Save
the Forest
Winter
2002/03
Forest plans may soon be developed without the creation of environmental impact statements, thanks to a new proposal by the Bush Administration.
Under the guise of simply changing federal regulations implementing the National Forest Management Act (NFMA), the plan is to eliminate or seriously weaken vital environmental protections that apply to all of our national forests. These protections safeguard our drinking water by preserving vital watersheds, protect habitat for nearly 3,000 species of wildlife and assure that our forests remain American treasures for future generations.
Under the proposed rule, forest plans could be adopted and revised without preparing an environmental impact statement — leaving us with only minimum information about the effects of the proposals.
The rule also weakens the requirements for maintaining viable populations of wildlife. It would also weaken standards, downgrading language like “shall” and “must” to “should.” These newer standards give total discretion to the land manager, reducing scientific and public input.
The Forest Service is accepting public comments until April 7, 2003. Tell the administration not to weaken NFMA regulations and listen to the scientists, not the timber industry. Send an official comment letter by mail, email or fax.
USDA FS Planning Rule, Content Analysis Team, PO Box 8359, Missoula, MT 59807. Email: Planning_rule@fs.fed.us Fax Planning Rule Comments at 406-329-3556.
A sample letter is available from adelek@alltel.net or kate.smolski@sierraclub.org.
The White County Chamber of Commerce received a new grant to help preserve and restore tree cover in White County. The aim of the grant is to let people know that they can have development without destroying trees, and to provide workshops on tree-friendly building techniques. That’s the job of the “Good Treescaping” Committee, a group of local volunteers. Joanne Steele is a member of the committee.
This is a long-term project that should make the county a more attractive place for tourism and business. Other impacts could be enhancing water quality and increasing water supply. Tree cover cools the environment on hot, humid summer days and improves air quality.
Trees are essential for a clean environment — and there are figures to prove it.
One 25-foot tree reduces annual energy cost for a typical residence by 8 to 12%, producing an average $10 gain per month.
Proper tree plantings around buildings can slow winter winds and reduce annual heating cost by 4 to 22%.
One
tree saves annually:
Air conditioning $75
Wildlife shelter $75
Air pollution reduction $50
Total: $200 times 50 years of tree life = $10,000.
Trees help maintain watersheds. One 32-foot tree is estimated to intercept rainfall, reducing runoff by 327 gallons. Without trees, heavy rains can wash soil into streams and rivers, killing fish and aquatic life.
Two healthy 32 foot trees produce enough oxygen to supply one person’s oxygen needs each year. And they absorb carbon dioxide.
Committee members attended a seminar, “Building with Trees,” conducted by the National Arbor Day Foundation. Others attending were the past president of the regional Homebuilders’ Association, the White County Planner, and a member of the Planning Commission, who learned methods of landscape architecture, pruning and protecting tree roots, and development design.
The Committee relies heavily on research by the University of Georgia’s School of Forestry and the Georgia Forestry Commission’s Urban and Community Forestry Program. The local representative of the Georgia Forestry Commission, Gary White, shares his specialized knowledge, as will Michael Harris, UGA Cooperative Extension Service representative.
The Committee will work with developer Barry Blalock, managing partner of Blue Creek Partners, to create model lots in the upcoming Laceola development near Yonah Mountain. An urban forester has been hired to work with the Committee and the developer to map existing tree cover and create a plan to show how the area can be developed to conserve forest cover. The plan will include provisions for maintaining newly planted trees as well as scientific techniques for protecting existing trees. So far the 300 site plan on 1000 acres leaves 150 foot or more buffers on mountain creeks. Building a lake on Blue Creek is also in the development plan.
The Committee works with the cities of Cleveland and Helen to help them become recognized “Tree Cities” by the National Arbor Day Foundation. Tree city status requires the cities to develop and maintain tree boards and tree ordinances. Helen has been established as a “Tree City.”
Check out the new website which has practical ways to protect trees during construction, how to select construction-tolerant trees, and how to plant and care for trees: www.snca.org/ecc/trees/index.html.
To learn more about the Good Tree-Scaping Committee, call Ted Doll at 878-2526 or Sam Barton at 865-0988.
Forest
Sales Lose Money
Winter
2000/1
The feds lost $126 million from logging on national forests in 1998, according to a draft report released March 8 by the U.S. Forest Service.
