In December, President Bush signed into law the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003. Purporting to reduce buildups of forest undergrowth, dead and diseased trees and other “hazardous fuels” threatening communities and watersheds, this legislation undermines the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and strips other environmental protections from national forests and BLM lands. With only minimal restrictions, this act gives the timber industry the go-ahead to log in roadless areas and in endangered species habitat and to harvest large, healthy trees, all under the guise of “treating” hazardous fuels.

For example, fuel-reduction projects are directed on “Federal land on which windthrow or blowdown, ice storm damage, the existence of an epidemic of disease or insects…poses a significant threat.” This provision offers logging companies wide-ranging access to forests, except for specifically excluded Wilderness and Wilderness Study Areas. Similarly, although the act encourages federal land managers to maximize retention of large trees, they need only do so “to the extent that the [large] trees promote fire-resilient stands.” (Emphasis added.)

After encouraging fuel reduction (read logging) in a variety of settings, the act guts the checks and balances to agency decisionmaking that NEPA and administrative review processes provide in this context. Specifically, the act limits the consideration of alternatives in environmental assessments or environmental impact statements for hazardous-fuel reduction projects. It also removes the opportunity for administrative appeals following a final decision on authorized hazardous-fuel reduction projects on U.S. Forest Service lands. Instead, it forces citizens to undertake costly legal actions to compel agencies to comply with national environmental laws and their own regulations.

In keeping with this administration’s desire to elevate energy development on public lands above the multiple other uses and resources highly valued by citizens, this act effectively raises forest-fire prevention to the dominant management consideration where trees exist. Other resources, such as wildlife, air and water quality, recreation and aesthetic values, have been relegated to secondary consideration.

This is not to say that the act is an unmitigated disaster. While a number of its provisions raise real cause for alarm, one positive step is that at least 50% of the funds appropriated under the hazardous-fuel reduction section of the act must be spent on the wildland-urban interface, where fire threats are greatest. Earlier versions of the bill did not contain this provision. Ironically, 90% of the lands burned by the recent California wildfires, which provided the final impetus to pass this bill, were not even forest lands; they were shrublands dominated by head-high brush, grass and chaparral. Further, almost two-thirds of the lands burned in these fires weren’t public lands. Consequently, they are beyond the reach of the act. In fact, if community protection were the true goal of this legislation it should have addressed fuel reduction on non-federal lands. According to one U.S. Forest Service analysis, 92% of forested lands that present a risk to communities are non-federal.

In sum, the Healthy Forests Restoration Act is merely the latest in a series of euphemistically titled administration initiatives that promote the interests of big business at the expense of the public good. Clearly, forest fires are a genuine concern that must be addressed. Yet, as with the energy bill, while the goal is supportable, the means by which it will be achieved are disturbingly detached from the real cause of the problem.