U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

40–351 cc WASHINGTON : 1997

FOREST HEALTH CRITERIA

OVERSIGHT HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON FOREST AND FOREST HEALTH

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED FIFTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

ON

CRITERIA TO DETERMINE IF A FOREST IS HEALTHY

OR UNHEALTHY, AND HOW TO IMPROVE OR MAINTAIN FOREST HEALTH

MARCH 18, 1997—WASHINGTON, DC

Serial No. 105–6

Printed for the use of the Committee on Resources

(
(II)

COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES

DON YOUNG, Alaska, Chairman

W.J. (BILLY) TAUZIN, Louisiana

JAMES V. HANSEN, Utah

JIM SAXTON, New Jersey

ELTON GALLEGLY, California

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

JOEL HEFLEY, Colorado

JOHN T. DOOLITTLE, California

WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland

KEN CALVERT, California

RICHARD W. POMBO, California

BARBARA CUBIN, Wyoming

HELEN CHENOWETH, Idaho

LINDA SMITH, Washington

GEORGE P. RADANOVICH, California

WALTER B. JONES, JR., North Carolina

WILLIAM M. (MAC) THORNBERRY, Texas

JOHN SHADEGG, Arizona

JOHN E. ENSIGN, Nevada

ROBERT F. SMITH, Oregon

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

KEVIN BRADY, Texas

JOHN PETERSON, Pennsylvania

RICK HILL, Montana

BOB SCHAFFER, Colorado

JIM GIBBONS, Nevada

MICHAEL D. CRAPO, Idaho

GEORGE MILLER, California

EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts

NICK J. RAHALL II, West Virginia

BRUCE F. VENTO, Minnesota

DALE E. KILDEE, Michigan

PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon

ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American

Samoa

NEIL ABERCROMBIE, Hawaii

SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, Texas

OWEN B. PICKETT, Virginia

FRANK PALLONE, JR., New Jersey

CALVIN M. DOOLEY, California

CARLOS A. ROMERO-BARCELO ́ , Puerto

Rico

MAURICE D. HINCHEY, New York

ROBERT A. UNDERWOOD, Guam

SAM FARR, California

PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island

ADAM SMITH, Washington

WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts

CHRIS JOHN, Louisiana

DONNA CHRISTIAN-GREEN, Virgin Islands

NICK LAMPSON, Texas

RON KIND, Wisconsin

LLOYD A. JONES, Chief of Staff

ELIZABETH MEGGINSON, Chief Counsel

CHRISTINE KENNEDY, Chief Clerk/Administrator

JOHN LAWRENCE, Democratic Staff Director

SUBCOMMITTEE ON FOREST AND FOREST HEALTH

HELEN CHENOWETH, Idaho, Chairman

JAMES V. HANSEN, Utah

JOHN T. DOOLITTLE, California

GEORGE P. RADANOVICH, California

JOHN PETERSON, Pennsylvania

RICK HILL, Montana

BOB SCHAFFER, Colorado

MAURICE D. HINCHEY, New York

BRUCE F. VENTO, Minnesota

DALE E. KILDEE, Michigan

————— —————

————— —————

————— —————

BILL SIMMONS, Staff Director

ANNE HEISSENBUTTEL, Legislative Staff

LIZ BIRNBAUM, Democratic Counsel
(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held March 18, 1997 ................................................................................. 1

Statements of Members:

Chenoweth, Hon. Helen, a U.S. Representative from Idaho ......................... 1

Peterson, Hon. John, a U.S. Representative from Pennsylvania ................. 47

Radanovich, Hon. George, a U.S. Representative from California ............... 48

Statements of witnesses:

Dombeck, Michael, Chief, Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture. ........................................................................................................... 3

Prepared statement ................................................................................... 52

Holmer, Steve, Campaign Director, Western Ancient Forest Campaign,

Washington, DC ............................................................................................ 35

Prepared statement ................................................................................... 55

Kane, Kenneth, Keith Horn, Inc., consulting foresters, Kane, PA ............... 33

Prepared statement ................................................................................... 58

Lynch, Dr. Dennis L., Professor of Forest Sciences, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO .............................................................................. 18

Prepared statement ................................................................................... 108

Moore, Martin, Director, Community Development and Planning, Apache

County, AZ ..................................................................................................... 20

Prepared statement ................................................................................... 96

Muckenfuss, Ed, Regional Manager, Westvaco Company, Summerville,

SC ................................................................................................................... 38

Prepared statement ................................................................................... 63

Schoenholtz, Dr. Stephen H., Associate Professor of Forest Resources,

Mississippi State University ........................................................................ 24

Prepared statement ................................................................................... 50

Wall, Bill, Wildlife Biologist, Potlatch Corporation, Lewiston, ID ............... 40

Wiant, Harry, President, Society of American Foresters, Morgantown,

WV .................................................................................................................. 23

Prepared statement ................................................................................... 48

Additional material supplied:

Little, Jane Braxton: Article on ‘‘How to manage healthy forests’’ .............. 121

Society of American Foresters: A Framework for Considering Forest

Health and Productivity Issues ................................................................... 69

Communications received:

Pfister, Professor Robert D. (Univ. of Montana): Letter of March 14,

1997, to Hon. Helen Chenoweth .................................................................. 116
(1)

MANAGEMENT OF OUR NATION’S FORESTS

AND CRITERIA FOR DETERMINING

HEALTHY FORESTS

TUESDAY, MARCH 18, 1997

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON FORESTS AND FOREST HEALTH,

COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES,

Washington, DC.

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:05 p.m., in room

1324, Longworth House Office Building, Washington, D.C., Hon.

Helen Chenoweth (Chair of the Subcommittee) presiding.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. The Subcommittee on Forests and Forest

Health will come to order. The Subcommittee is meeting today to

hear testimony on what criteria should be used to determine if a

forest is healthy or unhealthy, and what management tools would

be considered the most appropriate to maintain or improve forest

health.

Under Rule 4(g) of the committee rules, any oral opening Statee

ments at hearings are limited to the Chairman and the ranking minority member. This will allow us to hear from our witnesses sooner and help members to keep their schedules. Therefore, if other

members have statements, they can be included in the hearing

record under unanimous consent.

STATEMENT OF HON. HELEN CHENOWETH, A U.S. REPRESENTATIVE FROM IDAHO; AND CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON

FORESTS AND FORESTS HEALTH

Mrs. CHENOWETH. I am pleased to be conducting this hearing.

The Subcommittee has invited a broad range of witnesses to testify

on the criteria to determine if a forest is healthy or unhealthy, and

how to improve or maintain forest health.

It is my desire to use this forum as an education tool for the Subcommittee to listen to a broad range of interests as well as to substantiate and to form a hearing record.

We are fortunate to have with us today the caliber of witnesses

representing the Forest Service, academia, local government, industry, and the environmental community. The subject of forest

health has become a matter of great concern to us all. Forest

health has been defined in many different ways to express important values obtained from forests.

Many attitudes and policies during the past century have contributed to the forests’ present condition. The forests that seem to

be at most serious risk today are those developed under a historic
2

cycle of high-frequency, low-intensity wildfire. Nearly 100 years of

fire exclusion following thousands of years of management of the

same forests by the use of fire by Native Americans has led to

many crowded and unhealthy forests. Rather than the high-frequency, low-intensity wildfires of those days, today’s wildfires are

larger, hotter, more lethal to vegetation, more damaging to topsoils,

and exceptionally dangerous to human settlements and property.

Although the majority of forest health problems and the resulting

large, damaging fires are found on the public lands of the west, introduced non-native forest pests such as the gypsy moth and Dutch

elm disease in the east have also created serious threats to forest

health across the United States, including all of these criteria.

