Wildfires stoke tensions over conservation policy

Associated Press ^ | August 13, 2002 | MATTHEW DALY

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The spate of wildfires this summer is inflaming more than just the Western landscape. Longtime allies are turning into adversaries as the fires stoke tensions between environmentalists and some normally supportive Democrats in Congress.

Environmentalists who had long sought a bill to protect old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest are now vowing to oppose it, accusing Senate Democrats of undercutting conservation in the name of wildfire prevention.

Republicans and representatives of the timber industry say it is environmentalists who have a credibility problem. The fires now raging in the West are helping build public support for more logging to thin overstocked forests after decades of fire suppression, they say.

Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and other Western senators are leading an effort to loosen federal restrictions that have allowed dry tinder to build up in the national forests, fueling the devastating blazes.

"You've got forests that don't look like forests anymore," Domenici said. "They're totally built up with undergrowth. You try to do something about it, you're in court - it takes forever. We want to change that and I think we're going to do it."

Among those caught in the shifting political winds is Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. A longtime friend of the environmental movement, Wyden now finds himself under attack from it because he's willing to allow increased logging in some areas to reduce the fire threat in exchange for GOP support of bill to ban timber harvesting in old-growth forests in western Oregon.

With much of his state on fire, Wyden was under pressure to do something, said Chris West, vice president of the American Forest Resource Council, a Portland-based timber group.

So Wyden agreed to allowing expedited thinning in dry areas east of the Cascades to win Republican support for his plan to ban logging in areas where trees are more than 120 years old. With a Republican-controlled House and a closely divided Senate such a compromise was essential for Wyden's old-growth bill to have a chance of becoming law, West said.

Jasmine Minbashian, coordinator of the Northwest Old Growth Campaign, called Wyden's proposal "somewhat shocking." Conservationists will not agree to a "divide and conquer approach" that sacrifices eastern trees in return for protection of older, western trees, she said.

Wyden is not alone among Senate Democrats in challenging the conventional environmentalist line that prohibitions on logging represent the best forest policy. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota moved quietly last month to exempt some areas of his home state from environmental constraints on tree cutting.

Daschle attached a rider to an emergency spending bill to allow some logging in areas of South Dakota's Black Hills National Forest. The measure waives key restrictions on forest thinning and blocks court challenges by logging opponents - a heresy the environmental movement fears will spread to forests throughout the West.

Republican lawmakers quickly seized on Daschle's measure, calling it a model for allowing speedy action on thinning other national forests.

Domenici and Republican Sens. Jon Kyl of Arizona and Larry Craig of Idaho have vowed to introduce legislation that would allow up to 24 million acres of federal timberland with high fire potential to be thinned without going through standard environmental reviews.

"If it can happen in South Dakota it should happen in all of the West," the three senators said in a statement.

Daschle, in a letter last month to Republican lawmakers, defended his measure, saying it was the product of months of negotiations that involved all sides, including local chapters of the Sierra Club, The Wilderness Society and other environmental groups.

"If Congress is ever to succeed in resolving the ongoing national debate over forest management ... it should foster more consensus-based decision-making like the one that produced the Black Hills agreement," Daschle wrote.

Some environmentalists are not convinced.

Measures similar to Daschle's could be used to bypass environmental laws "and log old-growth forests in the name of fire protection," said Joseph Vaile of the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center in Oregon. "It's pretty scary."

Those fears were exacerbated when Wyden and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., appeared at an Aug. 1 news conference with Domenici. Wyden did not speak in favor of the forest-thinning plan, but his presence - coupled with his proposal for expedited logging east of the Cascades - was troubling, Vaile said.

Wyden declined to be interviewed for this story. But his chief of staff, Josh Kardon, said his office was "a little surprised that some of the groups seem to prefer to clear-cut the senator's proposal instead of selectively thinning what they don't like."

"Unless you are willing to compromise," Kardon said, "you are resigned to sloganeering and accomplishing nothing."

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