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An Idaho-specific plan meant to replace President Clinton's national roadless rule in the state was agreed to Friday by the Bush administration, timber interests, and a few environmental groups. If approved by the Secretary of Agriculture after a public-comment period, the revised rule would protect just 3.3 million acres of forestlands in the state, down from 9.3 million in Clinton's original roadless rule. Over 400,000 acres of current roadless areas in the state would be open to development with no restrictions, worrying environmental groups who are opposed to the plan that those areas could be mined and subjected to other destructive practices that were restricted under the original rule. Another 5.6 million acres of "roadless" forestlands could be subject to logging (and its attendant roads) if it's determined that logging could reduce fire risk to communities. Environmental groups Trout Unlimited and the Idaho Conservation League have backed the plan while the Wilderness Society and others have criticized the compromise, arguing that national forest lands protected by the original roadless rule "should be left roadless and undeveloped."

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The Clinton-era "roadless rule" has been declared invalid by U.S. District Judge Clarence Brimmer. The rule, which prohibits development on 58.5 million acres of national forest, has had a long and rocky past. Brimmer first put the kibosh on it in 2003, and while an appeal was pending, the Bush administration switched it out for an alternative that required states to petition the feds for forest protection. The Bush rule was thrown out by a different district judge in 2006 and the Clinton rule reinstated -- until now. Ruling in favor of the state of Wyoming, Brimmer declared that the roadless rule violated two environmental laws and stymied forest managers from doing their jobs. "The Forest Service, in an attempt to bolster an outgoing president's environmental legacy, rammed through an environmental agenda that itself violates the country's well-established environmental laws," Brimmer wrote. (Wonder what he thinks of the Bush admin's attempt to gut the Endangered Species Act?) The roadless saga will continue: green group Earthjustice has promised to appeal.

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Plum Creek Timber, which just negotiated a giant conservation deal with green groups, has also made a closed-door deal with the U.S. Forest Service that could ease the way for development on thousands of acres of Montana forestland. For decades, the USFS has enforced restrictions on logging roads that allow them to only be used for timber management. But under the deal expected to be formalized next month, logging roads on Plum Creek-owned land could be paved -- easing residential access to deep-woods summer homes. Plum Creek, a former logging company which now focuses on real-estate investment, says that in the next five years, it's likely to sell no more than 3,000 of its 1.2 million Montana acres to developers. But environmentalists are skeptical. "Now that Plum Creek is getting out of the timber business, we're kind of missing the loggers," says Ray Rasker of nonprofit Headwaters Economics. "A clear-cut will grow back, but a subdivision of trophy homes -- that's going to be that way forever."

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The U.S. Forest Service has released new regulations for forest management that are remarkably similar to regulations that a federal judge struck down last year. Under the new rules, species' sustainability will not be evaluated individually; instead, the focus will be on overall habitat. A coalition of green groups have sued, saying the rules loosen protections for wildlife. Says one Earthjustice lawyer, "This is a parting gift from the Bush administration to the timber industry."

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California sued the U.S. Forest Service this week, claiming that it violated federal environmental laws and ignored state policies prohibiting road building in roadless areas of national forests. At stake are over 500,000 acres in four national forests in the state that the Bush administration plans to open up to road building, as well as 52,000 acres slated for oil drilling. The state is seeking an injunction to halt the plan. "Today in the face of threats, we are forced to once again stand up for California's forests," said Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R). "Despite repeated attempts to ensure that the United States Forest Service honor its written assurances that California's roadless areas would be protected they have failed to do so."

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The U.S. Forest Service turned in a court-ordered environmental analysis of a fish-killing flame retardant 2 1/2 years late, and only after the agency's top official was threatened with incarceration for contempt of court. But the USFS did ultimately conduct the environmental review of ammonium phosphate -- which was dropped on an Oregon fire in 2002 and subsequently killed 20,000 fish -- so U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy elected Wednesday not to send Agriculture Undersecretary and USFS overseer Mark Rey to the slammer. Nonetheless, said Molloy, the agency's lack of action was "shameful," "unreasonable," and showed a "systematic disregard of the rule of law." Ah, just another day in the Bush administration.

