Tuesday 14 August 2007
The next president will inherit a mess.
What does 2007 have in common with 1987? Both are times of ill-conceived rushes to pillage public lands by Republican administrations nearing their final days.
It must be noted that there are many differences between the Bush and Reagan administrations. For one thing, the latter now in some ways seems a model of competency and moderation compared to the alarming shambles we confront today.
But both have pulled out all stops in converting public assets into profits for political supporters. During the current administration, for example, vast tracts of public land have been consigned to intensive energy exploration and development with little consideration for avoiding environmental damage.
When it comes to management of public forests in the Pacific Northwest, the U.S. Forest Service under President Reagan regarded high harvest levels as its raison d'être. There was neither the disposition nor an established legal framework for anything other than managing forests so that private companies could cut them down.
Today, a generation of court decisions and a considerable change of heart in the Forest Service have combined to make harvests far slower than they were 20 years ago. In some instances it can be argued that this has resulted in the opposite extreme for forest management, with appropriate timber sales stalled for years at a time, damaging local economies in Oregon counties where most forest is federally owned. Logging levels in the Pacific Northwest have declined by more than 90 percent since the late 1980s.
Even so, a sudden spurt in National Forest harvest preparations is certain to raise legitimate concerns. Having cut a deal with the timber industry, the Bush Forest Service is now flush with funds for logging, even while money remains too tight to maintain existing roads and recreational facilities.
A large part of the reason harvests have failed to reach targets set by the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan is that President Bush and Congress failed to give the Forest Service enough money to perform all its many jobs. Public foresters shouldn't have to pick which parts of their mission to neglect.
Among many other messes left for the next president, Northwest forests are likely to be pretty far down the list. But solid leadership and a new forest summit conference are the minimum of what is needed to get forest management back on track. We shouldn't have to have this same discussion in 2027.
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