Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: More smoke than fire

Tuesday, May 20, 2003 | 8:59 a.m.

SOMETIME TODAY the U.S. House of Representatives will consider H.R. 1904. The bill introduced by Rep. Scott McInnis, R-Colo., purports to reduce the risks of wildfires. Several environmental groups on Monday issued a joint statement, challenging the bill as follows:

"The McInnis bill, like the Bush administration's so-called Healthy Forests initiative, does not focus scarce federal funding and resources where they would do the most good: in the Community Protection Zone adjacent to at-risk communities. Instead, the bill would continue to allow the Forest Service and Department of Interior to conduct misguided logging projects deep in the backcountry in the name of 'fuel reduction.' An alternative proposal introduced by Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., would require that necessary resources are focused on responsible fuel reduction projects immediately around communities.

" 'Fire season is just around the corner, but Rep. McInnis continues to overlook the very communities that need help,' said Mike Francis, Director of the National Forest Program at The Wilderness Society. 'In fact, his plans would provide more help to timber companies than to fire threatened and cash-starved communities.' "

Much of the McInnis bill is based on the belief that past efforts to clean up the fuel for fires have been stifled by citizens and environmental groups challenging such efforts. Why so many of his colleagues buy into this nonsense is difficult to understand. Two General Accounting Office studies and one university study show that charge is untrue. In other words, the Bush administration and McInnis point fingers at citizen participation and not outdated Forest Service policies as being the culprit. The huge forest fires of 2000 and 2002 demanded some reasonable explanations, which didn't make the federal agencies look very good.

A paper by Dr. Jacqueline Vaughn, of the Department of Political Science at Northern Arizona University, looked at the political pressures in a summary:

"As a result, by 2003, Congress and the Forest Service were proposing new legislation and regulatory changes that would repeal or severely restrict the use of administrative appeals of Forest Service projects. By framing the problem as being caused by the actions of over zealous or misguided environmental groups who misused the process, policy makers were able to recast the agenda in terms more to their liking, and potentially, to negatively affect the perception of environmental organizations in the larger natural resources debate."

So what did the study conducted by the Ecological Restoration Institute at Northern Arizona University find?

The Wilderness Society, in a Wildfire Fact sheet, adds more reasons to question the basis for H.R. 1904.

"An August 31, 2001 General Accounting Office Report demonstrated that over 99 percent of fuel reduction projects proposed by the Forest Service for fiscal year 2001 went through without appeal, and none were litigated. The Forest Service proposed implementing 1,671 hazardous fuel reduction projects for that year. Of those, only 20 (about one percent) had been appealed by ANY interested party, including recreation groups, conservationists, industry interests or individuals."

Congress should dump the McInnis bill and promote a bill that protects at-risk communities in and near U.S. Forest lands. This can be accomplished by using studies already completed.