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Mark Rey, the undersecretary of agriculture in charge of the U.S. Forest Service, has been threatened with jail time or house arrest for his agency's attempts to continue using a flame retardant on forest fires that's toxic to fish. In 2002, fire retardant was dropped on a blaze in central Oregon, killing about 20,000 fish. Soon after, green group Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics sued. As a result, in 2005, U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy found that the Forest Service violated the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act when it failed to properly conduct public reviews of the fire retardant chemical. Then this Friday, the same judge noted that the agency still hadn't completed the reviews, ruling, "The Forest Service, throughout these proceedings, evidenced a strategy of circumventing, rather than complying with the law." Rey and the Forest Service have one more chance to explain themselves at a hearing late next month, but if the judge isn't convinced of the agency's progress in complying with the law, Rey could see jail time or the agency could be ordered to use only water on fires until review of the retardant is complete.

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The Bush administration has backed off of an appeal of a March 2007 ruling that overturned controversial management rules for national forests. The struck-down rules allowed national forest managers to approve logging, mining, cell-phone towers, and other commercial projects without undergoing environmental reviews and were found to violate the Endangered Species Act. The Bush administration had been in the process of appealing the ruling but then decided it was quicker and cheaper to comply with it and conduct an environmental impact study of the 2005 rules. While the decision not to pursue the appeal is a small victory for environmentalists, as always, the victory is widely expected to be short-lived. New management rules that are strikingly similar to the ones that were slapped down have been in the works since shortly after the 2007 ruling and could be issued in a few weeks.

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A key part of the Bush administration's "Healthy Forests" law, passed in 2003, was effectively struck down this week by a federal appeals court. The "hazardous fuels reduction" rule let the U.S. Forest Service get out of analyzing the environmental impacts of timber sales up to 1,000 acres in size and prescribed burns up to 4,500 acres -- at least until after the sales and burns had already happened. The judges ordered a lower court to issue an injunction halting fuel-reduction projects under the law that were filed after October 2004 when the Sierra Club and Sierra Forest Legacy filed the lawsuit. The appeals court also ruled that the Forest Service caused "irreparable injury" by not appropriately studying the cumulative environmental impacts of logging and/or burning more than 1.2 million acres of national forest lands each year.

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Top Forest Service official may be held in contempt of court

The top official at the U.S. Forest Service has some 'splainin' to do. Mark Rey may be held in contempt of court and possibly jailed unless the USFS follows through on a court-ordered analysis of the environmental impact of a toxic flame retardant, U.S. District Judge Donald W. Molloy has ruled. In 2003, ammonium phosphate that was dropped on a wildfire killed 20,000 fish in an Oregon creek. As a result of a lawsuit brought by Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, Molloy ordered the USFS to provide an environmental analysis of the chemical; on the day the review was due, the agency filed for an extension. Unamused, Molloy has ordered Rey to appear in his court in October unless the USFS completes the analysis beforehand, which is unlikely. "The Forest Service cannot disregard the orders regarding the Endangered Species Act," Molloy wrote. According to Andy Stahl of FSEEE, a little time in the slammer would "coerce future good behavior." Hey, it worked for Paris Hilton.

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U.S. Forest Service re-revises forest-management rules

In March, a federal judge put the kibosh on the U.S. Forest Service's revision of forest-management rules that had directed local managers to give economic concerns as high a priority as ecological health and removed requirements that managers ensure viable populations of native wildlife. Having not succeeded, the agency try, tried again, offering up a revised revision late last week. Enviros see the new pro-business rules as essentially the old pro-business rules with an allowance for more public review; if the plan remains unchanged, chances are decent that greens will sue again.

