Reforestation Plan Sparks Debate : Environment: Officials say use of herbicides will allow 44,000 acres damaged in 1987 fire to recover more quickly. Critics say the government is more interested in timber production than conservation.

Across the ravaged landscape, oaks, maples and dogwoods have sprouted from charred roots, and ground squirrels scamper under young manzanita bushes. Six years after a cataclysmic fire roared through the Tuolumne River canyon, nature is slowly healing itself.

But under a proposal by the U.S. Forest Service, helicopters and ground crews armed with herbicides would soon begin killing off the resilient hardwood trees, brush and wildflowers that are making a comeback in the Stanislaus National Forest, west of Yosemite National Park.

In a bid to accelerate nature’s pace, the Forest Service plans to spray herbicides in an area larger than Las Vegas and plant tree farms with rows of conifers that could someday be logged.

Forest Service officials say using poison is the fastest way to reduce the likelihood of future fires, restore commercially valuable timber and, ultimately, produce a diverse forest habitat. They insist that the chemicals will not pose a lingering hazard to the environment, drinking water or people who use the forest.

But the plan has aroused opposition from many quarters, including American Indian basket makers who gather their materials in the woods, and environmentalists, fishermen, campers, merchants and residents of the surrounding area.

“The conservation community is absolutely appalled,” said John Buckley, a former Forest Service firefighter who helped battle the 1987 blaze and heads the Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center. “The Forest Service with herbicides is trying to stop what nature is doing to heal from the fire.”

But Pat Kaunert, a public affairs specialist with the Stanislaus National Forest, says: “We’re not playing God, we’re rebuilding a forest. We’re trying to accelerate the natural time line.”

The reforestation plan for the Stanislaus National Forest calls for the first aerial application of herbicides in California’s public forests since the Forest Service lifted a seven-year moratorium on herbicide use in 1991. Indeed, at 44,000 acres, the area planned for treatment is twice the size of all land sprayed in California since the ban ended.

Adding to residents’ concerns, the Forest Service’s analysis predicts that hexazinone, one of the three herbicides to be used, will be detectable in the region’s streams and rivers for up to two years after the spraying ends.

The Forest Service, which has come under intense criticism in recent years for making timber production its top priority, says it is attempting to adopt an ecosystem approach to managing public forests. But critics--inside and outside the organization--say the plan to poison vegetation on such a large scale contradicts its goal of maintaining biodiversity in the forest.

“It’s a question of whether you see the forest for the trees or for all the things that are growing there,” Buckley said.

To the Forest Service, however, the herbicide plan is part of an effort to produce a diverse forest on a much faster schedule than nature would by itself.

Left on its own, the forest could take 300 years to recover, including decades in which the landscape would be dominated by highly flammable brush, said Mike Brown, the Stanislaus National Forest silviculturalist, who is helping to oversee the reforestation. By using herbicides, plowing the soil and planting trees, he said, it could take 100 years to produce a mature forest.

“If we defer to nature and nature’s rate of getting this done, what we end up with is a monoculture of brush that is an extreme fire hazard,” Brown said. “Brush burns a lot faster than a forest with trees.”

The massive 1987 fire and subsequent smaller fires during the drought years destroyed 131,000 acres of the Stanislaus National Forest. Of that, the Forest Service has concluded that about 71,000 acres are suitable for replanting pines and fir trees, including areas once dominated by oak. The remaining 60,000 acres, where soils are poor, will remain untouched.

Some of the area to be planted with conifers will be plowed to remove competing vegetation, such as deep-rooted bear clover. But at least one-third of the entire burned area will be treated with herbicides, Brown said.

Three separate chemicals, hexazinone (also sold under the name Pronone), glyphosate (also known as Round-Up) and triclopyr would be used. The spraying would start next year and could continue over at least a five-year period.

“We feel real good with these chemicals,” Brown said. “All the experts say they are not carcinogenic and that’s why we use them. It’s stuff I use at home.”

By taking an interventionist approach, the Forest Service, not nature, will decide what species of plants and animals will dominate the landscape. And to create diversity in the long run, the agency argues, it must first destroy it.

To the Forest Service, the pines and firs are the most desirable trees because of their commercial value as timber and because they provide the greatest opportunities for recreation and fire protection.

Forest Service officials insist that once the conifers are established and herbicide spraying stops, the wildflowers, brush and hardwood trees will return and help create a diverse forest. With enough time and proper maintenance by the Forest Service, the original rows in which the trees were planted will vanish, they say.

“Hopefully, 50 to 100 years out, human eyes would not be able to detect a difference with a forest that took nature 300 years,” Kaunert said.

But to critics like Buckley, the plan to spray herbicides stems from the Forest Service’s longtime policy of producing trees for the timber industry. During a recent tour of the burn area, Buckley pointed out stands of young oaks, maples and dogwoods that would be killed off to make way for Ponderosa pines. “They want to kill off the oak and brush that are there and turn the area into tree plantations,” he said.

Although Forest Service officials say the three herbicides are safe, opponents of the spraying are concerned about the effect the chemicals could have on drinking water and people who use the forest.

They are particularly alarmed by the Forest Service’s prediction that hexazinone will continue to be evident in the region’s water in 2000 and beyond. Because the area to be treated is in the Tuolumne River watershed, they say some of the chemical will inevitably enter the state’s drinking water supply. But agency officials say that the expected levels will not be harmful.

Buckley pointed out that in the nearby Sierra National Forest, officials halted the use of hexazinone in September because it apparently killed vegetation outside a targeted area.

“It does not appear the application system is sufficiently precise to avoid stream management zones or other non-target areas such as around large oak crop trees,” Sierra Forest Supervisor James L. Boynton concluded in a letter to his district rangers.

Many American Indians see the use of herbicides as being contrary to their philosophy of life; it kills plants they count on for their crafts, medicine and food. In making baskets, artisans often put the materials in their mouths, and they worry that the plants they gather might have been treated with herbicides.

“A lot of the plants that are targeted by herbicide sprays are useful to Native Americans who make baskets and gather wild food and medicines,” said Sara Greensfelder, executive director of the Native American Basket Weavers Assn. “Our opposition stems from a basic philosophy that . . . there is a web of life and the herbicides kill living things, and therefore it is harmful to all life.”

But Forest Service officials say the use of chemicals is essential to bring back the forest as quickly as possible.

“We happen to be in an area where you need help to control the vegetation,” Brown said.