The agency spent $672 million to administer timber sales that generated only $546 million in revenue. The Tongass National Forest in Alaska led the list of money losers. It cost $35.6 million to run the forest’s timber program in 1998, with returns of only $6.5 million.
A “Green Scissors” report by Friends of the Earth, Taxpayers for Common Sense, and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group uncovered 74 wasteful government programs that, if cut, would save a staggering $55 billion a year.
-- Paula Dobbyn, March 7, Anchorage Daily News, www.tompaine.com/features/2001/03/06/3.html.
Forest
Roads
Winter
1999/2000
Many of us went to a long series of Forest Service meetings to learn and discuss proposed changes in the national forest. It was a shock to see the Atlanta Constitution editorial on Jan. 24 chastise DNR personnel for interfering in the public comment process by writing letters to the newspaper opposing wilderness designation.
These personnel did not first seek approval from the Dept. of Natural Resources. They attended public meetings in uniform and spoke out, in opposition to citizens, while they were supposed to support all the public.
Although the wilderness proposal is for only 48,000 acres out of 634,000 acres open to road building in the Chattahoochee National Forest, or 7.5%, they apparently thought it wrong to lose any wildlife openings in even that small area.
Despite these efforts to influence policy, roadbuilding in national forests will become much more difficult if a policy proposed on March 2 is adopted. This policy would shift emphasis from building new roads to maintenance and reconstruction of existing roads.
The presence of roads is hard on wildlife, and construction makes it even harder for some species to survive.
Under the proposal each national forest will work with the public to identify heavily used roads that require maintenance, and roads that are unused or environmentally damaging that can be decommissioned. When the roads break down they can send landslides into streams.
The proposal is not a ban on roadbuilding but ŗthe public has rightfully questioned the logic of building new roads when the Forest Service is inadequately funded to maintain its existing road system,˛ said USFS Chief Bombeck. The Sierra Club agrees.
A 60-day
comment period began March 3.Comments may be mailed to USDA Forest Service
CAET, Attn: Roads, PO Box 22300, Salt Lake City UT 84122. Fax 801- 517-1021.
email: roads/wo_caet-slc@fs.fed.us.
-- Environmental News Service 3/2/00
Forest
Plan
Spring
2000
Forestry meetings seem to go on and on, but there is an important one coming up on the roadless area proposals. More than half our National Forests have already been lost due to clearcut logging, oil and gas development, mining, road construction, and unrestricted off-road vehicle use.
The newest version of the Forest Service plan calls for varying amounts of logging, off-road vehicle use, and mining, as they are allowed today. Because of the huge backlog of road maintenance projects, no new roads will be built in inventories roadless areas but local managers would evaluate these areas and “determine whether and how to protect them in the context of multiple-use objectives.”
In the Tongass National Forest the decision on whether to prohibit new roads in inventoried roadless areas would be postponed until April 2004. In the meantime, we can assume that roads would be built, oil drilling permitted, and off-road vehicles permitted.
What is not covered, either locally or in the Tongass, are the non-inventoried unroaded areas. Environmentalists point to the thousands of acres in Georgia available right now for hunting, fishing and recreation, with plentiful road access. These roads would continue to be maintained.
A recent survey showed that 79% of American voters support limiting the use of off-road vehicles to designated routes. “People aren’t allowed to tear across their neighboršs lawns or city parks,” says Jerry Greenberg of The Wilderness Society. “They shouldn’t be allowed to rip up public lands that belong to all Americans, especially when there are thousands of miles on public lands already open for use by dirt bikes and other ORVs.”
Personal, emotional descriptions of hiking through unspoiled and spoiled wilderness in the Dawson Forest and Toccoa District are in the Spring 2000 issue of GFW Forest News. Contact Georgia Forest Watch at 4 River St., Suite C, Ellijay 30540.
For North Georgians, the basic issue should be the watershed, the unique, irreplaceable source of our drinking water, now under heavy pressure from logging, mining, destructive recreation like off-road vehicles and the Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Resources Division.
Comments on the Forest Service plan are due by July 17 to: USDA Forest Service-CAET, Attn: Roadless Area Conservation Proposed Rule, PO Box 221090, Salt Lake City, UT 84122. Fax 877-703-2494. e-mail www.roadless.fs.fed.us.
