Quick details about the “Forest Jobs and Recreation Act of 2009”

Senator Jon Tester has been taking a lot of heat during the past few weeks for not making the details of a land management/wilderness bill more public as he, his staff, and a select few constituents were working out the final kinks in the bill.  Tester released the language today, and the full text can be found on a new website: www.tester.senate.gov/forest, along with maps, testimonials, and opportunities to get involved.

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 a very initial take on what we like and what we don’t like:

The Good Stuff

We had reviewed the initial Beaverhead-Deerlodge Partnership Proposal, and we had some very real concerns about how they described watershed restoration, the reliance on the temporary roads, and a failure to include any real “effectiveness monitoring.”  We are pleased to see that the new bill has addressed several of these key concerns:

* There is no mention of temporary roads anywhere in the bill.  Instead, the bill introduces a new term on p. 7, “access roads,” which are roads used to implement the bill, but then reclaimed and revegetated or converted to a trail within 5 years from the date of construction.   (Temporary roads, on the other hand, don’t have to be revegetated until 10 years after the final use of the road is finished.)  
* Restoration projects include, as a high priority, efforts to reduce road densities  (p. 16) down to 1.5 miles per square mile of land (but they don’t seem to mandate that road densities are reduced to this level).  Further, and perhaps more importantly, motorized trails are to be included with roads in the calculation of road density (p. 18) on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest in particular.  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 the watershed restoration activities on ecological health (p. 37).  In addition, the language regarding adaptive management addresses possible management changes that might be needed because of climate change.  More often than not (and in the earlier draft), monitoring only addresses whether or not the 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 a couple of primary 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
* 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” (p. 2).  This section goes on to state the need to, “reduce the size and severity of uncharacteristic fires on forest land” (p. 4).  Many of the forests in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge are high-elevation lodgepole pine, which is a species that evolved with stand-replacing fire, including the fact that its 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 some similar treatments.

Stewardship Contracting/Mandated Harvest
While we have few concerns about stewardship contracting in and of itself, it has rarely been able to generate the type of funds necessary to conduct all of the proposed restoration included in a project.  This is even further exacerbated by the economic crisis we are facing, and the drop in wood products prices because of the home-construction slowdown.  We were pleased to see that the Seeley Lake part of the project can be funded with direct appropriations, but we remain concerned that the proposed logging will be the primary thing that happens, and that the needed funding will not be available for the proposed restoration.  The bill mandates a certain amount of logging each year, which will only tie the agency’s hands, as they try to determine the best way to manage their forests.  Perhaps the most disconcerting thing we noticed is that the legislation sunsets at the end of 15 years, or at the end of the mandated logging, whichever comes later (p. 41).  There doesn’t appear to be any similar language stating that the legislation won’t sunset until the proposed restoration occurs.  While the introductory language of the bill appears to put watershed restoration and timber harvest on a similar 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.  Opportunities to drive around for fun or transport exist practically everywhere, there is no shortage or scarcity when it comes to motorized recreation.  Once motorized recreation is mandated by legislation, land managers hands tend to be tied regarding the ecological impacts of the recreation.  Interestingly, the bill is inconsistent regarding this particular topic.  Apparently motorized routes can be closed in the West Pioneers (BDNF) and Otatsy (Lolo NF) Recreation Areas if they are causing safety problems or natural resource damage (p. 71 and 81).  But the same is not true for the other special recreation areas that include motorized use that are proposed for designation, like the West Big Hole.

We know that there are numerous other good and bad things in this bill, but we tried to address those issues most related to our mission.  Furthermore, we conducted this assessment very quickly.  We’ll make changes and updates as we have time to review the bill language more closely.

Senator Tester clearly worked hard to try to make a lot of different interests happy with this bill.  While there are some things that we like a lot in concept, we’re concerned about whether or not they will work in practice.  Having reviewed a lot of these integrated land management bills, however, we do believe that Tester has avoided a lot of the pitfalls that appeared in 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 make 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.  It will be interesting to see how the debates play now that the bill language is public.

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 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 that’s what we’ve been working towards in our Legacy Roads campaign.