It is my desire to obtain information from this hearing that will

be helpful to the Subcommittee as we move forward with improving

the health of our nation’s forests. I would also like to point out that

it was my desire to have as broad a range as possible of interests

and expertise represented at today’s hearing. Although as I pointed

out, we have a highly qualified list of witnesses, I would like to

note that I extended invitations to more members of the environmental community to testify, but because of reasons known to them

only, only one representative could attend today, and we certainly

welcome him.

I look forward to the testimony and will recognize the ranking

minority member when he does get back from New York. Representative Hinchey is on his way in from New York, and will be

joining us when he arrives.

At this time, I would like to recognize Mr. Kildee for any opening

statement he may have.

Mr. KILDEE. Thank you, Madame Chairman, for recognizing me.

I really have no opening statement, just look forward to learning

what we can learn about the genuine health of our forests, part of

our national patrimony, and thank you for having the hearing.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you, Mr. Kildee. I would like to introduce the new Chief of the Forest Service, Michael Dombeck, and

his assistant, Director Ann Bartuska. As explained in our first

hearing, it is the intention of the Chairman to place all outside witnesses under oath.

This is a formality of the committee that is meant to assure open

and honest discussion and should not affect the testimony given by

witnesses. I believe all of the witnesses were informed of this before appearing here today, and they have each been provided a

copy of the committee rules.

Mr. Dombeck, if you will stand and raise your right hand, I will

administer the oath.

Do you solemnly swear or affirm under the penalty of perjury

that you will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the

truth, so help you God?

Mr. DOMBECK. I will.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you. Let me remind the witnesses that

under our committee rules they must limit their oral statements to

five minutes, but that their entire statement will appear in the

record. We will also allow the entire panel to testify before questioning the witnesses.
3

The Chairman now recognizes Mr. Dombeck, and, without regard

to what the rules say, we are anxious to hear from you.

STATEMENT OF MICHAEL DOMBECK, CHIEF, FOREST SERVICE, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE; ACCOMPANIED BY ANN BARTUSKA, DIRECTOR, FOREST

HEALTH PROTECTION

Mr. DOMBECK. Thank you for that introduction, and I have to say

I am pleased to appear before the Subcommittee for the first time

as Chief of the Forest Service. I want you to know that Dr. Ann

Bartuska here with me is here as an expert. She is our director of

the forest health protection staff and knows all of the details.

I would like to begin my testimony by giving three brief examples just to demonstrate that we do have tools and we know many

of the things we have to do. I would like to start out with an example from the south.

The southern pine, the longleaf pine, was considered probably

the most valuable in terms of wood quality products, aesthetically

pleasing, fire-resistant species, resistant to insect diseases and attacks.

In pre-settlement times, we had something in the neighborhood

of 60,000,000 acres of longleaf pine stands. By the early 1900’s,

that was reduced to about 3,000,000 acres due to fire exclusion and

conversion of forest lands to agriculture uses. Because of the management technologies today, the Forest Service is making progress

in restoring the longleaf pine ecosystems and it is a priority in that

part of the country. We are establishing new stands that provide

a wide array of social and economic benefits as well as just the

beauty of the forest.

The second example I would like to give has to do with white

pine blister rust. From 1909 and 1910, white pine blister rust came

to this country and contaminated nursery stocks. It first affected

Idaho and was discovered around Coeur D’Alene in about 1923.

Then it spread throughout the west, Washington, Oregon, Idaho,

and Montana, and as you know, the white pine was often known

as the tree that built America from the standpoint of its value.

In the 1950’s, we began a successful effort, a breeding program

to develop blister rust-resistant stocks because many of the original

stands have been decimated as a result of this disease. Today, we

are restoring white pine stands and white pine ecosystems in many

ares of the west, so this is another example of genetics and the importance of disease and those kinds of studies that are going on.

The third example I would like to mention is an issue that you

are so familiar with in your home State. Last week, I spent some

time in the west looking firsthand at some of the forest health

issues, and you have already described in your opening statement

some of the problems associated with overstocked stands.

In the Boise National Forest in your State, they are moving

ahead with a wide variety of tools to get on top of the issue, and

I would like to say that it is important that we use all of the tools

at our disposal to deal with the forest health issues from salvage

logging to thinning to fuel reduction to prescribed burning.

I looked at examples of mowing when I was out in Deschutes National Forest, and one striking thing that I saw there that also ap-
4

plies to the entire west is the Skeleton Fire, on the outskirts of

Bend where 19 homes burned in the wildland/fire interface.

We spent some $1,600 an acre suppressing that fire, whereas

many of the management practices we could have used to avoid

that type of situation as we move forward are much less costly

than that.

For example, we can do prescribed burning in some cases for $20

to $50 an acre, so I just list those as examples to say that we do

have the tools and we need to use all the tools and we need to work

with communities in a positive way.

I guess the message I would like to leave the Subcommittee with

is that we can accelerate the healing of our forests, and we can do

so in a balanced and measured way. Because the consequences of

inaction far outweigh the fiscal costs of the needs for restoration,

catastrophic events, fires, floods, landslides seem to be occurring at

increasing frequencies with ever more devastating consequences.

Noxious weeds are diminishing the productivity of hundreds of

thousands of acres of public land. The devastating fires are increasingly encroaching on the urban/forest interface. Last year alone,

over 6,000,000 acres of public land burned.

Healthy forests provide the resiliency to minimize the severe consequences of these events, and without decisive actions, these problems will only get worse. I want to say that restoration will not be

quick, and in fact will be expensive, but we must look to these sorts

of activities as investments in the land, investments that will immediately reduce the cost of catastrophic fire and, in the long run,

greatly enhance forest productivity, health, and diversity.

It took many decades to get where we are today, and it will take

years to get to where we need to go. With that, I would be happy

to answer any questions you have.

[Statement of Michael Dombeck may be found at end of hearing.]

Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you, Chief Dombeck. I appreciate hearing from you. Dr. Bartuska, do you have any comments to make

or are you here to assist in any questions that might need your expertise?

Ms. BARTUSKA. I am primarily here to assist in any questions.

I will make one comment as to the criteria with regard to understanding what the health of the forests are.

We have programs in place to try to describe that so we know

what the current condition is and where we are going in the future,

and I think that is particularly critical in order to identify the

areas of highest priority and highest risk, and part of our understanding on the national forests helps us do that, but also, we are

trying to put that into national context using the Santiago Agreement which is a way internationally to define what the health of

forests are and sustainability of communities.

So part of our criteria for understanding where these forests are

going is to identify current conditions and trends.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. Can you tell me what the Santiago Agreement

may list as far as criteria for healthy forests?

Ms. BARTUSKA. It involves a whole combination of biological criteria such as productivity of the forest lands, extent of forest lands,

whether or not you have high fire risk.
5

It also speaks to the stability and sustainability of communities,

so there are economic factors. The ability to sustain small communities and large communities, the contributions to the GNP would

be included, so it is a whole array of criteria dealing with health

of ecosystems but also health of communities.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. Dr. Bartuska, when we think of actual forest

health, which I think we have tried to confine our thinking in this

committee to include community stability as it so very important

to us, but in terms of restoring forest health to the forests, can you

give me a little more detail with regard to the Santiago Agreement,

if that is the criteria that you will be looking at?

Ms. BARTUSKA. I don’t have all the details of those criteria. We

can send that to you.

