- The Bush administration is asking Congress to ease environmental
laws so 10 million acres of overgrown federal forests can be thinned more
rapidly to reduce wildfires.
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- At the same time, the administration is quietly mapping
a far more ambitious plan that would bypass Congress: changing agency procedures
so such projects can proceed on 190 million acres with far less environmental
scrutiny than is now required.
''If you balance the short-term impacts of doing this work against the
long-term effects of catastrophic fire, the net environmental impact is
favorable,'' says Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey, a former lobbyist
for the timber industry.
The administration strategy, still being fine-tuned, would involve an array
of administrative changes to skirt some requirements of federal environmental
laws. The result: Thinning projects wouldn't be subject to reviews gauging
their environmental impact; citizens would have less opportunity to comment;
and there would be fewer studies of the potential harm to endangered species.
The goal of the legislative and administrative plans is what President
Bush last month called a more ''common sense'' approach to protecting vast
stretches of forest. Many of those woodlands have become choked with brush
and small trees that act as kindling.
Fires have burned about 6.4 million acres this year, about double the 10-year
average for this point in the season.
Legislators in the House and Senate are separately pushing proposals that
would accomplish many of the administration's goals.
Many conservationists say that short-circuiting fundamental environmental
laws would cater to the timber industry and result in widespread abuses:
commercial logging of large, valuable trees instead of brush and smaller
trees that feed fires; thinning projects deep in the woods rather than
near communities at risk; and excessive road building in sensitive wildlife
habitats.
Last week, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman and Interior Secretary Gale
Norton proposed legislation that would effectively exempt thinning projects
from the National Environmental Policy Act. That 1969 law requires the
government to study the environmental impact of its actions and involve
the public in decision-making.
The proposed legislation also would prohibit judges from temporarily blocking
thinning projects that are being challenged in court. That could allow
the Forest Service and other agencies to complete tree-cutting projects
before legal challenges are fully heard.
The legislation envisions such policies on only 10 million acres of forests.
The administrative changes being developed would apply to all 190 million
acres the government classifies as at risk of fire. Most of that land,
a combination of federal, state and private acreage, is in the West.
''It's breathtaking,'' says Chris Wood, public lands director for the conservation
group Trout Unlimited. ''It's essentially a wholesale revision of . . .
the most comprehensive network of environmental laws in the world.''
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