Nice Heatmap story on the Fix Our Forests Act

@Dana Nuccitelli This was a good read, but very disheartening. Mr. Weiner himself talks about what does work: “We all know that the best tool for mitigation is good fire, prescribed fire, beneficial fire, and — where appropriate — managed fire," but then goes on to talk about how the timber industry wants the big, old growth, trees. However, nowhere in the bill did I find any kind of protection for the old growth trees.

He also mentions 4 (four) environmental organizations (one of which is full of Board Members in the financial sector - banks that finance fossil fuel companies) that support the bill and when asked about environmental organizations that don't support this bill, he says, “the main tool that [the bill] uses is not broad NEPA exemptions or writ-large changes in the law. It utilizes categorical exclusions”.

But, actually it does use broad NEPA exemptions. According to this letter signed by almost 100 Environmental Organizations - “Section 101 waives the designation of fireshed management areas from the requirements of NEPA. A fireshed, as delineated by the Forest Service, is a very large area, typically 250,000 acres (390 square miles), and fireshed management areas comprise multiple firesheds.” So, deceptively, this article wants people to believe that areas that will be exempt from NEPA and ESA requirements, which should only be limited to 3000 acres, will not only be increased to 10,000 acres, but actually the entire bill applies to entire firesides which encompass hundreds of thousands of acres.

He mentions that the approval process can take 1000 days and cites that as the reason to do away with NEPA requirements, so this bill wants to bring that down to 120 days. I agree that 1000 days is a bit excessive, but 120 days doesn’t give enough time for concerned citizens and organizations to review timber harvest proposals on our public lands!

Additionally, it opens up even more public lands to livestock grazing. A scientific report that reviewed 500 studies spanning over a century found that livestock grazing, along with other mechanical disturbances (like road building to get timber harvesting equipment into forests) is what allows cheat grass (a highly flammable invasive species) to flourish. And this is not even to mention the catastrophic loss of biodiversity caused by livestock grazing.

While this article does make an argument that mechanical thinning will be necessary due to the decades-long mismanagement (fire suppression strategy) of forests, the bill does not put any limits on the timber industry or livestock industry. It's way too vague and it opens up a lot of our forests to the two industries who are some of the most responsible for climate change and biodiversity loss.

This bill is extremely concerning and is NOT endorsed by any organization that is concerned for biodiversity.

Here are just a few of the organizations that DO NOT support this bill:

Center for Biological Diversity

Defenders of Wildlife
Earthjustice

Natural Resources Defense Council
Sierra Club

Alaska Rainforest Defenders
Alaska Wilderness League
Alliance for the Wild Rockies
Alpine Lakes Protection Society
American Bird Conservancy

Cascade Forest Conservancy
Cascadia Wildlands
Climate Communications Coalition
Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks

Friends of the Bitterroot
Friends of the Clearwater
Gallatin Wildlife Association
Gila Resources Information Project

Hi @Ruth Morlas. I have to respectfully disagree.

nowhere in the bill did I find any kind of protection for the old growth trees.

Please see this section of our Fix Our Forests Act (FOFA) training page, which notes:

Fix Our Forests and the other legislation it references require that a qualifying project:

1. Maximizes the retention of old-growth and large trees, as appropriate for the forest type, to the extent that the trees promote stands that are resilient to insects and disease, and reduce the risk or extent of, or increase the resilience to, wildfires

Note that language isn't in the bill itself, it comes from FOFA's references to the Healthy Forests Restoration Act, which includes that language.

actually the entire bill applies to entire firesides which encompass hundreds of thousands of acres.

That's incorrect. The designation of fireshed management areas is exempt from NEPA (i.e. the Forest Service can say ‘this area is a high-risk fireshed’ without that determination being subject to NEPA), but the management of those firesheds is subject to categorical exclusions of no more than 10,000 acres.

120 days doesn’t give enough time for concerned citizens and organizations to review timber harvest proposals on our public lands!

Well this isn't about timber harvesting, it's about fireshed management, which can include forest thinning. How many months the public should be given to review and potentially object to a fireshed management plan is a subjective question, but personally I think 4 months is a reasonable amount of time. That's more than an entire winter season, for example. One of the primary purposes of FOFA is to allow fireshed management projects to occur in a timely manner in high-risk areas, after all.

Additionally, it opens up even more public lands to livestock grazing.

My town brings in herds of goats to graze on dry vegetation in the spring and summer, and it's a great way to reduce the fire risks that those dry bushes and grasses pose. That's not to say it's universally the best practice, but it's a great tool to have in the toolchest for some targeted areas. The report you reference does note, "Goats and sheep that can be herded are more suited for targeted grazing than cattle, and small, fenced pastures are better than large open range situations (Goehring et al. 2010)." Which is how my town does it.

the bill does not put any limits on the timber industry or livestock industry.

Yes it does. See my discussion of old growth forests above, and the fact that these fireshed management plans will be written by forestry experts with the goal of reducing wildfire threats in high-risk areas.

This bill is extremely concerning and is NOT endorsed by any organization that is concerned for biodiversity.

