Trump administration wants to speed up forest thinning
Trump administration wants to speed up forest thinning
20 November 2018
Published by https://www.redding.com/
USA – With California still going through its deadliest and most destructive wildland fire season in history, Trump administration officials announced Tuesday plans to expand programs that would allow more tree thinning and logging on federal land.
Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said he plans to ask Congress to expand the “Good Neighbor” program that lets federal officials enter into agreements with states and tribes on forest management programs.
He also plans to ask Congress to expand categorical exclusion programs for forests at risk for disease and insect infestation. The program would allow federal land managers to more quickly harvest trees in certain areas at risk of disease and removing hazard trees that pose a risk to public safety.
Perdue and Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke announced the plans during a conference call with reporters Tuesday.
Perdue noted this year there have been more forest fire related deaths this year than from hurricanes and tornadoes.
“We can do something about these disasters,” Perdue said, referring to forest fires that have killed 77 people during the Camp Fire in Paradise and another eight during the Carr Fire in Shasta and Trinity counties.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Zinke said. “It was like a flame thrower of embers.”
The National Fire Interagency Center estimated the cost to fight the Camp Fire alone at $82.2 million — and rising.
Both Trump administration officials said they want to see more forest thinning to prevent fires blazes like the Camp Fire.
Parker Williams, a spokesman for U.S. Rep Doug LaMalfa, R-Richvale, said the congressman has supported past proposals to increase the amount of thinning and logging in national forests.
“I think that is something he would definitely be supportive of,” Williams said of the two proposals floated Tuesday.
Andrea Howell, a Sierra Pacific Industries spokeswoman, said the company has enough capacity at its mills to handle more timber sent to its mills from trees killed on acreage the company owns in Northern California.
The forest products industry has been shrinking since the early 1990s, leaving the business with a diminished workforce and few mills, he said.
At one time California produced about 4.5 million board feet of timber annually. That has shrunk to about 1.5 million board-feet a year, Gordon said.
There are also few biomass plants available to burn forest slash, which is used to generate electricity, he said.
The large industrial timber companies such as Weyerhaeuser and Georgia Pacific have left the state. The remaining large timber companies are generally owned by families or family trusts, such as Sierra Pacific and Shasta Forest Timberlands, both based in Shasta County.
“There is some capacity left in our current private industry, but there’s not a lot,” Gordon said.
“We expect it will take some time to ramp-up and implement this desired pace and scale,” Howell said. “If there is a sustained commitment from the these federal agencies, SPI and the rest of the industry would invest in the infrastructure needed to meet the increased supply.”
It likely will take many years to clean out forests that have grown thick with underbrush and young trees, Zinke said.
“This is going to take years. We didn’t get here overnight,” Zinke said.
However, Denise Boggs, executive director of the Conservation Congress, said forest thinning will not make forests safer or make wildfires less dangerous. Forest thinning is another word for logging, which she said does not make forests more fire resistant.
Old growth forests, which have not been logged, are typically healthier than logged forests, with fewer trees and less underbrush, she said.
Old-growth forests are also more shaded, greener and wetter, which is in contrast to the dry and brush-choked forests found in most logged areas, she said.
Drought, wind, dry fuels and climate change were more to blame than overgrown forests, she said. Thinning of brush around trees only works in wildland areas around communities, she said.
The Camp Fire and others like it this past summer were made catastrophic by conditions created by climate change, she said.
“These are mega fires, and they are climate driven,” she said.
Rather than blame forest management for the Camp Fire, Boggs said land planners need to stop letting people build in wildfire prone areas.
“City and county planners need to quit approving subdivisions in these wildland-urban interface areas,” she said.
Zinke blamed the lack of forest thinning on environmental groups that sue the federal government to stop logging and thinning operations.
“Every time there is a thinning project, who is suing?” Zinke said. “Lawsuit after lawsuit by, yes, the radical environmental groups that would rather burn down an entire forest than thin a single tree. So yes, I do lay it at their feet.”
Boggs, however, said lawsuits are only filed when the forest service and other federal agencies don’t follow the law.
“Ryan Zinke is a liar,” Boggs said. She said there are few lawsuits filed compared to the number of thinning and logging operations annually on national forests.
“If environmental groups win (a lawsuit) that means we held government accountable to follow the law,” Boggs said. “If the forest service followed the law, then we wouldn’t be filing lawsuits.”