I will say that of seven main biological criteria, there is one specifically dealing with forest health, and the measures of that include extent and condition of the forest lands, mortality balanced

against growth, conditions of soil productivity, so it would be fairly

traditional within our own monitoring programs, traditional measures, but there are also some dealing with other criteria, other

characteristics of the system, and I don’t have all those details with

me.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. In terms of having our own chief be able to

make the decisions about the forests, what would the Santiago

Agreement do with regard to his ability to make decisions on our

forests in America? Chief Dombeck.

Mr. DOMBECK. I look at Ann as the expert on the Santiago

Agreement, but I look at it as more of the umbrella concepts, sort

of the macro approach that then we would build those or other concepts that we would apply to different geographic areas based upon

differences in species composition, differences in precipitation, differences in elevation, and all those other types of things then become nested in those overall, overarching concepts that apply

broad-scale.

I see it as an umbrella that is as much a communication and

education tool. We are, I believe, in the United States with the academic institutions, such as places like the University of Idaho—

who I understand did the bulk of the research along with the Forest Service on the white pine blister rust issue that I used as an

example, along with the Forest Service and industry and many others—we in this country are the experts on this issue, and many,

many other countries look to us for technical expertise, for advice

on these kinds of issues, and I have got to say one more thing

about your home State where the national interagency fire is another example of, these are the experts from the standpoint of

wildland fire fighting and incident command. We have this level of

expertise in this country that is sought after by the international

community, and it is something that we should be proud of.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. I think you can probably gather from the line

of questioning that you are receiving that we want you to have authority and be unencumbered to make decisions about forest health

in the future. I would be very interested in receiving more information with regard to the relationship there.

We have a situation in northern Idaho right now that I might

use as an example to see if it is something that could be moved
6

ahead, and that is that on November 29, we had a very interesting

phenomenon that occurred with regard to the weather. We had a

very, very cold air inversion that settled in the northern part of

Idaho and northeastern Washington, and then we had warm rain

above, and the rain came through and rained ice for eight hours.

We had ice buildup in the trees.

By the time the ice buildup reached up to two and a half tons

in the crowns of these trees, sometimes trees 175 to 200 years old,

so they were native species, the trees would break right below the

last green limb, and it also occurred in the trees averaging 30 to

50 years old. They all broke about 30 feet off the ground, and that

presents an emergency situation with regard to forest health, because we don’t just have the normal fuel load on the forest floor.

We have 25 to 30 percent of the forest on the floor now from that

ice damage spanning Mr. Nethercutt’s district as well as mine and

some moving into Montana.

Are we in a situation where a decision can be made at your level

or the level of Missoula, Montana, and Portland, Oregon, where we

can get in and clean that up so we won’t have a lot of fire damage

and insect and disease moving in which would happen in this circumstance?

Mr. DOMBECK. Let me say that actually, I saw some of that, not

the damage in the area that you speak of, but damage similar to

that when I was in eastern Oregon, and it is not unlike the hurricanes that hit the southeast that will take a swath through the forest.

My hope is that our policies are such that our experts are on the

land, that we have the ability and the flexibility, the processes to

make these kind of decisions by the resource managers on the land

working with the local people in that situation.

Now, I assume that that would be in Regional Forester

Salwasser’s area and I will check with him, but I assume that he

and the forest supervisors and rangers are taking a look at that situation as we speak.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you very much, and welcome to your

new job. I have appreciated working with you and your staff very

much.

Mr. DOMBECK. Thank you.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. I would like to call on the gentleman from

Colorado now. Mr. Schaffer.

Mr. SCHAFFER. Thank you, Madame Chairman. I have a couple

questions and I would like to start out just on the whole topic of

controlled burns, a big issue out in my State of Colorado, as you

may well imagine.

We have great concern over air quality, and there are many communities in the range of the State that are in any given year just

one or two days away from being considered nonattainment areas,

and when Secretary Babbitt had mentioned, for example, the increased effort on forest burns and a considerable portion of our

State includes federally managed lands, and that affects that

range.

I would just like to find out first, your thoughts about that particular management practice in the first place, but secondly, what

I need to hear is just some assurances that the air quality stand-
7

ards in our State are being considered, that there is a plan to accommodate those standards and help us maintain our attainment

of those standards, and that there is a commitment to work with

our State hand in hand just as these projects may be carried out.

Mr. DOMBECK. Let me say that air quality has been a significant

issue associated with prescribed fire, that has been broadly discussed, and the one reality is that in using a prescribed fire, we

do have control over fires, oftentimes. They are planned with the

particular wind direction in mind and to work within windows of

opportunity based on whatever the local conditions are, whereas, if

we deal with the disaster of the uncontrolled fire that we just have

Mother Nature take its course, that leads us then into a situation

where we have no control, no ability to manage the situation.

What we have been doing is working with the Environmental

Protection Agency. Our local folks are working with the State agencies to work with the windows of opportunity, to identify the windows of opportunity that they have so we make sure all of the situations, the air quality, the safety precautions, all of those kinds of

things are taken into consideration. It is very important that we

do that.

Mr. SCHAFFER. Colorado is in the process right now of passing

State legislation that would give the State authority that was

granted to States under the Clean Air Act to require Federal facilities to reduce emissions coming from Federal lands.

Are you familiar with that legislation or that effort among affected States and do you see any reason that there would be any

kind of controversy or conflict at all?

Mr. DOMBECK. I am not familiar with Colorado’s specific legislation and much of the clean air issues, of course, fall under the jurisdiction of the EPA, but what I will say is that the direction that

we are going in, and I believe fairly aggressively, and the State of

Colorado has been in the lead in this issue, is the Federal agencies

are working with the States and the counties from the standpoint

of planning, of having fire management plans of knowing how they

are going to respond to situations in advance based upon dialog

and plans and the interaction of the Federal agencies, the BLM,

the Forest Service, as well as the appropriate State agencies, the

counties, and from the standpoint of not only fire planning, but

also from the standpoint of how they are going to respond in the

most efficient and effective manner.

Mr. SCHAFFER. I would also like to ask just with respect to planning and plotting out these burns and how they occur, some of

those forests are so dry right now that it is very easy to see how—

in fact, I have heard some people in the Forest Service refer to

burns that exceed the plan. They are called bonus burns in the industry vernacular of sorts.

I am curious as to how many of your staff are trained in fire suppression.

Mr. DOMBECK. Let me first say that no, there isn’t a burn that

is not dangerous and shouldn’t be taken very, very seriously whether it is a natural fire or a prescribed burn, and as a result of 1988,

and the tragedies of ’94 that I was personally involved in, we have

enhanced training and safety to an all-time high, I believe, I was

with the Bureau of Land Management at that time, but also within
8

the Forest Service from the standpoint of the programs that we

had with the Forest Service as they kicked off a program called

Fire–21, which takes a look at the issues across the board associated with fire, the funding, the training, the safety, because we

should never, ever let anyone believe that fire is not—can be a very

dangerous situation, especially in extreme weather conditions as

we have learned the hard way many, many times, so the standpoint of training, the standpoint of safety is I think at an all-time

high.

But our workforces are changing, and the numbers of employees

that are perhaps in line positions that 30 or 40 years ago maybe

a greater proportion of them would have been smoke jumpers,

would have been trained specifically in fire, where now, I believe

a lesser proportion of some of our people have that training.

Therefore, the action that we have to take is to make sure that

we provide it so that we don’t have those gaps in skills and training.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. I thank the gentleman from Colorado, and we

will have another round of questioning, if you have any other questions in mind.

The chair now recognizes Mr. Kildee.

Mr. KILDEE. Thank you, Madame Chairman. What programs

that would lead to forest health is the Administration seeking to

give greater emphasis to in the 1997 budget?