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Judge tosses out Bush administration's forest-management rules

Heads-up to the Bush administration: You can't always get what you want. (As always, the Rolling Stones know best.) On Friday, a federal judge tossed out the administration's revised forest-management rules, issued in 2005, which allowed national forest managers to approve logging, mining, cell-phone towers, and other commercial projects without undergoing environmental reviews. The U.S. Forest Service had claimed that the new rules were environmentally benign, but had failed to undertake any studies showing that species were unaffected. Siding with 15 green groups, U.S. District Court Judge Phyllis Hamilton ruled that the administration did not adequately consider the environmental effects of the new rules and failed to properly gather public comment. Says Peter Frost of the Western Environmental Law Center, "I think people who love wildlife and care for our public forest should be elated by this decision." Better elate than never.

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U.S. Forest Service gets first female chief, trees cower

File this under The More Things Change: On Friday, the 101-year-old U.S. Forest Service named its first-ever female chief. Huzzah! Alas, Gail Kimbell is a pro-industry engineer who helped create President Bush's controversial "Healthy Forests" plan and whose appointment has put conservationists on alert. "She is a strong proponent of turning the clock back ... to the good old days where exploiting and extracting natural resources is the raison d'etre," said Andy Stahl, who heads Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics. Fellow greens echoed his concerns, but supporters praised Kimbell's "wealth of knowledge" and willingness to hear all sides. The New England native, now a USFS regional forester in northern Idaho, Montana, and North Dakota, said she was "honored, humbled, excited, and not just a little bit frightened to take the helm" -- a position that puts her in charge of 155 national forests, 30,000 employees, and a nearly $5 billion budget. Hmm, she'll have to work on that roar.

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GAO blames Bush administration for high cost of Biscuit timber salvage

The Bush administration, not environmental lawsuits, is to blame for the nearly $11 million cost of a logging project that will salvage only $8.8 million worth of timber, says a new study from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office. After the 2002 Biscuit fire burned almost 500,000 acres in Oregon and California, the U.S. Forest Service overestimated the amount of timber available and the number of jobs that would be created by logging it, says the GAO. "Taxpayers are going to have to spend millions more just cleaning up the damage from the logging than the government made from the timber sales," said Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.). "At the same time, promises of community fire protection, habitat restoration, and scientific analyses remain unscheduled and unfulfilled." Republicans responded by doubling down, promoting legislation by Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) that would speed up logging after storms and wildfires. 'Cause that seems to be working out pretty well.

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Judge puts Clinton's roadless policy back in action

In a Three Stooges-esque poke to the eyes of the Bush administration (nyuk nyuk!), U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Laporte yesterday reinstated a Clinton-era ban on road construction, logging, mining, and other development in roadless national forest areas. In May 2005, the Bushies replaced Clinton's "roadless rule" -- which applied to 58.5 million acres, or nearly a third of national forest land -- with a process that required governors to petition the feds if they wanted to protect national forests in their states. Siding with 20 green groups and four states that had sued the U.S. Forest Service, Laporte ruled that the admin did not conduct necessary environmental studies before yanking the Clinton policy. ''This is fantastic news for millions of Americans who have consistently told the Forest Service that they wanted these last wild areas of public land protected,'' said Kristen Boyles of Earthjustice. The timber industry denounced the ruling -- not because they want to log, silly, but because they're worried that roadless areas are vulnerable to wildfire. The Bushies may appeal.

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Dear Umbra,

Nearly every day, I can hear slurry bombers (planes that dump bright pink goo at the edges of fires) zooming overhead. I think the bright pink goo is a flame retardant, which seems to recently have gotten a bad reputation as a carcinogen. Not only that, but folks who have dogs here claim their dogs get hot spots from playing in the rivers below where the goo is dropped. What's going on? What is this stuff? Could it be harmful to firefighters or local communities? Is there anything being used anywhere else as an alternative? Thanks for any illumination you can provide.

