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About Illinois Valley news. (Cave City, Oregon) 1937-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 25, 2002)
Illinois Valley News, Cave Junction, OR 97523, September 25,2002 Page 14 How thinning will be accomplished raises queries By THE OREGONIAN Federal land managers are preparing to carry out Presi- dent Bush’s new initiative to thin flammable forests by ex- empting logging projects from citizen appeals and, in some cases, environmental scrutiny. The measures could give timber cutting aimed at reduc- ing wildfire immunity from the web of laws and regula- tions that environmental groups often use to slow or stymie logging. They come just as Con- gress last week appeared deadlocked on legislation to carry out the presidential plan, suggesting that the administra- tion wants to proceed with thinning millions of acres of overgrown Western forests regardless of whether Con- gress acts. “I’m not comfortable sit- ting around and waiting for an outcome as uncertain as legis- lation can be,” said Mark Rey, undersecretary of agriculture, who oversees the U.S. Forest Service. “We’re going to do this because we’re committed to getting the job done.” Among the plans by top administration and forest ser- vice officials: *Exempting fire reduction and some other logging pro- jects from the requirement that environmental impact state- ments or assessments be com- pleted, and with them multiple chances for public comment. *Allowing forest supervi- sors to revise their manage- ment plans governing logging and other forest uses without going through the environ- mental and public reviews they do nowl *Revising regulations so that citizen appeals of forest service decisions do not auto- matically block those deci- sions, as they do now. The moves took on new prominence last week as the Senate deadlocked over its own attempt to step up thin- ning of fire-prone forests in a year during which federal fire- fighting costs hit a record $ 1.2 5 billion. At issue in Congress is whether judges could block forest-thinning projects. Re- publicans, led by Sen. Larry Craig, of Idaho, want to re- strict judicial power, while leading Democrats want to leave judges the option to halt logging that they find unlaw- ful. The president meanwhile has directed the forest service and other federal land agen- cies to speed work in Western forests on their own, Rey said. They are drawing up an ad- ministrative measure, called a categorical exclusion, to ex- empt thinning and related ac- tivities from review under the National Environmental Pol- icy Act, which requires close scrutiny of federal actions. Rey called it “one of the two or three most important pieces” of enacting the presi- dent’s forest initiative because it would free forests from completing long and costly reviews often blamed for gumming up land manage- ment. Other critical elements, both which are under way, are reforming the appeals process and designing model environ- mental documents to save staff time, he said. A categorical exclusion allows agencies to examine records and conclude that they have done enough environ- mental reviews of certain kinds of projects to know that such projects have minimal effect. They then could ex- clude similar projects — in this case thinning and the like — from future review. Besides thinning, such projects could include salvage logging of burned trees and rehabilitation of charred for- ests. Environmental groups complained that the approach closes the public out of public land decisions. They fear that limiting environmental review will open the door to thinning that takes bigger, commer- cially valuable trees under the guise of abating fire risk. But Rey said that the law allows categorical exclusions specifically so that agencies need not review for similar projects over and over. He said that agencies must notify the public of projects, even if no review is conducted. And while public com- ment is useful, Rey said, “It’s also accepted that it’s not nec- essary every time something happens.” The forest service also is at work on a second categori- cal exclusion to exempt timber sales under a certain size fron environmental review. Such sales could include live trees; those threatened by bugs and disease; and others burned or blown over. While the measures could pave the way for thinning, salvage and other logging pro- jects to proceed much faster, officials said, land managers still could complete full re- views of exceptional projects where the environmental ef- fects are unclear. Riverside Physical Full Rehabilitation Services: •Physical Therapy •Occupational Therapy •Speech Therapy TWO LOCATIONS TO SERVE YOU Cave Junction Office 218 N. Redwood Hwy. (541) 592-6580 grants Pass Office 1619 N.W. Hawthorne Ave. Suite 109 (541) 476-2502 •Mike Johnson, P.T. •Jeff Wood, M.S., P.T. 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