The Nature Conservancy, Environmental Defense Fund, Audubon Society, National Congress of American Indians, Federation of American Scientists, CCL, etc. aren't concerned for biodiversity? I disgree.

@Dana Nuccitelli Thank you for your thoughtful response, but I still see huge reasons for concern. The Healthy Forest Restoration Act also doesn’t do enough to protect old growth trees for the purpose of biodiversity retention. Endangered species, such as Canada lynx and spotted owl, among many others, may no longer have protection of their habitat in these “fireshed areas” if it doesn’t include old growth trees that “are resilient to insects and disease, and reduce the risk or extent of, or increase the resilience to, wildfires.” If a 100yr+ old tree doesn’t meet that criteria, what protection will it have?

The CCL website mentions that ESA protections are not being rolled back, however this bill

“places forest management plan litigation on the same standard as many surface transportation, energy, and aviation projects” and we all know how environmentally responsible those industries are.

And 120 days is simply not sufficient - and ESA claim, for instance requires a 60-day notice period, which effectively limits the review period for a fireshed management project to just 8 weeks. With the current administration going after public lands, promoting climate denial, not to mention attacking democracy, 8 weeks is not enough for American citizens to offer public comments.

And thanks for the clarification on the fact that NEPA will no longer apply to the designation of fireshed management areas. However, this is probably even worse now that anything can become a “fireshed management area” without scientific review or public input.

I’m glad your town is careful in bringing in goats to reduce fire risk, but that’s not what the bill is proposing as it doesn’t differentiate between goats and cattle. And we know that, generally speaking, the beef industry is only interested in one thing and at the expense of every other species. The problem with cattle on public lands is that they don't belong in the western states. They need a lot of water, they are not native to dry environments, they destroy the surface of soils that would make wildfires a non-issue, and they trample native vegetation which opens up space for cheat grass to grow (another invasive species responsble for more frequent and severe wildfires). And, oh yeah, they also destroy riparian areas critical for water cycle and biodiversity. This bill encourages the use of livestock (a.k.a. beef industry cattle) doing all these things to our public lands.

You mention the Nature Conservancy - while I agree that they do “some” good work, overall their board members are mostly in the finance industry, such as high level executives of JP Morgan Chase, the largest global financier of fossil fuels, committing $53.5 billion to the fossil fuel industry in 2024 alone. TNC has very close partnerships with very large corporations, they love promoting logging and wood products as “climate solutions”, and spend large portions of their $1.4 billion dollar revenue fundraising and paying their execs almost $900,000 per year. I, quite frankly, am not surprised one bit that TNC is in support of this bill. I am baffled as to why CCL is.

I guess I wonder @Ruth Morlas, what the alternative is? Should we just not treat high-risk fireshed areas, or wait many years to treat them with our fingers crossed that a megafire doesn't break out in the meantime?

The reasons why CCL supports FOFA are articulated on our training page. The short answer is that because of the combination of climate change and poor forest management, the risks of extreme wildfires have become severe and our current permitting and forest management process is far too cumbersome to mitigate those risks in anything close to a sufficiently timely manner (though there are a lot of other good provisions in the bill beyond those that expedite fireshed management projects).

I think a lot of the opposition to FOFA comes from an assumption of malicious intent, trying to foresee the worst ways the bill could be abused by a malicious actor. And given the current administration, I certainly understand those fears. But I think it's also important to bear in mind that these fireshed management projects are going to be written and implemented by expert staffers in the US Forest Service, who aren't trying to decimate forests or ecosystems – exactly the opposite, in fact. And FOFA is just expanding the existing categorical exclusion of 3,000 acres to 10,000 acres – it's not creating some new way to bypass environmental laws. Also, the current administration won't be in charge forever.

You're of course free to disagree and to decline to participate in CCL's FOFA-related actions. But our support of the bill is based on a lot of research, and is shared by a lot of other good organizations.

@Dana Nuccitelli
I’m glad you asked about alternatives because I do believe there are better alternatives that will not sacrifice biodiversity to alleviate fears of wildfires. For starters, ALL old growth trees should be left standing unless they are an imminent risk to safety, not just the ones that meet some vague criteria. The designation of fireshed areas should not be left up to the administration without NEPA review and public involvement. Cattle grazing should NOT be used anywhere near where wildfire is a concern, it may be a short term mitigation but has catastrophic long term effects, including increasing wildfire risks in the long term from increases in cheat grass growth. I haven’t done much research on goats, but it sounds like your town has seen some success with this.
And if mechanical thinning is deemed appropriate, any road construction to support it should be immediately restored afterwards and prescribed burning used thereafter. These, and other similar, safeguards should be explicitly included in the bill.

I don’t think there will be purposeful malicious intent from the timber industry, or any other industry, for that matter. Just like the mistakes of past forest management practices were done with the best of intentions it got us to where we are today. What we lacked in the past wasn’t good intentions. What we lacked was lack of emphasis on the importance of old growth trees, biodiversity, and the will to protect them. We also lacked knowledge on the effects that cattle grazing would have on dry western landscapes (the catastrophic effect on native flora and fauna , water quality, and proliferation of cheat grass), we lacked knowledge and/or acceptance of indigenous practices that had shaped the land for thousands of years before.