July 28, 2002

Editorial www.missoulian.com

An eye-catching provision stuck deep into the supplemental appropriations bill for Defense, passed by Congress Tuesday, clears the way for logging in the Black Hills of South Dakota, with the goal of reducing fire danger. The legislation carves into stone a settlement negotiated by the Forest Service, state, timber industry and two environmental groups.

The deal's pretty simple: The logging of bug-killed timber will proceed, immune to challenge on the basis of environmental laws. In exchange, the tiny Black Elk Wilderness Area has been enlarged by 3,600 acres and thinning in a roadless area will be done without construction of roads.

Western Republicans are howling. Not because they don’t like the deal, but because they see it as hypocrisy on the part of Sen. Majority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, who engineered the deal's inclusion in the appropriations bill. Since Daschle was so eager to expedite logging to reduce fire risks in his home state, he should support similar treatment of other federal land in the West, his critics contend.

Our own Rep. Dennis Rehberg hastened to propose legislation exempting all national forests from “the shackles of burdensome regulations and lawsuits.” His proposal makes a point but doesn't deserve to be taken seriously. However, Rehberg’s bill does reflect the potential for mischief invited by the increasing tendency toward ad hoc management of public lands.

If all this gives you a sense of déjà vu, here's why: The Black Hills deal is reminiscent of a settlement negotiated earlier this year in Missoula governing salvage logging in the Bitterroot National Forest. In that case, it was a federal judge, not Congress, that endorsed the deal. But in both cases, self-selected parties gathered behind closed door and cut deals affecting our public lands. The Bitterroot deal completely rewrote the Forest Service's plans for restoring areas burned by the fires of 2000 – good plans that were more than a year in the making. However expedient this approach may be, however good the intentions of the people with seats at the table, important decisions about public lands shouldn't be made behind closed doors with no possibility of meaningful public participation.

It makes no sense to have laws, regulations and procedures on the books governing the national forests, only to set those aside and operate by some new set of rules whenever convenient. It's true that administrative appeals and lawsuits can create obstacles for land managers, and negotiated settlements offer a way around those obstacles. But when the sound decisions that professional land managers make with the benefit of extensive public involvement simply become the starting point for negotiations with special interests seeking something different, the litigants are rewarded.

Congress shouldn't pass blanket exemptions to laws and it shouldn't sanction secret negotiations designed to circumvent them even when it seems convenient. If existing laws are too unwieldy to manage the forests, particularly when it comes to addressing wildfire threats, then Congress should improve those laws.

http://www.montanaforum.com/rednews/2002/07/29/build/forests/forestdeal.php?nnn=2