the timber harvests can help protect human habitation. Finally, the level of mandated timber harvest should be set based on what foresters indicate is a sustainable level of harvest given the characteristics of that forest.

Such a tightening up of the language and numbers in the Tester bill should be acceptable to the wilderness advocates who support this bill since it would simply assure that the bill does what they say it is intended to do. If timber interests howl in protest over such clarification that should give the rest of us pause as to exactly what the Tester bill is really all about.

By the Numbers: Tester’s Mandated Logging vs. Historical Logging

What follows is some information compiled from US Forest Service records regarding historical logging on the Beaverhead and Deerlodge National Forests.

The info will clearly demonstrate how Sen. Tester’s S.1470, which would Congressionally mandate a minimum of 7,000 acres of logging per year for ten years on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest, would compare with historical logging on these same forests.

All of the following information was obtained directly from the US Forest Service.

From 1959-1996 the Beaverhead NF averaged 1621 acres of logging per year. The greatest acreage logged on the Beaverhead NF in that time period was 4168 acres in 1987. The Reagan years average on the Beaverhead NF was 2697 acres of logging per year.

From 1954-1996 the Deerlodge NF averaged 1592 acres of logging per year. The greatest acreage logged on the Deerlodge NF in that time period was 4332 acres in 1971. The Reagan years average on the Deerlodge NF was 1916 acres of logging per year.

The average acres logged per year for the Beaverhead and Deerlodge forests combined from 1954-1996 was 3213 acres/year. The average acres logged per year on these same forests during the Reagan years was 4,613 acres/year.

The most acreage ever logged in a single year since 1954 on both forests combined was in 1971, when 7013 acres were logged. The next highest total was in 1966 at 5813 acres. These years were also prior to our nation having environmental laws such as the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Forest Management Act.

Remember, Sen Tester’s bill would Congressionally mandate a minimum of 7,000 acres of logging per year for ten years on the BHDL NF. That amount of logging per year is not only more than double the historical average on these forests, but it’s the most amount of logging ever, except for one single year.

There is near universal agreement between the timber industry, Forest Service, conservationists, economists, scientists and the general public that the logging levels on National Forests during the logging hayday of the 1960s, 70 and 80s were completely unsustainable and misguided.

However, despite the current and on-going economic crises and resulting “Lumber Depression” (lumber demand down 55% and new home construction down 70%) Sen. Tester’s bill would have Congress step in and mandate a minimum level of logging on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge NF that far exceeds anything this forest has ever seen…at an estimated taxpayer cost of $100 million.

Furthermore, it’s quite clear that because Tester’s bill contains a number of “unfunded mandates” money would be taken from other national forests in Montana and the region and given to the BHDL NF to conduct this mandated logging and complete NEPA requirements for these large logging projects within the arbitrary 12 month timeline, which Tester’s bill imposes. (Note: NEPA typically takes the Forest Service 2 to 4 years to complete, and often even at that pace the NEPA assessment isn’t as complete as it should be).

This is just yet another concrete example of a serious concern many of us have that’s based on the actual language contained within the bill.

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.

Pulp & Paper Industry’s Boondoggle Could Cost Taxpayers $10 Billion

The US pulp and paper industry has figured out how to use an unintended tax loophole in the 2005 highway bill to basically transfer up to $10 billion in taxpayer funds right into their own packets.  Essentially every man, woman and child in the US is being forced to give $30 to the industrial dinosaurs in the pulp and paper industry.  If that doesn’t get your blood boiling, throw in the fact that this money is to compensate the pulp and paper industry for burning an additional 20 billion gallons of diesel!

For a look at how this issue is playing out in Montana, check out the Missoula Independent’s coverage.
You can also learn more by reading this letter that was sent to Senator Max Baucus, Chair of the Senate Finance Committee, by 25 environmental groups working to make the pulp and paper industry more sustainable and responsible.

Even more information can be found in this recent Wall Street Journal article, which opens with: “The Obama administration wants to stop billions of dollars of tax credits and direct payments to the paper industry under a tax provision originally intended to promote alternative fuels for motor vehicles.” Make sure to see a statement from a  US Treasury official quoted in the article who said, “Right now this does appear to be a transfer from the taxpayers to this industry.”  Talk about a “redistribution of wealth!”

Finally, no matter where you live in the US, please contact Senator Max Baucus (the Chair of the Senate Finance Committee) and ask him to end this tax loophole as soon as possible.  In April, Senator Baucus actually spoke out strongly against this boondoggle saying, “Unless we plug this loophole, the federal government is liable for billions in credits for black liquor in 2009 alone, even though the credit was never intended for this fuel…We are working to undo that unintended consequence.”  However, since that time, the Pulp and Paper lobbyists have been breathing down Baucus’ neck using the same tired, old rhetoric of the past.