The Bush administration announced a relaxation in federal logging guidelines Wednesday, allowing for swifter land development in national forests and stoking a furor among environmental activists who were angered last week by the administration’s decision to loosen air pollution controls.
The rule changes would clear the way for national forest managers to move forward with logging and commercial development without first conducting environmental impact studies.
“The national forests and grasslands are for everyone,” said Sally Collins, associate chief of the National Forest Service, explaining the change. “The proposed rule is designed to more effectively involve the public.”
According to the Forest Service, the new regulations would simply give managers greater leeway in whether and how to conduct environmental impact studies before they revise or develop a forest’s 15-year management plan. It also would give them several options in meeting plant and animal protection requirements.
Forest Service officials, billing the changes as simpler and more efficient, said reviews would take about two years to conduct, compared to the seven years now. The new regulations could take effect after a three-month public comment period.
Administration officials say the current planning process imposes wasteful requirements that divert resources from the outdoors. Under the new system, public input would be restricted, and form letters and preprinted postcards would be disregarded.
Environmental activists say the changes radically depart from standards that have been in place for 25 years. Many of the managers of the 155 national forests, environmentalists say, are close to loggers and other developers in their region, and now they will not have to consult with independent scientists before allowing more development.
Conservationists also said they fear that forest managers, if given the option of avoiding environmental studies, would do so simply to escape the work.
“What the Bush administration is proposing now is not just a rewrite or a tweaking of what the Clinton administration proposed,” said Rodger Schlickeisen, a spokesman for the environmental group Defenders of Wildlife. “Rather, it is a wholesale rollback of the environmental regulations that have pertained to national forests” since 1976.
Eight Democrats in the Senate and six in the House wrote a letter to Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth on Wednesday expressing concern that the changes would significantly weaken the National Forest Management Act, which governs how national forests are operated, and would bode poorly for preservation.
“We do not understand why your agency has released a draft rule that eliminates any assurance of protection for fish and wildlife and their habitat,” the letter says. It goes on to question the wisdom behind weakening the requirements for environmental studies, independent scientific review of resource management plans, and public input.
Tom Partin, president of the American Forest Resource Council, an organization representing forest product manufacturers and forest landowners, said the decision to revamp logging rules is key to improving land management and is long overdue.
“We needed some change in the regulations to better deal with the forest health crisis that we have in our national forests and public lands,” Partin said.
He said the rules that have been in place are cumbersome and don’t adequately address problems such as the threat of forest fires near communities or trees sickened by insects and disease.
“We still have all of the checks and balances we’ve had in the past,” Partin said. “People would still have the ability to comment; people would still have the ability to appeal.”
Environmental advocates said the Forest Service merely bowed to industry wishes.
“Not surprisingly, today’s changes to the National Forest Management Act reflect several of those desires from the timber industry,” said Annie Strickler, a spokeswoman for the Sierra Club. “So it’s hard to say that the Bush administration is doing this with the best interest of the American people in mind.”
Opponents of the changes also said the administration had waited for Congress to leave Washington and for the Thanksgiving holiday to overshadow the announcement.
“They have very carefully chosen the timing, obviously, to release these,” Schlickeisen said. “There is a very clever strategy here. They’re trying to lowball this as much as they can, and we fully expect that there will be more rollbacks coming.”