Heather McKee
Missoula, Montana

Dearest Heather,

The ingredients in slurry, according to the U.S. Forest Service, are "85 percent water, 10 percent fertilizer (ammonia phosphate and sulfate ions), and 5 percent minor ingredients (iron oxide for color, clay, or bentonite)." But the exact mix differs a little each time. That's because a person called a mixmaster is in charge of mixing up each batch, then loading it onto an aircraft that will visit whatever raging fire needs to be quelled. Slurry's chemical base also includes things like stabilizers, thickeners, substances to inhibit corrosion, and that bright red dye. The dye reddens an area for about three months, so pilots and firefighters know where it's been dropped already. A soaplike substance helps the slurry stick to vegetation.

Slurry with the cringe on top.

Photo: iStockphoto

It's difficult to say if animals that play or live downstream from the slurrified sites will get ill, but even the Forest Service admits that the mix may be "harmful to pets if swallowed," since they risk fertilizer poisoning. Though their website doesn't get into it, I'd guess that wild animals could just as easily get sick from the stuff. As for two-legged types, I haven't been able to definitively confirm nor deny the carcinogen rumor in my research. For what it's worth, the Forest Service says the slurry is nontoxic to humans.

About 15 million gallons of slurry hits the ground in the U.S. each year, but this weapon in the fire-fighting arsenal is not typically employed until things get especially bad, as it's an expensive one: the mixture itself costs about 70 cents per gallon, and air drops usually cost some $2 per gallon. A direct substitute would be greater reliance on other methods, such as dropping water from aircraft and purposely lighting what are called "backfires" -- small fires that burn toward the bigger fire in order to remove its fuel source. One drawback to dropping just water is that it doesn't last as long or stick as well as slurry -- both bonuses after the fire is out, but not while it's burning. On the other hand, water doesn't have those pesky animal-sickening qualities, nor that three-month redness.

Long-range alternatives include improving forest health by simply letting fires in some ecosystems burn, and limiting grazing and logging in others. Another important thing is restricting the expansion of residential areas -- if you're moving anytime soon, stay away from the area sometimes called the urban-wildland interface, "where combustible homes meet combustible vegetation." Also, as long as we're listing alternatives, working to slow climate change wouldn't hurt.

Ultimately, large fires will happen no matter what we do. A recent report to Congress [PDF] takes an uncharacteristically holistic view, saying "as long as there is biomass for burning, especially under severe weather conditions (drought and high wind), catastrophic wildfires will occasionally occur." I think this means you can expect to see lots more slurry. On the other hand, it might mean Congress is about to do away with all our biomass. You never know these days.

Flammably,
Umbra

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Federal judge rejects Forest Service plan to log in national monument

A federal judge put the smackdown yesterday on a U.S. Forest Service plan to allow increased logging in California's Giant Sequoia National Monument, home to about two-thirds of the world's largest trees. U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer said the USFS forest management plan lacked "coherent or clear guidance" and "trampled the applicable environmental laws"; he called for the USFS to write a new plan and conduct further environmental review. California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, who brought the suit, called Breyer's ruling "a resounding victory for the giant sequoias" and "a resounding defeat for the Bush administration, which aggressively sought to unravel the protections." In a separate ruling, Breyer halted further logging in four areas in and around the monument, pending further study of the effects on the rare Pacific fisher, a member of the weasel family. A USFS spokesflack said the agency was "very disappointed" with the rulings and may appeal.

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Urban-style crime in national forests seems to be on the rise

In some parts of the U.S., being a forest ranger isn't the cushy job you might imagine. Far from keeping cartoon bears away from picnic baskets, rangers have been confronting a rising tide of urban-style crime: everything from domestic violence and drunken driving to armed robbery and marijuana cultivation. "It's really a microcosm of where we are with society," says Jack Gregory, head of the Law Enforcement and Investigations Branch of the U.S. Forest Service's southern region. The past 10 years have seen a marked increase in the number of violent incidents involving forest law enforcement -- remarkable considering the number of USFS law-enforcement officers has declined by a third since 1993. There are now only 660 such officers to patrol some 193 million Forest Service acres, one for every 292,000 acres of land. And it can't be easy striking terror in the hearts of evildoers while wearing a goofy hat.

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