President Bush’s Fire Fighting Policy

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• GWEN IFILL:

  For more on the pros and cons of the president's proposal, I'm joined by Linda Lance, vice president of public policy for the Wilderness Society; and Terry Anderson, executive director of the Political Economy Research Center, an institute that promotes market approaches to environmental problems. Terry Anderson, what's wrong with the plan we have now in place, why is something new needed?

• TERRY ANDERSON:

  Main problem we have right now is that we have had political management of our forests for far too long. That political management has stood in the way of sound logging practices, where they are appropriate. It has stifled the ability of the Forest Service to really do the kind of thinning that the president is proposing now.

  For example, 100 percent of all of the fuel reduction plans in the northern division, that's Montana and northern Idaho, have been put on appeal and delayed for up to five years. Throughout the national forest, 48 percent have been appealed. Of those appeals 90 percent are overturned but it creates a huge cost to the taxpayer and a huge burden to the forests it tries to manage the forest and undertake fuel reduction.

• GWEN IFILL:

  When you say political management that's like saying mistakes were made, who is politically managing this?

• TERRY ANDERSON:

  Well, I think for a long while now the environmental community, which basically would prefer no logging on all national forests, has been in the driver's seat. It has used the appeals process to slow down any of the management plans put forward by the Forest Service.

  It has hidden behind the GAO report, which suggests that this appeals process is not delaying things but as the author of that report put it, the environmental community is misrepresenting the impact of appeals. And I must say on the other side, I think that for a while the logging interests had their way and what we have seen is the political pendulum swinging back and forth. And I think the Bush administration is making some effort at least find some balance by not simply opening the forest to old growth logging, but sensibly managing those forest.

• GWEN IFILL:

  Linda Lance do you feel like you'd been in the driver seat?

• LINDA LANCE:

  I was just feeling very powerful as he were talking and I wish we were as powerful as he suggests. What has actually been happening I think in recent years is there has been a lot more agreement on this issue in the past than appears from the president's speech today.

  And, as Mr. Anderson suggested, the environmental community, the administration, including the Secretaries of Agriculture and Interior, the governors in the western states, state and local communities, and the wilderness Society, joined together on a collaborative plan for dealing with wildfire and particularly risks to communities — and I have it with me right here. And this was really a historic effort because it was true collaboration on all these people with different points of views going in and it's very specific and detailed about what you need to do in these forests to deal with wildfire risks and protect communities.

• GWEN IFILL:

  Among other things which you agree with on the Bush Administration is that there ought to be more thinning of some kind of growth- you disagree of which kind of growth should be thinned and where it should happen. You agree that there should be some getting rid of the underbrush, the fuel that starts big fires or keeps big fires going. Why does there seem to be such a divergence of opinion if you agree on basically what needs to be done?

• LINDA LANCE:

  Well, that's the thing that's troubling to us about what the president said today, because we thought that there was real progress being made and that the thinning that needs to be done to protect people and their homes could be well underway. We all agree that that's what needs to be done that that should be the first priority. The environmental community does not oppose thinning for protection of the public and communities from fire.

• GWEN IFILL:

  How about the challenges, the red tape the president talked about today that Mr. Anderson just alluded to?

• LINDA LANCE:

  Yeah I think there is a lot of myth that's grown up around the ability of the environmental community to tie this up. That hasn't happened.

• LINDA LANCE:

  What's really happened in terms of what is the first priority of protecting people and their homes, the Forest Service has not committed its full resources to that kind of work. In fact, in 2001 only a third of the acreage that the Forest Service will clear is in areas around communities even though this plan and our organization certainly agree that that's the first priority.

• GWEN IFILL:

  Mr. Anderson is the effort going on now to kind of curb the future spread of fires, is it focused in residential areas or in the areas where woodland meets residential areas, or is it focused further out?

• TERRY ANDERSON:

  Well, the problem is that it hasn't been focused anywhere. Again, I repeat that most of the thinning efforts have been stifled through the appeals process and they haven't progressed in the way that they should have in the last five to ten years.

