Administration Finalizes New Guidelines for Forests
Washington Post
27 January 2012
By Juliet Eilperin
WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration finalized a rule Thursday
governing the management of 193 million acres of national forests
and grasslands, establishing a new blueprint to guide everything
from logging to recreation and renewable energy development.
The guidelines, which will take effect in early March and apply to
all 155 national forests, 20 grasslands and one prairie, represent
the first meaningful overhaul of forest rules in 30 years. The
George W. Bush administration had issued a management-planning
rule for national forests in 2008, but a federal court struck it
down the next year on the grounds that it provided inadequate
protection for plants and wildlife.
In announcing the new procedures, Agriculture Secretary Tom
Vilsack said they were crafted to enhance the nation's water
supplies while maintaining woodlands for wildlife, recreation and
timber operations. The lands provide 20 percent of the nation's
drinking water, according to the U.S. Forest Service, an agency of
the Agriculture Department.
"Restoration is the philosophy, with a focus on forest health and
our water," Mr. Vilsack told reporters in a conference call,
adding that the rules require that planning decisions be "driven
by sound science."
The debate over how best to manage forests, especially in regions
such as the Pacific Northwest, has pitted timber companies against
environmentalists and some scientists for decades. On Thursday,
administration officials emphasized that they had sought input
from an array of constituencies to develop a plan that could
minimize these public disputes.
"We expect to see much less litigation with this process," Forest
Service Chief Tom Tidwell said.
The rule will serve as the guiding document for individual forest
plans, which spell out exactly how these lands can be used. While
these plans are updated periodically, Mr. Vilsack noted that half
are more than 15 years old.
Several environmentalists and scientists praised the guidelines,
which were revised to include additional scientific safeguards
after the department received 300,000 comments. But they cautioned
that the rules gave local supervisors considerable discretion in
their implementation.
"The vision is laudable, and this is no small shift in how the
national forests will be managed, from one of commodity extraction
into a vision of protection, restoration and water preservation,"
said Dominick DellaSala, president and chief scientist for the
Oregon-based Geos Institute.
John Fitzgerald, policy director for the Society for Conservation
Biology, said the rule had "several weaknesses," including the
fact that it would "assume and not require the responsible
official to show that the plan includes all practicable steps to
conserve the full biological diversity" within a given forest.
Agriculture officials noted that the guidelines still compel
managers to document how the "best-available scientific
information" has guided decisions ranging from what areas should
be logged to how officials are monitoring wildlife.