Much at stake in Idaho's forests

The West is in crisis. Annual forest mortality is at a 50 year high and 85 percent of this annual forest mortality is occurring on National Forest System lands. According to the University of Idaho, nearly 12 percent of federal forestland in Idaho is “standing dead”—dead trees still standing in a forest. Ninety-four percent of those standing dead acres in Idaho are located in federal ownership. These acres are at high risk of uncharacteristically intense fire due to overcrowding of dead stock.

Increasing harvest activities through innovative legislative solutions, collaborative groups where they exist, and conventional timber programs elsewhere, will address pressing forest health concerns, bolster employment in economically distressed rural communities, and aid in lessening the intensity of the wildfires that currently hit the west every summer.

Wildfires in Idaho emit the same amount of carbon dioxide into the air we breathe as 4.7 million cars during an active fire year. Fire suppression costs now exceed a billion dollars a year, and fire-related activities account for more than half of the Forest Service budget. This model is simply not sustainable.

Seventy-three percent of the timberlands in Idaho (20.4 million acres) are managed by the federal government, and the need for active landscape-level management on these federal lands is dire. US Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell has recently testified that between 65 and 82 million acres of National Forest lands throughout the nation are in need of active management. Specifically for Idaho, Chief Tidwell stated that 15 million of the 20.4 million acres of National Forests in Idaho need some form of restoration.

Of the 20.4 million total acres of national forests in Idaho, over 4 million acres have been designated by Congress as wilderness and are off-limits to timber harvest. Another 8.4 million acres are roadless. Most roadless acres are also reserved for wildlife habitat, wilderness and recreational purposes, with restrictions or outright bans on timber harvesting. The remaining acres of federal forestland are classified as unreserved or multi-resource, and some of these acres are available for harvest.

All timber sales from federal forests have to undergo comprehensive analyses under the National Environmental Policy Act, which often take 18-24 months to complete and can expose the Forest Service to lawsuits from environmental groups. This leads to a lack of management of these forests, which has produced undesired consequences.

As the federal agencies labor under the requirements imposed on them by Congress and by the courts, the overstocked and unhealthy timberlands of the west often go up in smoke.

It’s a big problem in need of a big solution, which is why the Resilient Federal Forests Act of 2015 has been proposed in Congress. This promising bill would allow the US Forest Service to do exactly that — create resilient, healthy federal forest landscapes. This legislation would provide an ability to expedite the NEPA process in rare occasions known as “categorical exclusions” or CEs. This legislation would provide another tool in the toolbox for allowing agency land managers to get Idaho’s overstocked federal forests back into a healthy state.

This legislation would also codify something that forestland managers have been requesting for years — anyone who wants to sue the federal government to stop a timber sale would be required to post a bond to cover the government’s legal costs if the court challenge is found to be frivolous. Suddenly, environmental activists have to put their money where their mouths are, and they are running scared because they know just how much of their litigation is, indeed, baseless tactics of stall and delay.

Scientists and forest managers all know that there is a close relationship between fuel loading and fire severity. Anyone who claims otherwise has obviously never built a basic campfire or ever even been outside. All fire is comprised of three key elements — ignition, oxygen, and fuel. We can’t change our atmosphere, and we cannot prevent lightning. This leaves fuels reduction as the only thing we humans can possibly do to decrease the size and scope of potentially catastrophic wildfires.

When it comes to forest health, foresters and forest managers have the answer. It’s time to reconsider the policies that govern federal forests. Current policies have evolved in response to controversy and litigation — not from solid science or from sound forestry knowledge. Increasing sustainable harvest and restoration activities on choked, overstocked federal forests will improve forest health, reduce fire danger, and bring jobs to depressed rural economies. It’s a win-win situation. Change will require a sustained effort by respected political leaders, as well as the collaboration by diverse groups who all recognize that healthy, growing forests are in everyone’s best interests.

Alan Harper is a forester with Idaho Forest Group.