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T-STORM Temp: 80 °F Wind: CLM at 0 mph Sunday, August 3, 2003 SECTIONS Home Page Local News Sports Business Obituaries Life Opinion - Politics AP News Weather Classified Archives Site Map EXTRA HomeLife Magazine W3 Magazine Jobs @ Mail Tribune Tempo A & E Oregon CarZone Wellness Connection Real Estate Newspaper in Education Prime Times Outdoor Journal Personals Movie Times TV Times E The People CLASSIFIEDS Find a Car Find a Home Find a Job Find Everything E SOUTHERN OREGON Automotive Communities Entertainment Publications Recreation Calendar ABOUT US FAQ What's New Advertise Home Delivery Classified Ad Contact Us Media Kit Email Story to a Friend May 21, 2003 Walden thinning bill passed by House, praised by Bush By PAUL FATTIG Mail Tribune The Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003, co-written by U.S. Rep. Greg Walden, R-Hood River, was approved Tuesday by the House of Representatives. The bill, HR 1904, is being touted by Walden and co-author Scott McInnis, R-Colo., as the best way to hasten thinning federal forests of small trees and underbrush in an effort to reduce the threat of catastrophic wildfires. It would allow the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management to streamline environmental studies and limit appeals on up to 20 million acres of forest thinning projects. Blocks of up to 1,000 acres could be clear-cut as part of the study areas. The bill has drawn praise from the timber industry camp and condemnation from the environmental community. Advertisement "Today’s passage of the healthy forests bill is tremendously good news for our forests, our watersheds, our species and, most importantly, for the citizens whose lives are endangered by catastrophic wildfire," Walden said in a statement. " . . . This is a common-sense, bipartisan measure that directs treatment projects where they’re needed most — in the wildland-urban interface and around our watersheds," he added. Walden represents the 2nd Congressional District — including Jackson and Josephine counties and all of Eastern Oregon. President Bush supports the bill, which was approved 256-170 by the House and now goes to the Senate. Bush had pushed for such a measure while visiting the roughly 3,000-acre Squire fire in the Applegate Valley last August. He praised the bill during a short ceremony Tuesday in the East Garden of the White House. "I stood at the scene of the Squires Peak fire in Oregon," Bush said. "On one side of a dirt road, where small trees and underbrush had been removed before the fire rolled through, the forest was green and alive. "On the other side of the road, where a similar thinning project had been stalled by lawsuits, the landscape was charred and the trees looked like matchsticks." Active management would have saved both sites, he added. "It could have saved millions more acres across America from the devastation of severe forest fires and insect damage," he continued. "Yet, for too many years, bureaucratic tangles and bad forest policy have prevented foresters from keeping our woodlands healthy and safe." The bill is a common-sense approach to reducing the threat of devastating wildfires, said David Hill, executive vice president of the Southern Oregon Timber Industries Association. "It’s an honest effort to try and address the forest health issue in the West through programs to more rapidly approve thinning projects and fuels reduction work while trying to shorten the appeals process," he said. "Hopefully, this will result in less catastrophic fires than we’ve had in the last couple of years." But environmental watchdogs argue that it sacrifices rural home protection, citizen participation and environmental laws for the benefit of the logging industry. "This bill should be called the Unhealthy Forest Degradation Act, because it opens the door to unregulated logging of ancient trees and old forests far from communities," said Joseph Vaile, a biologist with the Ashland-based Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center. "The Forest Service and BLM have had decades to come up with real fuels reduction, but they came up with old-growth removal and tree-farming instead," he added. "This bill is not going to direct them to do anything different, such as clearing brush around homes or thinning small diameter-trees — it just makes it impossible to hold them accountable for logging old- growth, polluting watersheds or even increasing fire hazards." Vaile countered that the claim that lawsuits have stalled thinning projects has been undermined by the fact a General Accounting Office report concluded that 95 percent of the 762 Forest Service fuels reduction projects it reviewed were ready for implementation within the standard 90-day review period. Moreover, he questioned whether the forest thinning in the BLM area Bush toured had been delayed by litigation. The area tour included a portion of the Spencer Lomas thinning project, according to BLM officials. "Nothing was stopped by litigation in the sale — logging was not delayed," he said. But Steve Armitage, forest manager for the BLM’s Ashland Resource Area, disagreed. "Spencer Lomas was stalled by a series of lawsuits which slowed down its implementation," he said. "I believe it would have drastically altered the fire behavior had it all been thinned." Printer Friendly Version Email Story to a Friend Subscribe Archive: Click to Search Mail Tribune Home Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life Opinion - Politics | AP News | Archives | Site Map E Southern Oregon | Classified Copyright © 1997-2003 Mail Tribune. All rights reserved. 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