Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) recently introduced The Forest Jobs and Recreation Act of 2009, which was  developed through a partnership of organizations and individuals working on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge
National Forest. Tester took a lot of heat for not making the details of the bill more public as he, his staff, and a select few constituents were working out the final version. The full text can now be found at: www.tester.senate.gov/forest.

We took a few minutes to skim through the bill, which Senator Tester was very clear to say was NOT a “wilderness” bill, but instead a “forest jobs and stewardship bill.” Below is our initial take on what we like and what we don’t.

The Good Stuff

Long before it became legislation, we reviewed the original Beaverhead-Deerlodge Partnership Proposal, and we had some very real concerns about how they described watershed restoration, the reliance on
temporary roads, and a failure to include any real “effectiveness monitoring.”

We are pleased to see that the Tester bill has addressed some of these concerns.

• There is no mention of temporary roads in the bill. Instead, the bill introduces a new term, “access road,” which is a road used to implement the bill, but then reclaimed and revegetated or converted to a trail within 5 years of its construction. (“Temporary roads,” on the other hand, don’t have to be revegetated until 10 years after completion of the project for which the road was built.)

• Restoration projects include efforts to reduce road densities down to 1.5 miles per square mile of land (but they don’t seem to mandate this reduction). Further, and perhaps more importantly, motorized trails are to be included with roads in the calculation of road density on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest. Few forests do this, but it’s critically important – we are very happy to see this in the bill language.

• The bill includes monitoring requirements that explicitly address the effectiveness of watershed restoration on ecological health. In addition, the language regarding adaptive management addresses
management changes that might be needed because of climate change. More often than not (and in an earlier bill draft), monitoring requirements only include whether or not actions were taken, regardless of whether they had the intended “benefits.”

• The bill proposes designating more than half a million acres of wilderness, in various places throughout the Beaverhead-Deerlodge, Kootenai and Lolo National Forests

The Not-So-Good Stuff

We have some concerns with the bill:
• statements regarding forest health and catastrophic fire that do not seem ecologically justified;

• expectations that stewardship contracting will provide enough funds for watershed restoration activities on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest;

• mandated timber targets; and,

• efforts to “permanently protect and enhance motorized recreation opportunities.”

Forest Health

Wildlands CPR doesn’t work directly on timber/forest structure/fire restoration issues. That said, the bill includes, as a primary purpose, the need to “reduce wildfire management costs by reestablishing natural fire regimes outside of a wildland-urban interface.” This section also states a need to “reduce the size and severity of uncharacteristic fires on forest land.” Many of the forests in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge are
high-elevation lodgepole pine that evolved with stand-replacing fire. Lodgepole cones won’t open to release their seeds without the heat generated from big fires. Such stand-replacing fires are exactly what occurred in Yellowstone National Park in 1988, and they are ecologically normal and necessary. The bill clearly distinguishes between the backcountry and the wildland/urban interface, but it seems to recommend similar treatments.

Stewardship Contracting/Mandated Harvest

While we have few concerns about stewardship contracting in theory, it has rarely been able to generate the funds necessary to conduct all of the proposed restoration in a project. This problem is further exacerbated by the drop in wood products prices due to the home-construction slowdown. We are pleased that the Seeley Lake part of the project can be funded with direct appropriations, but we are concerned that the proposed logging will take precedence over restoration. The bill mandates a certain amount of logging each year, which will tie the agency’s hands and may set a bad precedent for future bills. Perhaps most disconcerting is that the legislation sunsets after 15 years, or at the end of the mandated
logging, whichever is later, and this sunset provision is not contingent on completing the restoration. While the introductory language of the bill appears to put watershed restoration and timber harvest on a level playing field, the fine print makes it clear that watershed restoration remains a secondary objective at best.

Designations/Protections for Motorized Recreation

We repeatedly hear the argument that if Wilderness is going to be designated/permanently protected, then motorized recreation should be too. But it’s a false dichotomy. The only way to get Wilderness is through legislative action, while opportunities to drive around for fun or transport exist practically everywhere. Once motorized recreation is mandated by legislation, land managers’ hands are tied regarding its ecological impacts.

Interestingly, the bill is inconsistent on this topic, with different provisions for different recreation areas. The West Big Hole, in particular, does not seem to receive as much protection as other areas.

Conclusion

We know that there are numerous other good and bad things in this bill, and we have met with Tester’s office about our specific concerns. Senator Tester clearly worked hard to try to make a lot of different interests happy. While there are some things that we like in concept, we’re concerned about whether or
not they will work in practice. Having reviewed a lot of integrated land management bills, however, we do believe that Tester has avoided some of the pitfalls of other bills. For example, this bill does not appear to circumvent the National Environmental Policy Act, the off-road vehicle Executive Orders, or other laws. It does, however, legislate a forest plan, and mandate that a certain number of acres be treated annually,
which could set a dangerous precedent while also making it challenging to comply with the National Forest Management Act and other substantive environmental laws. The forest stand management components
of the bill will probably be more controversial than the motorized recreation issues, with even the Forest Service questioning whether it’s possible to sustainably log that many acres annually on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest. The Forest Jobs and Recreation Act of 2009 offers some good steps toward restoration, it protects a lot of land as wilderness, and it doesn’t directly circumvent environmental laws; but it also includes some highly controversial components. In our ideal world, watershed restoration practices would be fiscally separated from resource extraction, and we will continue to work and advocate for such efforts.