Blame misplaced in forest appeals?
By GARY GHIOTO
Sun Staff Reporter
04/22/2003

As fires burned across the West last summer, Arizona politicians such as then-Gov. Jane Hull and U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl said appeals filed by environmentalists had delayed or blocked forest thinning projects that could have prevented wildfires that scorched millions of acres.

Some members of Arizona's congressional delegation, such as U.S. Rep. Rick Renzi, R-Flagstaff, said the only way to stop "obstructionist environmentalists" was to pass legislation making it harder for them to appeal forest projects.

But according to research under way by the Ecological Restoration Institute at Northern Arizona University, appeals were routinely filed not just by conservation groups but also by individuals, cattle ranchers, timber companies and "concerned local citizens."

ERI also found that lawmakers and government officials used the issue of forest project appeals to "shift the blame for damage caused by wildfires" from the Forest Service, which had suppressed fires to protect trees for commercial logging and timber companies, to environmental groups.

In addition, ERI said the Bush administration and Congress have capitalized on the perception environmentalists are to blame for overcrowded, wildfire-prone forests in legislation aimed at "a reform of the administrative appeals process."

In preliminary analysis of some 3,635 administrative appeals filed from 1997 to 2002, ERI found that: The Forest Service and the General Accounting Office submitted reports to Congress that relied on "unconfirmed data" concerning the number of appeals filed. Despite the controversy surrounding appeals, Congress is relying on "anecdotal" information as it prepares to pass legislation to restrict or eliminate citizen appeals. The Forest Service cannot say for certain how many appeals were filed blocking forest thinning and wildfire reduction projects due to incomplete data. Lawmakers used faulty appeals data to "demonize" and destroy the credibility of environmental groups trying to participate in "the forest and fire policy debate." Conflicting information was used by both environmentalists and government officials to push their own political agendas regarding appeals.

As the U.S. House Resources Committee begins its review of legislation next week aimed at restricting, and in some cases, eliminating appeals, two ERI reports being discussed today on a national teleconference are sure to heat up the controversy.

The reports were created by NAU political science professor Jacqueline Vaughn and ERI researchers Hanna J. Cortner and Gretchen Teich. The database being analyzed consists of 3,635 administrative appeals filed between 1997 and 2002.

Specifically, the reports say more analysis of administrative appeals needs to be conducted before either environmentalists or government officials can reach a conclusion on the subject.

ERI researchers found that more than 33 percent of appeals aimed at blocking thinning, timber sales and other projects were filed by individuals.

Forest Guardians, a Santa Fe-based environmental group, filed more appeals than private citizens in the Southwest, said the report.

Meanwhile, ERI took issue with "dueling" reports from the General Accounting Office and the Forest Service, which provided plenty of fuel for environmentalists and politicians to stir up controversy.

Lawmakers, mostly from the West, who want to eliminate or roll back federal policies allowing appeals of timber sales and thinning operations, were successful on three fronts, said ERI.

Lawmakers used "unconfirmed data" provided by the Forest Service, which said that nearly half of all Forest Service thinning and wildfire projects had been appealed. That was in stunning contrast to a GAO report cited by environmentalists that found that only 1 percent had been appealed.

But government officials and members of Congress were able to blame environmentalists for delays in thinning wildfire-prone forests and "shift the debate over the problem of wildfire policy and decades of ineffective fire suppression tactics" to a perception that federal appeals needed to be overhauled, said ERI.

"As a result, by 2003, Congress and the Forest Service were proposing new legislation and regulatory changes that would repeal or severely restrict the use of administrative appeals of Forest Service projects," said an ERI report.

"By framing the problem as being caused by the actions of overzealous or misguided environmental groups who misused the process, policymakers were able to recast the agenda in terms more to their liking and, potentially, to negatively affect the perception of environmental organizations in the larger natural resources debate," concluded the ERI report.