Buck In Brief

The National Forest Management Act

In Brief: The Bush administration works to weaken law that protects the national forests and the creatures that live in them.

10/15/04

When entering a national forest, a sign emblazoned with the forest's name and the slogan "Land of Many Uses" welcomes visitors. "Land of Many Abuses" often seems more appropriate.

In the years following World War II our national forests provided the lion's share of the timber for the suburban housing boom taking place across the country. By the 1970s it became apparent that the nation's forests were not inexhaustible, and in 1976 Congress took action to better manage the national forest system by passing the landmark National Forest Management Act. This powerful piece of legislation requires the Forest Service to write and follow plans that ensure that our national forests are managed to preserve water quality, protect wildlife, and provide recreational opportunities as well as for timber, pulp and cattle forage.

The National Forest Management Act has proven extremely effective at safeguarding not only the trees of the nation's forests but also the creatures that cannot survive without them. The act's "viable populations" provision requires the Forest Service to "insure that viable populations [of wildlife] will be maintained"; "habitat must be provided to support, at least, a minimum number of reproductive individuals and that habitat must be well distributed so that those individuals can interact with others in the planning area."

The "viable populations" requirement thus reflects a bedrock principle of wildlife preservation -- wildlife needs habitat. That requirement has been the key to some of Earthjustice's most important victories. Many of the surviving ancient forests of the Northwest, for instance, exist only because Earthjustice went to court to enforce this provision. But this provision's power has made it the enemy of timber and pulp companies, and they are doing their best to render the provision meaningless.

The same week that the Bush administration declared September 25th National Hunting and Fishing Day "in recognition of the contributions of America's hunters and anglers, and all those who work to conserve our Nation's fish and wildlife resources," the administration profoundly weakened the protections that allow wildlife to thrive in our nation's forests. It did this by eliminating from Forest Service regulations the language that required the Forest Service to apply the "best available science" in protecting viable populations -- language adopted by the Reagan Administration in 1982 -- and replacing it with language directing the Forest Service only to consider the best available science. Although this was done ostensibly as an "interim" measure, it is very likely that the new language will be adopted as a final rule in the near future.

By creating a situation where parts of the National Forest Management Act can be applied selectively -- and totally at the discretion of individual forest managers -- the Bush administration is attempting to undo more than 30 years of work by the environmental community to establish a cohesive system for managing our public lands. If this change goes unchallenged, one can expect a return to the dark days of the 1950s and '60s when extraction was the guiding principle in our National Forests.

Vawter "Buck" Parker, Executive Director
buckparker@earthjustice.org