Mr. DOMBECK. The following initiative would be—we are looking

at timber stand improvement increases, I believe about an

$11,000,000 increase in timber stand improvement. The acres

treated would increase by about 30,000. We are looking at about $10,000,000 for insect disease prevention

and suppression, and increased emphasis in fuel treatment, and increased emphasis in the watershed restoration. These are in addition to other activities that we are involve in, the training, the

monitoring, the research and all these areas.

I think the point that I want to make is that we realize that in

many cases we have to make investments in watersheds and those

investments include a wide variety of things. We have got roads

sometimes that need to be put to bed, sometimes that need to be

brought up to standard; noxious weed issues that we have to deal

with; a whole variety of forest management practices that could include anything from salvage logging to thinning to a prescribed

burning.

When I was out in Deschutes National Forest last week, they

showed me some mowing projects they were involved in, and one

thing I would like to call your attention to is something that I have

put in your folders just to give you a visual of some of the forest

health situation. I think that it describes in pictures some of the

things I am trying to describe.

The first picture, and this is in Shasta County, California; the

first picture shows about 1,500 stems per acre. It is a situation that

is very dense, and in low humidity situations, very flashy from the

standpoint of the historical situation would have been, these would

have been probably Ponderosa pine, and because of fire suppression

over the last 100 years, you have had an encroachment of fir species, and a significant fire risk.
9

The second picture shows work after some management has

taken place there, and let me just describe the management that

has occurred here, and that is about 2,000 to 3,000 board feet per

acre of saw logs were removed, along with about 35 to 40 tons per

acre of nonmerchantable material, and what we have done here

now is reduce this to about 100 trees per acre compared to 1,500

on the previous photo.

Now, here, we have a photo that is eight years later, and what

we are ready to do there is, we are ready to go in with a prescribed

burn, giving the right weather conditions, to further reduce some

of the fuel loading that is there because of the suppression that has

occurred there for about 80 years.

I guess my point is again, it is important that we use every tool

at our disposal when we deal with this issue that we have. On the

national forest system, we are estimating somewhere in the neighborhood of 39,000,000 acres is at high risk to catastrophic fire.

Mr. KILDEE. At one time when I was growing up, fire was always

the enemy in the forest. Now, you can use fire as a friend, as helpful?

Mr. DOMBECK. With great respect. Fire is a natural part of the

ecosystem and depending on where you are, the typical situation

in the intermountain west is that it burned every seven to 15 years

in a low-intensity situation.

The large, catastrophic fires may have occurred in the cycles in

centuries rather than decades like the low-intensity fires, and these

are the way these ecosystems evolved. Through extensive and overzealous, if you will, fire suppression, the stands have changed in

composition, leaving us with a significant issue to deal with, a serious issue compounded by the urban/wildland interface.

If you go around Lake Tahoe or the front range or the west slope

or the Sierras where you have got lots of houses, and in many

cases, very expensive houses, interspersed in these dense forests.

The education issue that is facing us is, in some cases, you see

cedar shake shingles on these houses. You see people that are used

to a visual that is very dense, much like photo number one, when

the historical situation would have been more like photo number

three.

So there is this education problem that goes along with the visual landscape, and the fact that over the last several decades, we

have preached to put every fire out, and yet, we have got to be very

respectful of fire, because we can never assume that it cannot be

very, very dangerous.

Mr. KILDEE. Thank you very much. Thank you, Madame Chairman.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you, Mr. Kildee. The chair now recognizes Mr. Vento.

Mr. VENTO. Thanks, Madame Chairwoman, and I welcome our

new chief. I really am looking forward to working with you and I

appreciate your testimony today. This is a tough topic, but one I

think that merits education and I hope that we can come down

with policy that reflects the science rather than what actually favors our own interest.

I appreciate your effort to come here and the Chairwoman’s effort to put forth the hearing on an educational basis.
10

What was the time lapse between these two photographs, photo

number two and three? Ten years?

Mr. DOMBECK. Eight years.

Mr. VENTO. Eight years.

Mr. DOMBECK. I believe.

Mr. VENTO. I was reminded—I was at a meeting on Saturday

evening, and I was reminded by one of the foresters from the Superior National Forest in Minnesota. He said they had two fires up

there this past year. One was a prescribed burn, and one was a

natural fire that they tried to put out.

Anyway, on the prescribed burn, they spent some $30,000 to

$40,000, maybe even less than that. I don’t remember. It might

have been $18,000, but on the fire that they tried to put out, they

spent $1,200,000.

This is one of the problems that we have, Chief, in terms of when

we get into firefighting, we are spending an awful lot of money. For

the short-term, I suppose because of the urban interface and some

other factors we have to deal with that.

I don’t know what they did to the air quality, but I guess they

were obviously doing that in compliance with the laws that deal

with air quality.

Mr. DOMBECK. From the standpoint of prescribed fire, oftentimes

we can deal with somewhere in the neighborhood of $20 to $50 per

acre in many situations; sometimes a little more than that, but

when we get a catastrophic situation to deal with, it could go upwards to $4,000 an acres.

The fire that I reviewed earlier, last week in the Deschutes National Forest that burned 19 homes in Bend at the urban/wildland

interface there, we spent about $1,600 an acre. From the standpoint of management in advance, you can do a lot for $1,600 an

acre.

We need to start shifting our management practices so we can

begin to make investments to prevent problems before they occur.

It is sort of like watch our cholesterol before we have a heart attack.

Mr. VENTO. No one is suggesting that in life or limb. I think in

Superior, that was not the case. I think it was just a regular fire

that they were trying to put out. But I think that the urban interface, no one is suggesting that when those incidents arise that you

don’t try to deal with it in terms of life and personal property and

as I said, health.

Mr. DOMBECK. Let me just add that part of the importance of

planning that we talked about associated with Colorado I think applies here, because it is important that we know in advance what

we are going to do.

It is just like having the closest force as the most efficient way

to deal with a fire, it is also important that we know what we need

to do.

I was at a situation, and this one happened to be in Arizona

where we had a trailer park of about 1,000 residents in a very remote area that has a serious fire almost every year, and the average expenditure is about $3,000,000 to $5,000,000 dealing with

suppression of that fire.
11

Now we have a management plan that actually creates a mosaic

of vegetation types to dampen the effects of the fire as well as

through a prescribed burn or natural fire depending on where the

lightning strikes are to actually create a zone around the community so that we have protection from that.

So planning in advance and knowing how to deal with these situations is the way to go versus having to react in the emergency

role.

Mr. VENTO. It is a problem. I think that obviously it may not

look as aesthetically pleasing if you happen to want to be in the

middle of a dense forest, but that is part of the management that

we have to advocate, I guess at the same time, and work with local

communities to try to make certain they understand.

Forest health is a very interesting issue. I have followed it in detail, but mostly there is an emphasis on salvage logging that tends

to override everything else. There is a role for salvage, is there not?

Mr. DOMBECK. Yes, and I think it is important that we use all

the tools and logging is certainly a tool, but what do you do when

you are in an area where the timber values are not there to carry

the cost of management?

Mr. VENTO. Very often, these types of salvage logging efforts—

because of the way receipts are divided—are actually below-cost

sales. They are money losers unless we get extremely high costs.

If you are going to do this right, you should be using some of the

new forestry type of plans in these areas, shouldn’t you?

Mr. DOMBECK. Yes, and I hope—that is certainly the direction I

would like to have again, as I emphasized using all the tools.

It is important that we educate people to the fact that there is

an appropriate place for salvage logging. There are timber companies that say to me, we would like to retool and use some of the

lower value woods available, looking for new technologies.

At our forest products laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin, we have

probably 275 Ph.D.’s, some of the best minds in wood technology

developing techniques to use lower value or poorer quality fiber for

things in a wide variety of efficiencies.

