Healthy debate

The Weber Fire burns near Mancos earlier this summer. In the wake of an active fire season this summer, legislators are bringing bills to the U.S. House of Representatives they say could help mitigate fire danger. But environmentalists are wary, saying it’s just another ploy to circumvent the public process with forest lands./Photo by Stephen Eginoire

Environmental groups respond to Tipton’s forest bill

by Tracy Chamberlin

On the heels of an active fire season, lawmakers are reigniting the debate over fire prevention tactics.

Several bills recently introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives fly under the flag of preventing wildfires and creating jobs. However, 36 environmental organizations have expressed concerns with the proposed bills and their effectiveness.

“On behalf of our millions of members, activists and supporters, we write to express our strong opposition to legislation that are essentially Trojan horses,” stated a letter to congressional delegates signed on behalf of the environmental groups. The groups included Earth Justice, the Sierra Club as well as locally based groups San Juan Citizens Alliance and Rocky Mountain Wild.

The letter specifically addresses the Catastrophic Wildfire Prevention Act of 2012, the National Forest Emergency Response Act, the Farm Bill and the Healthy Forest Management Act of 2012, a bill introduced by Congressman Scott Tipton, R-Colo.

Tipton’s bill, H.R. 6089, was introduced in early July and attempts to mitigate the risk of wildfires from the bark beetle epidemic and drought conditions by expanding the ability of local authorities to address those risks.

Supporters of the bill highlight the need to deal with fire danger across the country, while opponents express concerns about how much power the bill actually gives local authorities over public lands.

According to Tipton’s website, the bill allows local authorities to play an active role in healthy forest management by getting the federal government “out of the way.”

“By empowering states and counties … we can more proactively manage our forests, reduce future destruction from wildfires, safeguard water supplies and species habitats, and promote a healthy natural environment,” it states.

But environmental groups expressed concerns that the bill doesn’t just cut the red tape, it cuts an important part of the public’s involvement in the process.

“It ends up giving the states an undue amount of authority over federal land,” said Josh Pollock, executive director for Rocky Mountain Wild, one of the organizations attached to the letter.

Joshua Green, a spokesman for Tipton, said that local authorities know what part of their community could be at risk. “There’s nobody that’s going to know that better than the people on the ground,” he added.

The bill begins by declaring the bark beetle epidemic, drought and deteriorating forest health conditions as an “imminent threat” to communities in the affected areas because of the high risk of wildfires.

That imminent threat in turn gives state governors, the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Agriculture the authority to designate an area “high risk” and in need of hazardous-fuel reduction projects.

The purpose of the projects is to “thin the forest to provide the greatest health and longevity of the forest,” according to the bill. It takes into account rights of way, watershed protections, and wildlife and endangered species habitat.

The bill also requires the projects to be consistent with land use and forest management plans, however the secretary is given the authority to modify those standards to “correspond with a specific high-risk area designation.”

Once the need for a fuel-reduction project is established, it must be implemented within 60 days and the high-risk designation can remain for 20 years, unless the governor removes it.

With the limited time period to begin the project, environmental groups are concerned that public input will be muted.

“It is very important that we address the needs of our forest,” Pollock said, “… but this (bill) makes pretty sweeping exceptions.”

Green said it is a misconception that the bill takes away from the public’s ability to provide input and insists the bill will maintain the existing process under the Healthy Forest Restoration Act of 2003. But environmental groups consider the HFRA to offer limited public input and an already expedited environmental review and appeals process.

“There’s a reason, as a society, we create laws that help us look before we leap,” Pollock said.

Another concern is that the bill opens up roadless areas to road-building. The only areas exempt from the fuels-reduction are wilderness areas and national monuments.

Dan Randolph, executive director for the San Juan Citizens Alliance, said the bill uses the Colorado wildfires as “an excuse” to open up public lands to logging, road building and extensive timber harvesting. “It’s a solution in search of a problem,” he added.

Green does admit that the bill would allow roads to be built on inventoried roadless areas and wilderness study areas, but that the decision to build roads to address the hazardous fuels would be up to the governor. “It essentially yields to the state in those areas,” he said.

Since its introduction, several groups have come out in support of the bill, including the Colorado Association of Conservation Districts, the Colorado Timber Association and commissioners from Montrose, Archuleta, Dolores and Gunnison counties.

The bill passed through the Natural Resources Committee on Wednesday morning and is headed for a full vote in the House of Representatives. With the clock ticking on legislative sessions, it’s uncertain if it will see a vote before the November elections but Green is hopeful it will.

In the meantime, the list of supporters and opponents continues to grow and the debate over healthy forest management continues to burn.

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