There will be a comment meeting on June 21 at 6 PM at Gainesville College. For information visit www.saveourenvironment.net or write Save Our Environment Coalition, PO Box 96085, Washington DC 20090-6085.
Final decision makers are our congressional representatives, who are receiving more mail from loggers than from tree huggers. Call them at 202-224-3121 or call ACE for their addresses.
Money
Grows on Trees
Winter
2000/1
National forests are ten times more valuable if used for recreation and to protect wildlife and water quality than they are if used for logging, mining and grazing, according to a report commissioned by the Sierra Club and released last September.
Measured by these new standards, the forests are worth $234 billion and generate 2.9 million sustainable jobs, found the report, which was prepared by ECONorthwest, an economic consulting firm.
In contrast, logging, mining and grazing on national forest land are worth just $23 billion and provide 407,000 jobs. “Leaving trees standing in most cases can contribute far more to local, state, and national economies than logging,” said Ernie Niemi, a coauthor of the report.
-- John Hughes, San Francisco Chronicle/Examiner, Associated Press, 8/29/00.
Forest
Lies
Spring
2000
The Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility newsletter, PEER Review, offers a list of forest industry phrases used to describe the process of clearcutting: “forest utilization,” “tree density reduction,” “re-establishing even-age stands” “landscape management,” “enhancing landscape diversity,” “shade intolerant tree regeneration,” and “temporary meadow.”
— Earth Island Journal, Summer 2000.
Logging
Violations
Fall
1999
Who's the most feared environmentalist in the Pacific Northwest? A Reagan-appointed federal judge, William Dwyer. Time and again, this Seattle judge has come down hard on the federal government for trampling over the law.
On Aug. 2 he issued a blistering ruling that imposed a temporary injunction on nine timber sales because the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management had failed to survey for more than 70 rare species prior to approving logging plans in their habitat. Another 150 pending sales could be stopped.
The Forest Service responded by suspending all timber sales in spotted owl forests, a move that outraged the timber industry and its allies in Congress. Sen. Slade Gorton (R-WA) has drafted legislation to overturn the judge's ruling. The Senator is aided by two Democratic senators of the region, Patty Murray and Ron Wyden, and by White House Chief of Staff John Podesta.
"This injunction won't last long," said Hermath of the Native Forest Council. "If we want to keep the spotted owl and the thousand or so other critters that live in ancient forests, we're going to have to stop logging. Period."
-- Jeffrey St. Clair, "Court of Last Resort," In These Times, Sept. 1999.
On Sept. 29
in Illinois, another federal judge,
J. Phil Gilbert, ruled that the U.S. Forest Service had acted illegally in
allowing timber sales under a loophole known as "categorical exclusion."
He issued an injunction against the entire National Forest system -- a first.
It seems that the Forest Service had chopped up the timber sale into parcels small enough to get them out from under NEPA regulations.
-- Environmental News Service, Oct. 5, 1999.
Forest
Bills
Fall
1999
In recent years the U.S. Forest Service has let up on the logging that subsidizes the timber industry at the expense of taxpayers. In counties with national forests, school systems now receive 25% of the money that timber companies pay the Forest Service to clear-cut.
One bill now in Congress, HR 2389, would require increasing logging and thereby provide more funds for schools. Another bill, HR 2868, takes a different approach. It would send a fixed amount (about $200 million more than the present) to county schools each year, thus removing the incentive to increase logging. Congressman Nathan Deal supports HR 2389 which would increase logging.
— Emily Calhoun, “How do you want forests managed?” Gainesville Times, Nov. 17, 1999.
A third forest bill, HR 1396, would end commercial logging on public lands. “The federal timber sale program subsidizes logging companies to clear-cut our national forests at a net loss to U.S. taxpayers of over $1 billion each year,” said John Talberth, executive director of the National Forest Protection Alliance. “We’re actually paying wealthy corporations to destroy Americašs natural heritage.”
— NFPA, 505-986-1163 or 515-285-8266.
To learn more about National Forest policies, come to Forest Service presentations on Nov. 8 or 9 at Gainesville Collegešs Continuing Education Building, from 4 to 8 PM. And then let your representatives know where you stand. Call the Congressional switchboard at 202-224-3121.