Mr. VENTO. We are using all our aspen in Minnesota, let me tell

you, for fiberboard and other products. I might also say, of course,

the road restoration issue, mixed species types of reforestation, watershed management, road restoration, these are enormously important if you look at the damage that is occurring in terms of

these forests.

I think getting this on a cost basis is what the ultimate solution

is. As I say, this is a good hearing. I am sorry I am going to be

running back and forth, because we have another hearing on my

Committee on Banking that Congressman Hansen is interested in.

Thank you, Mr. Dombeck, Chief.

Mr. DOMBECK. Thank you.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you, Mr. Vento. For a second round of

questioning, I have just a couple of questions, Mr. Dombeck.

I wonder, in your opinion, how would you describe modern-day

timber harvest practices with regard to the overall health of the

forest?
12

Mr. DOMBECK. I think there are, like in all areas, a wide variety

of practices developed in everything from helicopter logging to techniques that are less soft on the land than that sort of thing.

In fact, I was reading about not too long ago, some mom-and-pop

operations, like those used when I was a kid in northern Wisconsin, where they were still skidding logs with horses.

I am not the logging, the engineering expert, but I hope that in

logging technologies, just like all of the things we have been talking about here where there is management that we continually

strive for the best and most efficient technologies available to use.

We are a society that the development of technology is something

important. We encourage that and are solidly behind that, and there are lots

of good, progressive timber operators out there.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. I assume from your answer that you really

don’t feel—I don’t want to put words in your mouth. Do you feel

that good, solid timber harvest practices could in any way be in

conflict with ecosystem management plans?

Mr. DOMBECK. I think maybe they could in some situations, but

I would venture to say that it is probably a social issue more than

it is a technology issue. From the standpoint of the debate that I

know that you are very familiar with whether we talk riparian

zones, roadless areas, those kinds of things, and I think it is one

of the most important things that the Forest Service can do. I

would hope that the Subcommittee here and that all the interests

would move to the areas first where there is the least controversy,

and that as we begin to build credibility and build trust on these

issues and confidence, because the things that we don’t know when

we end up in these protracted debates and end up in the court system, that money spent on litigation doesn’t necessarily benefit the

land or restore the ecosystem or restore the health of the forest.

I see this in a sense as more of a social issue than it is a technology issue, but by that I don’t mean to diminish the need to continue the search for new and better, more efficient and effective

technologies. Mrs. CHENOWETH. I am also very interested in knowing how you

feel about grazing practices on the national forest, because you

mentioned that over in the Deschutes Forest, they were mowing

some of the meadows, which I think is something that can be dovetailed into the whole picture of fire suppression.

I know Teddy Roosevelt envisioned using the livestock industry

to help keep the fuel load on the forest floor down in terms of grazing practices. Mr. DOMBECK. Well, the specific situation that I looked at on

Deschutes was in the coniferous forest and not a situation where

it didn’t appear that there were opportunities for grazing in that

forest.

But from the standpoint of reducing fuel loading and that sort

of thing, grazing is also a tool, and yet some of the forest health

issues associated with—again, like the long-term fire suppression

where we have encroachment of rangelands by pinion and juniper,

for example, there is already a shortage of water and the competition for water by the plants is there, and sometimes—these gradual

changes over time based upon the way we have managed the
13

ecosystems, we need to reverse through active management practices.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. I know it must have been just as fascinating

for you as it was for me when I first went into the Deschutes National Forest to see how an emerging forest establishes itself with

the pinion pine being a pioneer species, and then behind that, we

see the graduated growth of the forest following.

I see I still have just a minute left. I do want to ask you, how

many of your staff are actually qualified in fire suppression activities, actually qualified as fire suppression trained technicians?

Mr. DOMBECK. I don’t know the exact number. I don’t know if

Ann does, but we would be happy to provide that information to

you. I am proud to say that I carried a red card at one time, and

one of my goals this spring was to get qualified again, but with the

pace of everything I have to do, I am not sure I am going to have

the time to spend out jogging or in the gym to pass the tests.

Again, as I said in the beginning, I am proud of the fact that we

have among the best wildland firefighters in the world employed in

the Forest Service, and I am real proud of the work that they do.

They are very respected in the communities that they work, and

it is an interesting group of people doing work that is very satisfying to them and at not very high pay.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you, Mr. Dombeck. The chair now recognizes Mr. Vento, if he wants a second round of questions.

Mr. VENTO. Thanks, Madam Chair. Just briefly. I note that an

interagency task force or group was put together to examine the

memorandum of understanding under which salvage logging took

place, and there are a number key findings.

Some of them, I think, in fairness are positive. The involvement

of the Fish and Wildlife Service in the salvage logging plan added

to rather than duplicated the efforts of the Forest Service and BLM

regarding compliance with the ESA.

That is a good one, but some of the others are not. They have

a negative effect on pre-existing efforts to improve collaboration

among agencies—a negative effect on pre-existing efforts because it

overrode them, I take it, which is common sense. This was an

emergency, and so the existing channels of communication that existed were suppressed.

One of the concerns is that it destroyed the neutrality of dealing

with forest health. I think I am saying this right in terms of this

finding, Mr. Dombeck. I know that you participated in this or at

least some of your associates did.

It said current budget processes within BLM and Forest Services

act as an incentive for field units to resort to salvage logging to

generate money to pay for forest health projects, even when other

projects may be more appropriate.

I would assume that they are talking about forest health here,

and that is to say that maybe road restoration would be more important than forest health, watershed restoration, diversified planting of mixed species, prescribed burns. Obviously, this law put in

place specific quotas. I think it did mandate cuts, but others will

argue that it didn’t.

Do you have any comment on these task force recommendations?

I notice the final draft of an action plan was due in February. I
14

don’t know if it is out or not, but you might want to comment on

that as well.

Mr. DOMBECK. Let me say, I think we did learn several things

from the exercise. Number one, I think it got a lot of our policy people from the Washington staff and the various agencies out on the

ground to look at things firsthand, and I think that was a positive.

I think from the standpoint of endangered species consultations

and things like that, the whole exercise demonstrated that we

could—by starting the processes up front, and rather than having

the consultation processes in series, it was valuable to us knowing

what the rules are and what data was required as soon as we

started collecting it.

We coordinated better than ever. There were a variety of

positives, but from the standpoint, I think, of some of your latter

comments, we have got to understand that sometimes, we need to

make investments and that we shouldn’t always rely on the value

of the fiber that is there to carry the cost, because you have roads,

sedimentation problems that you might have to deal with; noxious

weeds issues you might have to deal with; stream restoration; high

densities of low value or virtually no value wood, those kinds of

things, and we need to look at it from the watershed approach

versus the values of the merchantable timber that is there as the

driver so that in the long haul, that will generate benefits.

Mr. VENTO. One of the problems, of course, is at the same time

when timber revenues are down, the various funds that respond to

conservation are also flat. So you are appealing to Congress for additional appropriations, modest as they may be, for prescribed

burning, for watershed restoration, for road restoration, a host of

things, the noxious weed issues that make up this forest health, is

that correct?

Mr. DOMBECK. Yes, and I think more and more we are learning,

and if it is in agriculture or forest management or whatever, that

there are all sorts of interactions, and the thing that we would like

to be able to do is use the broadest variety of tools and technologies

available in the best and most efficient combination for the longterm benefit of the land.

Mr. VENTO. One of the criticisms that often is raised, of course,

is that there is a great controversy about the suppression of fire

and whether or not that suppression is actually responsible for in

fact the buildup of fuel loads in the forest.

