By Mike Soraghan
The Denver Post
Copyright 2006 The Denver Post
All Rights Reserved
WASHINGTON, D.C. — With fire season underway in the West, Congress is looking at speeding up salvage logging in burned stands of timber on public lands by limiting environmental reviews.
The timber industry and the Bush administration say too many acres of fire-damaged trees have been left to rot while the U.S. Forest Service does environmental reviews or fights off lawsuits by conservation groups.
“In many cases, active management can restore a forest faster than letting nature take its course,” said Mark Rey, an agriculture undersecretary who oversees the Forest Service.
So, the administration is backing the concept behind a bill sponsored by Reps. Greg Walden, R- Ore., and Brian Baird, D-Wash., that streamlines environmental procedures to get chain saws into burned or storm- damaged forests faster.
But some caution against the rush to log burned forests, saying fire is a natural part of the landscape.
“What’s being said is you’ve got to cut the forest to save the forest,” Oregon state Sen. Charlie Ringo, a Democrat, said at a Senate forestry subcommittee hearing on the bill Wednesday.
Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., who attended the hearing, said the problem isn’t with environmental reviews but with the Forest Service’s lack of money.
The bill, which passed the House in May, would give public-land agencies 30 days after a catastrophe to come up with a logging plan, followed by a 90-day public comment period.