By Jim Furnish in the Washington Post – August 11. 1:38 PM
Jim Furnish is a consulting forester in Iowa, following a 34-year career with the U.S. Forest Service, including as the agency’s deputy chief from 1999 to 2002.
I was the supervisor of Oregon’s Siuslaw National Forest in 1996 when a huge landslide caused by shoddy road construction sent tons of mud and debris into a critical salmon stream. I felt terrible ― and personally responsible. In the rush to build logging roads along treacherously steep hillsides, we mismanaged forests for decades and pushed salmon and spotted owls to the brink of extinction.
When I came to Washington to become deputy chief of the Forest Service a few years later, that Oregon landslide ― and countless other road-building mistakes ― motivated me to rewrite national forest policy. I was a chief architect of two landmark rules to reform logging and road-building in our national forests.
But I learned another important lesson: The Forest Service shouldn’t operate in a vacuum. The public should have its say, and we can’t cut it out of its rightful role just because that would be quick, easy or politically expedient.
This is why I’m so deeply troubled by the Trump administration’s latest attempt to roll back some of the most important rules protecting our national forests via the National Environmental Policy Act. That law has fostered government transparency and accountability for our environment and public health for 50 years. But a new Forest Service proposal would eliminate opportunities for citizen involvement and environmental review on more than 90 percent of all Forest Service projects.
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I recall feeling miffed when, as a young Forest Service employee in the 1970s, NEPA required me to document why we did things such as cut down trees. Over time, I came to learn that many concerned citizens knew a lot more than I did. They also owned the public land where I worked on their behalf.
Federal agencies that authorize logging, mining and drilling on public land should aspire to accountability, transparency, trustworthiness and scientific rigor. So when the Forest Service claims that sweeping changes to its NEPA rules will “increase efficiency,” I measure its proposal against those bedrock principles.
During my 34-year career with the Forest Service, I authored several rule changes. But with this one, I see smoke and mirrors.
Buried deep within 16 pages of legalese are some nasty surprises: a nearly unlimited license to commercially log nearly seven square miles — about 3,000 football fields — or build five miles of logging roads at a time without involving the public or disclosing environmental consequences.
This proposed rule will stifle citizen participation, foster deepened opposition and increase litigation.
