SEELEY LAKE - The danger of catastrophic wildfire will not be alleviated simply by thinning trees within a few hundred feet of homes and communities on the forest's edge, the chairman of the U.S. House committee that oversees national forest management said Wednesday.
Rep. Richard Pombo, the California Republican who chairs the House Resources Committee, said the U.S. Forest Service needs the flexibility to "do what is needed" to restore the nation's forests to health - and that includes cutting trees in forests far from town.
Sometimes, that responsibility will mean thinning trees in the so-called wildland-urban interface where houses crowd the forest's edge, he said. Sometimes, it will mean logging in the backcountry. Sometimes, it will mean spraying weeds or removing roads or replanting trees after a wildfire.
"We need a broader perspective than 200 feet around a home," said Pombo, who convened the hearing to take testimony on "Management Challenges on Montana's National Forests."
Both Pombo and Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth chided those who continue to focus the forest-health discussion on the pros and cons of logging - what they called "the same old, tired arguments."
Bosworth lashed out at a recent report listing the Bitterroot National Forest as one of the nation's most endangered forests. Released by Greenpeace and the National Forest Protection Alliance, the report blasted the Bitterroot for trying to pass off old-fashioned timber sales as forest restoration work.
"It's nonsense," the chief said. "Utter nonsense. Greenpeace is falling back on the same old, tired arguments of 15 years ago. They are completely missing the point."
The national forests have problems, but extensive logging is not one of them, Bosworth said. "No one is talking about the real problems: forest health, noxious weeds, fragmentation of the land and unmanaged recreation. That's what we need to be talking about."
Pombo, in turn, chastised environmentalist Steve Kelly for speaking out against forest health legislation recently passed by the House without ever reading the bill.
In written testimony presented to committee members in advance of Wednesday's hearing, Kelly complained that the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003 "deregulates logging in roadless areas and threatened and endangered species habitat, and gives the (Agriculture) Secretary sole discretion to log old-growth areas."
"Did you read the bill?" Pombo asked Kelly after his oral testimony. "None of this was in the bill."
Kelly, who spoke on behalf of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, said he had read a draft of the legislation on the Internet, but not the final bill.
"There was never a draft that repealed the Endangered Species Act," Pombo replied. "I would not support a bill that repeals the Endangered Species Act. Or a bill that gives the secretary discretion to log old growth. I would never support that. In the eight years I've worked on this issue, that language was never in a bill."
But the Healthy Forests Act would increase logging in the national forests, Kelly insisted. "That is a promise Congress made to mill owners."
Wrong, came Pombo's reply. "This is about trying to restore a more natural, more healthy forest. This is not about opening up roadless areas to logging. The only place I've seen that is on environmentalist Web sites."
"That's what the Bush administration wants," said Kelly, not ready to give up the battle.
"If it is, they haven't talked to me about it," the congressman said.
Markedly different was the testimony - and reception - given Montana State Forester Robert Harrington, who told the committee that "thinning a few trees around forested subdivisions and communities will not guarantee the survival of our communities at risk."
"When combined with drought conditions, the current amount of fuel on our national forests contributes to fire intensities that can overwhelm firefighters and even the most extensive community fuel reduction projects," he said.
Timber harvest - commercial timber sales - will not prevent fires, Harrington said, "but will decrease the intensity of fires when they occur, allowing safer and more efficient fire suppression tactics. It will also not eliminate insect and disease outbreaks, but it will lessen the impact when they occur."
Rep. Denny Rehberg, R-Mont. and the Resources Committee member who convinced Pombo to conduct Wednesday's hearing in Seeley Lake, wondered whether the state of Montana couldn't sue the Forest Service for creating conditions in the national forests that put nearby state forests at risk of fire or insect attack.
"Take that back to the governor," Rehberg told the state forester. "Think about that."
And aren't attempts to focus the debate on the wildland-urban interface a "sleight of hand?" Rehberg asked Bosworth, the top federal forester. "I would rather take care of the whole forest's health, and that would help the wildland-urban interface."
Bosworth took a different approach.
"We do need to do fuels treatment around some of these communities," he said. "I worry that if we do treatments too far from communities, and not in the forest from there to town, that it's like leaving a sea of gasoline around our homes."
There are forests far, far from communities that need thinning, the chief said, and there are forests that bump up against communities that need thinning. There is no one-size-fits-all prescription for forest health.
Near the end of the hearing came the testimony of Kim Liles, a paper maker at Smurfit-Stone Container's mill in Frenchtown and special projects director for the Rocky Mountain Region of the Pulp and Paperworkers' Resource Council.
"Since when did it become un-American and wrong to make a profit on lumber?" he asked. "If we are to believe the environmental extreme community, no one should make a dime on public lands on anything. Only they, it would appear, should be allowed to make money through litigation and legal action, while at the same time good, hard-working people are put out of work as a result of their actions.
"I as well as many of my co-workers hold them responsible and accountable for many of the jobs we have lost in the timber industry here in Montana and the western United States. They always talk about compromise, but as I have experienced and seen through the years, the only ones who must compromise are those of us who rely on our natural resources for our living and survival."
Reporter Sherry Devlin can be reached at 523-5268 or at sdevlin@missoulian.com.
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