I know that someone is going to come through and say, well, this

is what the forest looked like 120 years ago. It was barren and

there was nothing there, and now this is what it looks like today.

It is in much better condition, obviously under those circumstances.

What is the scientific state of the majority of scientists with regards to forest health today versus what it was in the past?

Mr. DOMBECK. Well, from the standpoint of the proportion of forests that are healthy versus those that are not is a really tough

question, because then—what proportion of the tress and the condition of the trees and so on.

But I might say from the standpoint of monitoring and technologies, the sooner that we can identify the problems, the better.

Rather than waiting until we have a catastrophic fire situation or

rather than waiting until we have got this insect infestation, the
15

more that we can detect this coming, our early warning system is

sort of, you know, keep your cholesterol down and get plenty of exercise to avoid the heart attack, and that is the direction that we

really need to be heading in.

Of course, from the standpoint of science and technology, we are

learning more and more about the interactions of things and we

just need to apply those and I hope we can do it in a good, balanced

context, and one of the things that I am looking for is being able

to move with a broad support base as we fix our forests, because

we do know that inaction is not the solution. In fact, the costs will

increase.

Mr. VENTO. My time has expired and I have to leave. Thank you.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you, Mr. Vento. The chair recognizes

the gentleman from Colorado, Mr. Schaffer.

Mr. SCHAFFER. Thank you, Madame Chairman. Before I start,

Dr. Bartuska, could you tell me where you came from before you

ended up with the agency? Tell me about your background.

Ms. BARTUSKA. I am originally from Pennsylvania and I got my

degrees in Ohio and West Virginia, and spent nine years in North

Carolina before I came up here working in research in the Forest

Service and the university community and then most recently here

with the forest health protection staff.

Mr. SCHAFFER. Thank you. Going back to this prescribed burning, on the forests where you know you want to do prescribed burning now, how soon would you start?

Mr. DOMBECK. Well, let me say first that I am not the prescribed—the fire ecologist, but what we look for basically is the

window of opportunity from the standpoint of fuel moisture levels.

We always, and there are very strict guidelines that I would be

happy to send you if you wish that our experts follow from the

standpoint of weather conditions, relative humidity, fuel moisture,

the time of the year, all of those kinds of things.

I was again out west last week. They were telling me about a situation, where if they would burn that the direction of the smoke

would go over the interstate, then they could not burn because of

the air quality as well as the public reaction to that.

So these are things that—every situation within a certain set of

parameters is probably different.

Mr. SCHAFFER. What percentage of these lands would you estimate have to have fuel removed ahead of time mechanically?

Mr. DOMBECK. Before they would be burned?

Mr. SCHAFFER. Yes.

Mr. DOMBECK. I would ask Ann to—I would just have to almost

take a wild guess. I am not sure.

Ms. BARTUSKA. It is highly variable obviously depending upon

the geographic area.

For example, in the south, they almost never are mechanically

removing things, and it is a very active program, but in certain

parts of the west, mechanical treatment is going to have to be a

very high priority first, and it could be ten to twenty percent before

you go in and actually do any prescribed burning.

A lot of it is dependent on how much fuels there are, as we mentioned earlier with the urban/wildland interface, there will be conditions where we will not, even though prescribed burning might
16

be the most desired approach because of the communities there will

have do mechanical treatments primarily.

Mr. SCHAFFER. Let me ask a more general question. Some of the

Forest Service personnel that I have met with in Colorado believe

that they are insufficiently funded to accomplish forest health

projects.

Do you think they are right and how do you think we would deal

with this?

Mr. DOMBECK. I think the answer is yes, and it is a matter of

where we make—you know, as a society where we make—our investments and the priorities that you and the U.S. Congress in consultation with the Administration.

Let me say that as I mentioned, in national forests, we assume

now that about 39,000,000 acres are at significant threat of fire,

and as I look at the management practices, and I have the numbers here someplace, and I believe we are making process to the

tune of about——

Mr. SCHAFFER. How many million acres a year?

Mr. DOMBECK. We would like to be at about 3,000,000 acres a

year of treatment and management to get on top of the problem,

and I guess—let me say I will respond in writing with the specifics,

but I think we are somewhere in the neighborhood of 700,000 acres

treated per year is about where we are at now, and we would like

to be at about 3,000,000.

Mr. SCHAFFER. In your prepared comments, you mentioned the

importance of gathering good data and giving us a good picture of

our ecosystems and conditions and so on.

I would like to find out what kind of information does the forest

inventory and assessment program provide for our national forest

lands?

Ms. BARTUSKA. If you are speaking about the forest inventory

analysis program, we have very good coverage in determining what

the standing volume is as well as other structures of the forest.

For most of the national forests in the east and throughout the

west, that combined with forest monitoring gives us a really good

handle on some of the trends going on with other components like

soils, condition of the forest.

Mr. SCHAFFER. Thank you, Madame Chairman.

Mr. DOMBECK. I just found the numbers here, sir. The President’s budget allows for treatment of between 800,000 and

1,200,000 acres of high priorities for fiscal year 1998, and from the

standpoint of planning and so on, we would like to be able to get

up to about 3,000,000 or so per year to begin to gain on the issue.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you, Mr. Schaffer. The chair now recognizes Mr. Peterson.

Mr. PETERSON. Good afternoon and welcome to Washington. I

was interested in knowing your familiarity with the Allegheny National Forest located in northwestern Pennsylvania.

Mr. DOMBECK. Well, I have been there. I have never worked

there, and I grew up in the Chequamegon National Forest in northern Wisconsin not far from Lake Superior, 25 miles from a town

of 1,500, so I am somewhat familiar with the eastern forest landscape and species and so on.
17

Mr. PETERSON. You are the custodian of maybe the finest hardwood forest in North America?

Mr. DOMBECK. I have heard about it and this is—I am into my

second month on the job, but I hope to get up there and see it. I

want to get out on the ground as much as I can and not only talk

to the employees but talk to the local people that are there and be

able to solve as many of the problems that we have locally as well

as celebrate the successes.

Oftentimes, I think in the business of natural resource management, we don’t spend nearly enough time celebrating the successes

because the positive reinforcement and encouragement of employees and constituencies and so on is I think a very powerful educational tool that we can use and should be using a lot more.

Mr. PETERSON. I guess just to quickly familiarize you, it is a for- est that I think contributes $12,000,000 to $15,000,000 a year to

the treasury while only cutting about half of the recommended cut

by the last forest plan, and I guess I would just like to ask you if

you support the multi-use concept that has been there which I

think has pretty successfully balanced recreation, water quality,

hunting, timbering, and oil and gas exploration.

Mr. DOMBECK. Yes. I believe that the multiple-use concepts are

among the cornerstones that we have and the fact of the matter is,

we know how to do these practices and we know how to do them

right in many cases, and in virtually all cases, and from the standpoint of the wide variety of demands and uses of national forests.

Recreation is in a tremendous growth phase today. Forest health

is an issue that we have to deal with. The wildland fire issue is

an issue we have to deal with. Some of the eastern pest and disease problems are issues that we have to deal with, but from the

standpoint of overall balanced use, I believe that is where mainstream America is.

Mr. PETERSON. I just wanted to share with you that it is very

much a part of our growing economy in that area. It is the finest

hardwood forest in North America.

It is a mature forest. We had a sense a few years ago that there

was a move on the national level to really limit or stop cutting,

which most people that you might hear later today think would be

a mistake, because it is a mature forest that needs harvesting,

much of it or a lot of it. It is not, as some would say, that we are

cutting down the rain forest. That is just not the case, but it is a

mature forest. It is a very important asset economically to the area,

and I look forward to you coming up this summer, if that is possible.

