Restoration or Exploitation?
By Native Forest Network, New West Unfiltered 1-24-06
For Release: January 24, 2006
Conservation Groups Appeal Lolo National Forest Decision for Industrial Logging in Unroaded Wildlands, Old-Growth Forests and Habitat for Grizzly Bears and Bull Trout
USFS Admits Congress Fails to Provide Adequate Funding for Watershed Restoration
Meanwhile, Sen. Burns, Sen. Baucus and Rep. Rehberg Collect Over $1.8 million in Campaign Contributions from Resource Extraction Industries
For More Information: Jeff Juel, The Ecology Center: 406.728.5733
Matthew Koehler, Native Forest Network: 406.542.7343
MISSOULA, MT - Claiming that the Fishtrap project perfectly illustrates the failed nature of the current U.S. Forest Service management scheme for restoring forests, the Ecology Center, Native Forest Network and Alliance for the Wild Rockies have filed a formal administrative appeal over the Fishtrap logging project that calls for industrial logging in unroaded wildlands, old-growth forests and habitat for grizzly bears and bull trout.
The Fishtrap project area is located 20 miles north of Thompson Falls within the remote upper Fishtrap Creek watershed. Sixty-seven percent of the Fishtrap project area is part of the Cabinet-Yaak Grizzly Bear Recovery Area and Fishtrap Creek is listed as a priority stream for the threatened Bull trout.
The Fishtrap logging project would cut down enough trees from over 3 1/2 square miles of the watershed (2,260 acres) to fill 2,400 log trucks lined up end-to-end for twenty miles. The Fishtrap project calls for industrial logging in unroaded wildlands, within old-growth forests and important habitat for grizzly bears and bull trout. Based on the Forest Service's budget, the project would lose $2.5 million.
The Fish Trap project area is literally surrounded by tens of thousands of acres of private industrial timberlands that have been exhaustively clearcut and roaded.
"We support the watershed restoration aspects of this project, but disagree with the notion that the Forest Service can restore this forest through more industrial logging and road reconstruction. For one, they offer no proof that this forest can be restored through industrial logging. Second, the Forest Service fully admits within the environmental impact statement (EIS) that very little of the needed road restoration work will actually be accomplished under this decision because Congress has not appropriated enough money to restore our national forests," explained Jeff Juel, Executive Director of the Ecology Center.
Juel also pointed out that the Fishtrap project decision is a great example of the fallacy of making up for Congress's failures by trying to acquire restoration funds using the value of timber. Forest Supervisor Deborah Austin stated in the Record of Decision, "The Fishtrap project has been proposed as a stewardship project, which incorporates the concept of an exchange of goods for services."
"This project also illustrates one of our concerns with stewardship contracting. We don't believe it makes economic or ecological sense to degrade one part of the Fishtrap watershed within industrial logging and road reconstruction in order to generate a little bit of money to only restore only a small portion of the same watershed. That's the equivalent of taking one step forward and three steps backwards," stated Matthew Koehler, director of the native Forest Network.
"The fact of the matter is that Sen. Burns, Sen. Baucus and Rep. Rehberg are part of the problem when it comes to putting Montanans to work restoring our national forests because Congress isn't providing anywhere near adequate funding for road and watershed restoration. Rather, Congress and the Montana Congressional delegation continue to insist that restoration is funded through industrial logging projects. We can only assume that this failed and outdated restoration funding approach - as evidenced in the Fishtrap project - still caries the day due to the $1.8 million in campaign contributions Sen. Burns, Sen. Baucus and Rep. Rehberg have received from the logging industry and other extractives industries during their congressional careers," said Juel.
"We have been working with the Lolo National Forest and various stakeholders to try and come to agreement on projects that restore our watersheds and forests and focus the Forest Service's limited fuel reduction resources near neighborhoods and communities. We have even spent time with the Forest Service on-the-ground within the Fishtrap project area," explained Koehler. "This Fishtrap project - with industrial logging in unroaded wildlands, old-growth forests and habitat for grizzly bears and bull trout over twenty miles from the nearest community - clearly doesn't fit within that sensible framework for common ground."
Additional Information about the Fishtrap Project
From reading the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and Record of Decision (ROD), it's very obvious that stewardship contracting will not get the restoration job done in the Fishtrap project area. Very little of the needed road restoration work will actually be accomplished under the Decision:
"The majority of the restoration needs identified for the entire project area includes application of Best Management Practices (BMPs) on roads needed for future management and decommissioning unneeded roads for a total of more than three million dollars." (USFS in ROD at p. 13.)
"In total, approximately $3 million of restoration opportunities were identified in the Project Area as a result of completing the Roads Analysis Process. … Because road management and watershed restoration opportunities …far exceeded anticipated revenues, only the highest priority road treatments were selected." (USFS in EIS at p. 6-87, emphasis added.)
Appellants made another attempt at getting to the validity of the Forest Service's restoration strategy, commenting:
"The premise is, the more logging that happens, the more restoration that could be paid for. Just how much logging (acres, volume, timing) would have to happen here for all the known restoration needs to be paid for?"
The Forest Service's response:
"The simple fact is, that currently, there are not sufficient appropriated watershed or road maintenance funds available to finance a comprehensive portion of the identified watershed restoration opportunities in the project area. As stated on page 2-6 of the DEIS, we did explore various sources of funding for implementation of restoration activities and determined that the best means available to us at the present time is stewardship contracting. …. We did not engage in the 'tail-chasing' approach that you allude to of assessing the total amount of timber harvest receipts needed to pay for all of the identified watershed restoration opportunities. To do so, would have involved proposing harvest activities that would be likely outside the constraints of other resources." (USFS in EIS 6-11 - 6-12, emphasis added.)
The purpose of our question was not to set the Forest Service on some "tail-chasing" exercise, and indeed their response precisely proved our point: the Forest Service's "industrial logging to pay for restoration" approach to "restore" the Fishtrap Creek watershed will never accomplish anywhere near the necessary restoration work in the watershed.
Campaign Contributions to the Montana Congressional Delegation from Resource Extraction Industries
Total career campaign contributions to the current Montana Congressional Delegation (Sen. Burns, Sen. Baucus, Sen. Rehberg) from resource extraction industries *: $1,860,446
Total career campaign contributions to Sen. Burns from resource extraction industries*: $917,885
Total career campaign contributions to Sen. Baucus from resource extraction industries*: $625,012
Total career campaign contributions to Rep. Rehberg from resource extraction industries: $317,549
Total career campaign contributions to Sen. Burns from the logging industry*: $159,510
Total career campaign contributions to Rep. Rehberg from the logging industry: $89,820
* Note: These career totals only go back to 1989. Also note that career campaign contributions from the logging industry specifically to Sen. Baucus were unavailable. This information was obtained from http://www.opensecrets.org
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