More wilderness or good stewardship

Many opinions have recently been expressed extolling the merits of Sen. Tester’s Forest Jobs and Recreation Act. However, there are other aspects to this legislation that need to be brought forth.

This proposed legislation is a thinly disguised attempt to legislate new wilderness areas in Montana while supposedly promoting more jobs on national forest lands and in the timber industry.

What the bill really does is legislate new wilderness areas without mandating good forest management through proper long-term stewardship to maintain a healthy, productive forest. Simply put, the legislation is primarily a wilderness bill without mentioning that fact in the bill title.

Forest management involves a long-term rotation, producing numerous products while providing good-paying jobs. Timber harvest on Forest Service land is continually being thwarted by several well-funded environmental organizations. The way it is now, the Forest Service cannot even salvage fire-damaged trees in a timely manner due to the environmental groups using the Endangered Species Act as a land-use control mechanism.

A healthy, vigorously growing forest will continue to sequester carbon, contrary to an older mature forest. The mature trees need to be harvested and their carbon put to good use as building materials, while new forest growth sequesters additional carbon.

The jobs in Sen. Tester’s bill do not hinge on the legislation actually opening up lands that are otherwise closed today for logging. Although maps and other “PR” try to make it seem otherwise, the legislation is very clear on this point. Any logging or forest health jobs resulting from this bill are already permitted today, either via an existing forest plan or via legislation already passed into law.

The essence of Tester’s bill is an attempt to force the Forest Service to follow through with existing plans that allow logging, and also attempts to limit environmental groups’ ability to challenge them. It is no longer a joke to say it takes an act of Congress to cut timber in Montana.

I don’t know if I could have created a better example of how gridlocked the agency is in management, or how these “environmental” groups sue at the drop of a hat. That it requires legislation to log a paltry 70,000 acres over 10 years on Montana’s 3.5 million acre Beaverhead National Forest is a sad indication of how broken our system of public lands management has become.

Another point I want to raise is the increase in catastrophic forest fires that ignite on Forest Service lands and then explode onto adjoining private lands, often because there has been no pro-active forestry practices taking place on public lands.

Pro-active forestry practices should include sustainable logging, thinning and the maintenance of forest management access roads. These intense fires not only burn valuable timber (and freeing carbon from sequestration), but they often sterilize and bake the soil surface, decreasing water absorption and increasing water runoff and stream sediments. This has a direct effect on aquatic life as well as water supplies for human consumption.

In summary, this proposed legislation creates more wilderness areas but is smoke and mirrors when it comes to jobs and long-term, sound forestry practices. A productive, well-managed forest will provide many jobs to small businesses in Montana and elsewhere in the nation.

Chuck Jarecki is a resident of Polson.