I would love to have the chance to spend some time with you, because it is not only a very valuable resource economically, it is a

very beautiful forest, and it is just a nice place to visit and a pretty

part of Pennsylvania, and we would look forward to your coming.

Mr. DOMBECK. Thank you, I accept.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. Mr. Dombeck, I thank you for being here in

the committee with us. I saw a very interesting article in the

Washington Times yesterday about timber harvest practices in

Brazil.

A representative from the World Bank was indicating that in

Brazil, we need to realize that we don’t need to set aside vast
18

chunks of land exclusively for one use, that really, everyone is better off, including the communities, the logging industry, the environmentalists, everyone is better off when we can all work together

using the same land, and actually, we achieve a higher standard.

I share with you the fact, Chief, that we have quite a mountain

to overcome socially, but together, I think that we can do that and

welcome to your new job.

Thank you very much.

Mr. DOMBECK. Thank you.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. The committee will recognize the second

panel. On the second panel, we have Dr. Dennis Lynch, Professor

of Forest Science, Colorado State University from Fort Collins, Colorado; Martin Moore, Director of Community Development and

Planning from Apache County, Arizona; Harry Wiant, President,

Society of American Foresters, Morgantown, West Virginia; and Dr.

Stephen Schoenholtz, Associate Professor of Forest Resources, Mississippi State University, Mississippi.

Before we get started, I want to ask you to stand and take the

oath. Would you raise your right hand?

Do you solemnly swear or affirm under the penalty of perjury

that your statements and responses given will be the truth, the

whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Thank you.

Without objection, I will now recognize Mr. Schaffer from Colorado to introduce Dr. David Lynch. Mr. Schaffer, thank you very

much for bringing Dr. Lynch to us.

Mr. SCHAFFER. Thank you, Madame Chairman, and I appreciate

the opportunity to introduce a constituent, and a noted one within

his industry and profession as well. In spite of the material in front

of us, his name is Dennis Lynch.

Dr. Dennis Lynch has been a professor of forestry and scientist

at the Colorado State University in Fort Collins for the past 23

years. Previously, he spent 15 years with the U.S. Forest Service

as a forester, district ranger, planning leader, and three years

working at Colorado State Forest Service and Land Use Planning

Commission.

Dr. Lynch holds a Bachelor of Science in forestry, a Master’s degree in business, and a Ph.D. in natural resources administration,

all from Colorado State University, I might add.

He has received numerous awards and honors over the years for

his work in the area of forestry. I appreciate him coming here

today and look forward to his testimony. Thank you.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you, Mr. Schaffer. Let me remind the

witnesses that under our committee rules, they must limit their

oral statements to five minutes, but that your entire statement will

appear in the record.

We will also allow the entire panel to testify before questioning

of the witnesses, and now the Chairman recognizes Dr. Lynch for

the first testimony. Dr. Lynch.

STATEMENT OF DR. DENNIS L. LYNCH, PROFESSOR OF FOREST SCIENCES, COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY, FORT COLLINS, COLORADO

Mr. LYNCH. Thank you, Madame Chairman and members of the

Subcommittee. I appreciate your inviting me here to present my
19

views on forest health and management as these relate to the Central Rockies.

At the outset, I want to say that I am attempting to present

what I believe are points of consensus gained from discussions with

a number of professional forestry colleagues in Colorado and Wyoming, so I am indebted to my fellow faculty members, to the Wyoming State Forester and the Colorado State Forester and his management staff and fire division staff.

I am indebted to the Colorado Timber Association Director, the

Wilderness Society forest ecologist, and the Chairman of the Colorado-Wyoming State Society of American Foresters.

In discussing issues of forest health and management related to

the Central Rockies, it is important to review the historical interaction of people and forests, as I do in my written testimony.

There are several key points that I would like to draw from that

summary. The first is that the forests that we have today in the

Central Rockies are a result of a long history of human disturbance

and use.

Second, these previously disturbed areas of the past have grown

up under protection into today’s mature forests.

Third, each time period from pre-history to the present has been

accompanied in its own unique way with a society sense of forest

health. In other words, definitions of forest health have subjective

societal values interwoven with our ecological estimates.

Fourth, this long period of custodial care and protection in Colorado and Wyoming appears to have allowed shifts in understory

plant species, the buildup of forest fuels, increased numbers of

trees, and less overall forest diversity.

It is important to recognize that there are distinctly separate forest types in the Central Rockies, and that these vary uniquely from

one another and from forests in the other parts of the United

States. Therefore, generalizations about forest health may be of

only limited application when addressing specific forest situations.

Each forest should properly have its own specific criteria related to

health and management, and as I will explain later, our approach

to the restoration of these forests must change.

In my invitation to testify, I was asked to respond to the question what criteria would you use to determine if a forest is healthy

or unhealthy. From my previous testimony, I think you can see

why that question is very difficult to answer.

However, from my discussions with colleagues, I have attempted

to find some areas of complete or general consensus about overall

criteria. The first criteria that we agree upon is an unhealthy forest condition is outside the range of normal forest conditions.

Second, an unhealthy forest does not have a diversity of age

classes and successional stages over large areas.

Third, an unhealthy forest does not have a diversity of plant and

animal species.

Fourth, natural disturbances are more severe and frequent in

unhealthy forests.

Fifth, dead trees and woody debris accumulations are much

greater than decomposition rates and removals in an unhealthy

forest.
20

Sixth, an unhealthy forest does not provide a balanced flow of

benefits to sustain our society.

I have also been asked to respond to the question, what management tools would you consider most appropriate to maintain or improve forest health.

There is always the option of doing nothing, but I would like to

point out that doing nothing carries a price tag. Currently, fire suppression cost per acre in the Central Rockies greatly exceeds the

cost we have experienced in demonstration forest restoration

projects.

The first management tool that seems appropriate to us is the

use of prescribed fire. The results can be quite good in achieving

desired changes or they can be quite variable. Prescribed fire is not

a precise tool.

Another management tool we believe is quite appropriate in

achieving forest health is the use of mechanical equipment to prepare areas for prescribed fire, to thin forests to desired stocking

levels, and to remove forest products for our use. Some critics

would quickly point out that this is just traditional logging or timber harvesting.

The key point I wish to make is that forest restoration is not traditional logging or timber harvesting. Mechanical removal can be

more precise than the use of fire alone. It can achieve results in

different forest types that prescribed fire cannot.

I also wish to note that current Forest Service procedures related

to timber sale layout, administration, and pricing do not work very

well in forest restoration situations.

Lastly, there are combinations of prescribed fire and mechanical

restoration techniques that are especially appealing. Mechanical removal can extract materials for use while preparing the fuel bed

for follow-up prescribed fire. It gives the manager options when air

quality concerns, for example, preclude using fire to fully accomplish a project.

The Forest Service needs some new authorities for changing the

way it does business in dealing with forest restoration projects. We

suggest that the Subcommittee look careful at the potential for

stewardship contracting on national forest lands.

This concludes my testimony. I will attempt to answer any questions the Subcommittee members may have.

[Statement of Dennis Lynch may be found at end of hearing.]

Mrs. CHENOWETH. Dr. Lynch, thank you very much for that valuable testimony. The chair now recognizes Martin Moore for his testimony.

STATEMENT OF MARTIN MOORE, DIRECTOR, COMMUNITY

DEVELOPMENT AND PLANNING, APACHE COUNTY, ARIZONA

Mr. MOORE. Thank you, Madame Chair, members of the committee. I come before you today in the capacity of director of environmental planning and research for Apache County, Arizona. I am

also at the dissertation stage of a Ph.D. at Northern Arizona University, specializing in western forest resource policy and management. I also serve on the Arizona delegation to the Western Governors’ Drought Task Force, and I have worked as a member of the

interagency coordinating group on wildland fire with the western
21

governors in tandem with the Wildland/Urban Interface Fire Policy

Review Team.