  I think the environmental community is saying, we'll let them progress on that urban forest interface, but that's not the only place that this needs to be done. There are many, many forests that need to be thinned and that includes cutting larger trees not just underbrush, and if that doesn't happen we're going to see major threats to environmental habitat that is important for endangered species.

  And I think that, again, this administration is proposing to try to remove the hurdled that are put in the way. I should also add that one of the things that President Bush has suggested is, that we need to think about long term stewardship contracts. And we have not thought long term about how we manage our forest.

• GWEN IFILL:

  What does that mean, stewardship contracts?

• TERRY ANDERSON:

  Well, it means that the Forest Service would work with environmental groups and with logging companies to manage the forest for a longer term, give the logging companies the incentive to put in the appropriate kind of sawmills to deal with the smaller timber that's now coming off that needs to come off if they're being thinned; give the companies an incentive to work with the Forest Service providing a real sustainable flow of logs.

  That sustainable flow of logs has not occurred since the mid 1980s and it's not just a matter of those logs flowing; it's a matter of thinning those trees, utilizing the trees that are thinned in a productive way and in the process slowing down the kind of wildfires that we have experienced.

• GWEN IFILL:

  Let's translate a little bit for people who aren't really up-to-date every day on forest policy about some of this.

  The president among other things, Linda Lance, said today that he thinks there has to be some mix of larger log, old growth trees taken along with the new growth trees as a way of giving some incentive, I guess, to the timber industry to do the work and to finance this work. Is that something you disagree with?

• LINDA LANCE:

  Well again I think there is a myth — the environmental community is not opposed to all commercial timber cutting either. But the unfortunate thing that the president did today is he moved beyond this plan, which his administration had agreed to and virtually everyone who's interested in this had agreed to.

  The Forest Service has never followed the priority set in the plan, which is to start with clearing around communities and protecting people and their homes. But what he did today was he walked away from this plan. He moved beyond it and he said even though this plan explicitly says you need to do these things in order to protect communities but in order to do that you do not need to change any existing laws and regulations.

  Everyone who worked on this — including the administration — agreed to that. Today the president changed his mind on that and I think unfortunately is taking the opportunity presented by everyone's legitimate concern about protecting communities from fire and our serious concern, that is our first priority, and use that opportunity to further another agenda.

• GWEN IFILL:

  Mr. Anderson, do you think that, in fact, laws and regulations need to be changed in order for this to move forward?

• TERRY ANDERSON:

  Absolutely. They need to be changed. That doesn't mean that we need to do an end run. Mr. Daschle added a rider to legislation, which did an end run around the existing regulations. That's not the appropriate approach. What the president is suggesting now is changing the regulations and laws so that we can expedite the kind of thinning and logging operations that need to take place, if we're going to truly reduce the fuel loads in the western forest. Without those changes, without regulatory and legislative changes we will have business as usual, which means more appeals, more red tape and more wildfires.

• GWEN IFILL:

  Response, Ms. Lance?

• LINDA LANCE:

  I think again this is focusing on the wrong thing. We have an agreement among everyone involved to go ahead and do the kind of thinning that needs to be done to protect communities and the president seems to have picked an unnecessary fight, because everyone agreed that you don't need to change these laws and regulations.

  And I just wanted to address Mr. Anderson's statement about the appeals tying this all up. He doesn't like to talk about the General Accounting Office report and he's dismissive of it, but this is an arm of Congress that is nonpartisan and unbiased and they issued a report.

  They were asked by members of Congress to look at this issue and whether appeals were tying up the ability of the Forest Service do clear away hazardous fuels and prevent fire and they said in the year 2001 a little over 1% of the fuel reduction projects were appealed. That's all.

  And you need to keep in mind — think about this there are different kinds of projects but the fuel reduction project as opposed to the big commercial timber projects a little over 1% were appealed last year. So it is simply a myth to suggest that that's the problem. The problem in part is that the Forest Service hasn't been working in these areas.

• GWEN IFILL:

  I'm afraid we're out of time. We're going to have to disagree about the numbers. Mr. Anderson and Ms. Lance, thank you very much.

• LINDA LANCE:

  Thank you.

• TERRY ANDERSON:

  Thank you.