Scientists Concerned Over Forest Legislation
By Perry Backus, The Missoulian
August 11, 2006

On the eve of a hearing on a controversial forestry bill, a letter signed by 546 scientists was released Tuesday warning about the negative impacts of logging after wildfires.

The Forest Emergency Recovery and Research Act is slated for discussion by the Senate Agriculture Committee's forest subcommittee on Wednesday.

The legislation's sponsors say it would help the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management fund restoration, reforestation and research.

Environmental groups are worried the legislation (HR 4200) would fast-track logging by suspending environmental safeguards and reducing the public's ability to give input on how national forests are managed.

“We are concerned that HR 4200 will bind us to land management practices that, perhaps logical in the past, are no longer tenable in the light of recent scientific understanding,” the scientists' letter said. “Neither ecological benefits nor economic efficiency result from post-disturbance logging.”

Richard Hutto, University of Montana professor and director of UM's Avian Science Center, was one of 16 Montanans who signed the letter. In a recent paper, Hutto raised doubts that the current standards for mitigating the impacts of post-fire logging protect wildlife species that depend on burned forests.

“Existing post-fire salvage logging studies reveal that most post-fire specialist species (like the black-backed woodpecker) are completely absent from burned forests that have been (even partially) salvage-logged,” Hutto wrote.

The development of more meaningful snag retention guidelines for post-fire specialist species would preclude logging in burned conifer forests, where the maintenance of biological diversity is deemed important, Hutto said.

“Proponents of expedited post-fire logging can't provide a significant body of evidence that a nationwide program for logging after disturbance is scientifically justified,” said Dominick DellaSala of the National Center for Conservation Science and Policy. “Of the more than 30 scientific papers on post-fire logging published to date, not a single one indicates that logging provides benefits to ecosystems regenerating after disturbance.”

But salvage logging isn't the most important issue that would be addressed under HR 4200, according to Julia Altemus of the Montana Logging Association.

The legislation would give the Forest Service additional tools to deal with a burgeoning beetle problem that's having a major impact on forests in Montana, Altemus said.

“Due to drought and a declining timber program, federal forests in Montana are currently under siege by a catastrophic insect infestation outbreak,” Altemus wrote in her own letter to the Senate. “Once healthy, green timber stands are now colored red, brown and black.”

In 2001, 300,000 acres of federal forests in Montana were killed by beetles, she said. Today, there's more than 1.2 million acres of infested trees.

“Therefore, we strongly support the opportunity to expeditiously harvest this wood fiber for national utilization and consumption or we will lose these timber stands, along with important wildlife and fisheries habitats, to catastrophic wildfire,” Altemus wrote.

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