Garberville, CA - Today, at 4:45 PM Eastern, the U.S. House passed the "Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003." This misguided piece of wildfire legislation does virtually nothing to help protect rural homeowners from wildfire. Instead, the bill severely limits citizen participation, undermines key environmental laws and authorizes an additional $125 million in taxpayer subsidies to log tens of millions of acres of federal public lands.
The very premise of the "Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003" - and the Bush administration's "Healthy Forest Initiative" - were seriously undermined by last week's General Accounting Office report which found that 95% of the 762 Forest Service fuels reduction projects it reviewed were ready for implementation within the standard 90 day review period.
"It is disappointing that the House approved this ill-informed and unjustified legislation. Congress should be working to protect lives and property from wildfire by focusing limited resources on reducing small-diameter fuels close to homes and communities. However, the McInnis fire bill completely fails to address this critical need, and instead will open the door to unrestricted logging of old-growth forests, roadless areas, and key salmon watersheds, all under the guise of `forest health' and `fuel reduction.' This bill is nothing more than a smokescreen to log our National Forests," said Anthony Ambrose with the Environmental Protection Information Center.
"Today's vote clearly shows that some members of Congress and the Bush administration are willing to sacrifice common sense home protection measures and limit citizen participation in order to promote their agenda of increasing logging on millions of acres of our National Forests," stated Matthew Koehler with the Native Forest Network. "It's frustrating that the GAO finds that 95% of Forest Service fuel reduction projects were ready for implementation within a timely manner and that Forest Service researchers repeatedly state that protecting a home from fire depends entirely on treatment of the home itself and the area within 200 feet of the home, and yet these facts don't matter to those who are intent on limiting citizen participation and increasing logging."
Mike Petersen, executive director of The Lands Council, a Spokane, Washington conservation group that has helped hundreds of rural homeowners craft individual home protection plans, said, "This bill does nothing to protect rural homeowners from wildfire. Instead, it plays on the public's fear of fire to limit citizen participation and undermine our nation's environmental laws in order to increase logging on America's National Forests. It's that simple."
"The House today took a giant step backwards by passing the McInnis bill and defeating the Miller-DeFazio amendment," said Randi Spivak, Executive Director of American Lands. "The McInnis bill ignores the best science on how to protect communities at risk and serves up the same mismanagement schemes that failed in the past. If this bill is not changed by the Senate, the timber industry will continue to line their pockets at the expense of forest communities and taxpayers. "
Andrew George, campaign coordinator with the National Forest Protection Alliance - a national network of over 130 grassroots conservation groups - explained "This bill and the Bush administration's so-called 'Healthy Forest Initiative' endangers rural homeowners, endangers the health of our National Forests and endangers the right of every American citizen to participate in the management of our public lands. Our grassroots alliance will do everything in our power to make sure that the Senate doesn't pass a similarly flawed bill."
