Defenders Magazine

National Forest Giveaway

Bush administration policies undermine ecosystems and wildlife to benefit Big Timber

It should have come as no surprise this summer when President George W. Bush proposed to increase logging on public lands as a cure for wildfire. After all, the administration’s top official overseeing our national forests has spent nearly his entire career trying to saw down these same woodlands.

After 18 years as a lobbyist for Big Timber, Mark Rey now is the under secretary for natural resources and environment in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and he’s leading an administration attack on national forests and the wildlife that depends on them for survival.

Environmentalists are denouncing the plan as a giveaway to timber interests. They say it would do nothing to reduce the risk of wildfires but would degrade America’s forests. They point out that the Bush plan undermines efforts to prevent forest fires by clearing small trees and brush near communities to save property. The new plan would also bypass environmental protections to allow the timber industry to log profitable, large trees deep in our forests and would limit public appeals of logging projects.

The timber industry argues that decades of overregulation and lawsuits and too little cutting have left the nation’s forests vulnerable to catastrophic wildfire, and that the only way to fix the problem is to cut more trees. Conservationists say decades of overzealous fire suppression on public lands has disturbed the natural cycle of burning and regrowth in forests and has left forests dense with highly combustible undergrowth. But they insist that cutting large trees, suspending laws and reducing public input will not solve the problem.

“The Bush plan comes straight from corporate timber interests, which have yet to encounter a question to which more logging isn’t the answer," says Mark Shaffer, senior vice president for programs at Defenders of Wildlife. “Past logging of large, healthy, fire-resistant trees is a major reason some forests are full of fire-prone smaller trees and brushy understory."

Shaffer called on the U.S. Forest Service to help communities fire-proof homes and buildings and to reduce unnatural fuel loads near communities rather than “make matters worse by logging the healthiest trees."

Bush’s forest-fire plan is only the latest salvo by an administration seemingly bent on forest cutting. Rey is leading the fight to gut recently implemented federal protections known as the Roadless Initiative, which barred road-building and commercial clear-cutting on nearly 60 million acres of the country’s last remaining pristine wilderness. A record 2 million citizens supported the protections during a public comment period, but the administration has claimed the public wasn’t given enough input into their development. The measure has been suspended by court order. Some members of Congress are responding to the Bush administration’s attacks by working to make the Roadless Initiative law.

Yet another Rey rollback — which threatens even more forest land — is slipping under the radar screen so far. Rey is trying to cripple the National Forest Management Act. That long-standing law, which governs what activities are permitted in national forests, was enacted by Congress in 1976 to reform the Forest Service. Rey would strip the law’s wildlife protections, throwing bears, big cats, wolves and millions of other animals to the mercy of timber-industry profiteers, conservationists say.

The national forest system covers more than 191 million acres and comprises 155 national forests and 20 national grasslands. National forests contain more than 25 percent of the species at risk of extinction in this country and more intact populations of these rare species than any other federal land system.

Shortly after taking office, the administration suspended forest regulations opposed by the timber industry as too slanted towards wildlife and the environment, even though those rules had been developed by a distinguished committee of 13 forest and wildlife experts. This “Committee of Scientists" spent three years working on the regulations, traveling the country and gathering recommendations.

A draft of new Bush administration regulations only became public after a leak to the media a year ago. The administration proposals include:

• Eliminating the requirement that our national forests be managed so that viable populations of forest wildlife continue to exist.
• Excusing the Forest Service from obeying important environmental laws, including the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, that every other federal agency is required to follow.
• Seriously reducing the amount of public involvement and scientific review allowed in the forest planning process.
• Eliminating the requirement for scientific reviews of forest plans.
• Reducing significantly the public comment period on forest plan revisions.

“It’s clear that the Bush administration intends to bend the rules as far as possible in favor of the timber industry," says Defenders of Wildlife President Rodger Schlickeisen. “Protection of essential wildlife habitat would take a back seat to Mark Rey’s efforts to maximize timber cutting on public lands. That’s bad news for at-risk wildlife and would tilt the balance in an extreme direction in favor of timber interests."

Environmentalists can expect no better from Rey, who has dedicated his career to advancing the profit-making agenda of the timber industry. A long-time Washington insider, Rey has been the champion and the voice of the timber industry. He lobbied from 1976 to 1994 for the National Forest Products Association, the American Forest Resource Alliance and the American Forest and Paper Association — all groups whose sole purpose is to promote the timber industry.

From 1995 until he joined the Bush administration in 2001, Rey was a top aide for the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, working closely with Senators Larry Craig of Idaho and Frank Murkowski and Ted Stevens of Alaska to promote logging interests above all others.

In 1997, Rey was quoted by Sunset magazine as saying that clear-cut logging, while “not aesthetically uplifting" is “compatible with rain forest ecology."

What’s next from Rey? He wants to turn some of our national forests into “charter forests" run by special interests. Of course, under Rey’s plan, they wouldn’t have to comply with environmental laws.

Jeff Woods, web editor for Defenders of Wildlife, wrote about Interior Secretary Norton in the summer 2002 Defenders.