Fix Our Forests Act

[OXN939]

Any foresters or similar subject matter experts on here with opinions on this? Obviously fire management is super important these days, but with the trend of politicians trying to set up resource grabs for their corporate buddies disguised as conservation or safety, it's hard not to be skeptical.

Fix Our Forests Act divides environmental community - High Country News

But it’s a rare instance of bipartisan lawmaking and the biggest wildfire legislation in recent history.

www.hcn.org

 

[HunterGatherer]

Any foresters or similar subject matter experts on here with opinions on this? Obviously fire management is super important these days, but with the trend of politicians trying to set up resource grabs for their corporate buddies disguised as conservation or safety, it's hard not to be skeptical.

Fix Our Forests Act divides environmental community - High Country News

But it’s a rare instance of bipartisan lawmaking and the biggest wildfire legislation in recent history.

www.hcn.org

I’m not a forester but a couple of my friends are. I’m familiar with the process that the FS has to go through before they can authorize a timber sale and this is clearly a shortcut to an easy resource grab as you mentioned. The “ Fix our Forests” part has as little to do with fixing our forests as the Patriot Act has to do with patriotism.

The act is not intended to change how we manage forests, which have been mismanaged since the inception of the USFS, by their own admission. It only reduces the amount of due diligence that the FS is required to do before a sale gets approved. If you’re a logger this is probably great news. If on the other hand, you’re someone who wants to see forests managed properly it’s a step in the wrong direction IMO.

 

[dtrkyman]

If it’s a government program it is generally lip service for the citizens and a money grab for politicians and their donors!

There are likely areas where any timber cut may well be good?

Back in the 80s Cali was a top timber producer, now they import most of it from Oregon up to BC I believe.

California fire issues are a whole other can of worms!!!


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[Watcher of the Woods]

I think another concern that comes with this is that more roads means more probability of resource extraction through mining. This then leads to damaged water tables, fish loss, vehicle noise, and release of heavy metals into the environment. Not a fan.

 

[Ozarkansas]

In my neck of the woods- where there are no large roadless areas besides designated wilderness- anything that increases thinning and burning has my support. I recognize that it’s more complicated than that out west though

 

[OXN939]

In my neck of the woods- where there are no large roadless areas besides designated wilderness- anything that increases thinning and burning has my support. I recognize that it’s more complicated than that out west though

Heard that. Everyone I know who is familiar with this says it's right out of Mike Lee's playbook to privatize (extract resources from and sell once depleted) public lands.

 

[mike.adams.467]

I worked for the federal government for over 30 years and am very familiar with the NEPA process. While this is a systematic way of reviewing government projects, the definition of "environmental impacts" can be interpreted very broadly. Think about the spotted owl and how that one bird was used to stop forestry for decades in a large section of the country. More flexibility is definitely needed to make badly needed improvements to dying and overgrown forests. This might force some left coast states to finally improve forestry management.

 

[ThorM465]

I’m not a forester but a couple of my friends are. I’m familiar with the process that the FS has to go through before they can authorize a timber sale and this is clearly a shortcut to an easy resource grab as you mentioned. The “ Fix our Forests” part has as little to do with fixing our forests as the Patriot Act has to do with patriotism.

The act is not intended to change how we manage forests, which have been mismanaged since the inception of the USFS, by their own admission. It only reduces the amount of due diligence that the FS is required to do before a sale gets approved. If you’re a logger this is probably great news. If on the other hand, you’re someone who wants to see forests managed properly it’s a step in the wrong direction IMO.

Then, exactly what would be a move in the right direction?

 

[HunterGatherer]

Then, exactly what would be a move in the right direction?

It’s an extremely complex situation and I don’t claim to have all the answers . The friends that I have/had in the FS were lifelong foresters, both retired, and at the end of it all they mostly talked about the fact that it had really just become a firefighting profession and lamented that we had ever started fighting fires in the first place. I don’t know how you reverse that in the current day.

I’ve been a professional forager for a few decades now and have worked in forests from California to the Yukon, in nearly every western state, and I’ve seen firsthand a lot of forest management in action- hundreds of burn scars in all sorts of different forests, lived in close proximity to many burns and observed burn behavior and had countless interactions with forest managers regarding forest resource management so I have maybe a little bit of insight…

First we would have to think about how to increase funding as the FS is constantly underfunded for preventative/fire mitigation work. Also, the vast majority of the funding is mandated to come from timber sales, grazing leases, mining, etc. When the FS was created the Feds said it basically had to fund itself by selling timber. Some of that has changed but they are still in a bad way.

For sure more prescribed burning would help.
Thinning is definitely a good thing as well but there’s thinning and then there’s thinning… I’ve seen plenty of examples of both good and bad outcomes from what was considered selective logging or “thinning”. I’d like to see more $ directed towards the forest service thinning projects using its people rather than just opening more timber sales to private interests and let them do their version of it. I don’t want to say negative things about loggers because I also have friends in that industry. I think a lot of them would say that NAFTA and getting cheap lumber from elsewhere is what killed the logging industry here. The mills are mostly gone. We need to build more mills if we’re going to be able to harvest more timber and offset the increased cost of Canadian lumber.

Just a few thoughts. Hopefully there’s people with more experience that can chime in.