They’re Barking Up the Wrong Trees in the Sierra

In 1989, my brother and I fulfilled a longtime dream by hiking the entire 2,700-mile length of the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada.

When we reached the national forests of the Sierra Nevada, we began to see U.S. Forest Service signs posted on trees that read: “Trail washed out, take detour.” We dutifully followed the hastily constructed detour trails, which often took us miles out of our way.

One day we came upon two men who were writing something on one of these signs. Seeing us approach, they hiked quickly away. There on the detour sign was written, “Clear cuts ahead. It’s a scam!”

Intrigued, we followed the regular trail. Soon the forest gave way to an enormous clear cut.

The trail wasn’t gone, but the forest was. Nothing but massive stumps were left.

We caught up with the two men, who turned out to be U.S. Forest Service employees. They told us that they had been ordered by their bosses to put up the detour signs to conceal the agency’s deforestation activities from hikers.

From then on, we ignored the detour signs and continued to see the heart-wrenching devastation caused by logging on national forests.

More than a decade later, after several years of hard work and citizen pressure, the Forest Service finally produced its required long-term management plan for the entire Sierra Nevada range in January.

The Sierra Plan, while far from perfect, for once gives ecosystem recovery a higher priority than continued commercial logging.

Responding to the public’s increasing desire to see our national forests protected, the plan would reduce logging levels in Sierra Nevada national forests by more than half.

The Sierra Plan, however, could be eliminated before the new year by Mark Rey, new undersecretary of Agriculture who now oversees the national forest system.

The plan was upheld by Forest Service chief Dale Bosworth in November, but Rey ordered a review on Dec. 4 of all documents upon which Bosworth based his decision.

Rey’s boss, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, wrote the timber industry’s comments on the draft Sierra Plan months before being named to her post. To avoid the appearance of impropriety, she left the decision on the Sierra Plan to Rey.

Rey, who was recently appointed by the Bush administration, was a timber industry lobbyist for nearly two decades. He also was responsible for writing the “Salvage Logging Rider” of 1995, which suspended federal environmental laws and allowed timber companies to clear-cut many thousands of acres of healthy, ancient forest under the guise of “fire risk reduction.”

The fire issue is again being used by timber interests and the administration as a pretext to justify stalling the new Sierra Plan.

The federal government’s own national fire plan, however, states that commercial logging should not be used for fire management because “removal of large, merchantable trees from forests does not reduce fire risk and may, in fact, increase such risk.”

The removal of mature trees through commercial “thinning” operations reduces forest canopy cover, degrading important wildlife habitat and creating hotter, drier conditions on the forest floor. Instead of timber sales, the national fire plan recommends the reduction of flammable undergrowth--shrubs and saplings--where unnatural accumulations have occurred. Timber companies, however, have no use for underbrush. They want to increase logging of economically valuable mature and old-growth trees on public lands. Rey is now poised to do their bidding, despite stacks of scientific studies concluding that such commercial logging causes severe fires.

Like the old “detour” trick, the administration apparently hopes to misdirect the public one more time.

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Chad Hanson is the executive director of the John Muir Project and a national director of the Sierra Club. E-mail: chadhanson@juno .com. Web site: www.johnmuir project.org.