Currently, we are facing a serious forest health crisis throughout

the western States, which threatens adverse ecological, safety, and

economic impacts on an increasingly catastrophic scale. These concerns are centered around a definition of forest health that includes

the vitality and balance of wildlife populations, health of the forest

resource, balance of multiple uses, and levels of catastrophic fire.

A number of scientists, including Dr. David Garrett and Drs.

Wallace Covington and Margaret Moore have performed research

showing alarming trends in forest resource health in Ponderosa

Pine ecosystems.

Drs. Covington and Moore, with comparisons from 1867 to 1987,

show a 994-percent decrease in herbage production, a 26-percent

reduction in streamflow, and an increase from 24 to 843 trees per

acre.

Concerned about the implications of Dr. Covington’s research,

Apache, Greenlee, and Navajo Counties in Arizona commissioned

an independent, scientific study by Dr. Garrett of the health of the

Ponderosa Pine ecosystem in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, with comparisons to other southwestern forests.

This study includes a compendium of major scientific research

with the full cooperation and assistance of the Apache-Sitgreaves

National Forest, utilizing the latest forest stand inventory data,

and is watershed-based research.

Dr. Garrett’s conclusions, building on Covington and Moore’s research, shows from 1911 to 1994, a 391 percent increase on the

Apache-Sitgreaves Forest of trees per acre four inches or greater in

diameter, with several stands exceeding more than 1,000 trees per

acre.

Average maximum stand density index forest-wide is approaching a high danger level with several areas exceeding the high danger threshold.

Herbage biomass has plummeted to its low production levels,

largely because of high tree densities. Water yields per acre will

further decrease, resulting in continued stream flow reductions and

water quality problems.

Fuel loads will rise from the current 20 tons per acre to well over

30 tons, and fuel ladders will dominate the landscape, leading to

increasing numbers and intensity of catastrophic wildfire.

This continued downward spiral of forest ecosystems threatens

the health and sustainability of recreation opportunities, wildlife

and wildlife habitat, timber resources and water resources.

Another forest health indicator is level of fire intensity. Apache

County, alarmed about fuel load buildups identified by Dr. Garrett

and the Forest Service, conducted a comprehensive study of wildfire hazards and potential impacts throughout Arizona and New

Mexico. The results of the study show that more than 224,000

homes are at high to extreme risk, threatening the safety of over

600,000 citizens.

Over 5,000,000 acres are at high to extreme risk of loss and potential costs of fire in relationship to timber resources, livestock,

homes, and drains on the Federal treasury could exceed

$35,000,000,000.
22

Dr. Garrett’s research shows that the number of catastrophic

fires has doubled in 20 years and will continue to rise.

Concerning the vitality and balance of wildlife populations, a

third forest health indicator, Drs. Covington and Moore show that

instead of wildlife geared toward open, park-like forest, types and

numbers have shifted toward wildlife favoring closed canopy structures. This stresses wildlife adapted to open-space environments,

threatening the survival of these species.

In addition, ungulates such as elk have erupted in population,

eating forest meadows down to the roots, creating erosion and forage reproduction problems, in turn, destroying the grazing resource

base for other ungulates and competing wildlife.

Another important indicator of forest health is the ability of the

forest to provide for multiple uses. Current laws, regulations, court

decisions, and most significantly, unhealthy forest resource conditions combine to form a serious threat to the continuation of

human and natural multiple uses.

Based on this testimony and a preponderance of research, it is

our contention that every aspect of multiple use is placed in serious

jeopardy over the next 50 years in southwestern forests unless the

current forest condition is reversed.

The overwhelming body of research shows a need to return forests to a healthy state for the sake of the total forest ecosystem,

forest resources, public protection from wildfire, healthy wildlife

populations, and every other aspect of forest health including multiple use and human survival.

To accomplish this, Dr. Garrett provides a 50-year prescription

which should dramatically improve forest conditions across the

landscape. These improvements include increased water yield; doubling of herbage production; increase in average tree size from less

than six to 16 inches in diameter; healthy maximum stand density

index for healthier, more disease and insect-resistant trees; and a

50-percent reduction in fire fuel load with a return to healthy, lowintensity fires.

This time line includes thinning, prescribed burning, and

overstory harvest of high hazard, unhealthy, and overly dense trees

of all diameter classes with emphasis on trees 20 inches and smaller, as this would not include healthy old-growth trees. Returning

every ten years to treat and control burn is vital to this effort.

Dr. Garrett shows that this prescription, in which mechanical

harvest is an imperative player, would result in a per-acre net

value of $155, nearly ten times the $16 net value if we continue

on our present course.

Added to this is the multi-billion dollar savings of treatment over

destruction by catastrophic fire, tree-stand die-offs and drought.

Currently in place, and I will wrap this up very briefly. Currently in place on the Apache-Sitgreaves and Tonto National Forest

is an ecosystem demonstration project agreement which we are

part of. This agreement, if funded, would help facilitate implementation of forest health projects on these forests.

Madame Chair and members of the committee, the threat to our

natural and human environments is real, and the solution is

straightforward and affordable. To ignore them is unconscionable

from either a scientific, ecological, social, ethical, or economic point
23

of view. It is our plea that all sides will come together to make the

tough choices and act to preserve this nation’s forests for ourselves

and our posterity.

Thank you for this time, and I look forward to any questions.

[Statement of Martin Moore may be found at end of hearing.]

Mrs. CHENOWETH. Mr. Moore, I thank you for your very interesting testimony. I have been in touch in conversations with Mr.

Mark Killian as well as the dean of Northern Arizona University

there at Flagstaff.

It is fascinating, the work that has been done there, and I thank

you for bringing that to the committee. Thank you very much.

At this time, the chair recognizes Harry Wiant from the Society

of American Foresters. Mr. Wiant.

STATEMENT OF HARRY WIANT, PRESIDENT, SOCIETY OF

AMERICAN FORESTERS, MORGANTOWN, WEST VIRGINIA

Mr. WIANT. Thank you. I am President of the Society of American Foresters, which is the largest professional forestry organization in the world, over 18,000 members.

It is a real honor to speak before this committee. I am serving

on a related committee that is a scientific panel for Congressman

Charles Taylor’s forest health committee, and that has been a real

pleasure also.

I am going to speak with two hats on, first as president of the

Society of American Foresters, and second, as a private citizen and

forester. They will differ a little bit.

The Society of American Foresters has studied the forest health

issue for many years. You will find a written report in my testimony.

We conclude that there are serious forest health and productivity

problems in the U.S., but also, forest health is an informal and a

very inexact term.

An assessment of forest health has to consider not only the condition of the forest but what do you want out of the forest, the

management objectives. Very importantly, forest health is a local

issue. A single national prescription is inappropriate.

Now, I am going to express my personal views which aren’t too

different, but perhaps stated a little different than some of these.

Please note in the record that I am not speaking for the Society of

American Foresters at this time.

As humans, we experience, all of us, the joys of birth, the vigor

of youth, the slowing down with age (and I have gone through several of those stages myself), and finally death. Very few of us would

accept the idea that the hands-off approach is appropriate to maintain human health.

Trees and forests are similar. I want to make two main points.

A well-managed forest is the healthiest possible, number one, and

number two, there is no opportunity to address declining health in

an unmanaged forest.

I want you just for a moment to picture a well-managed forest

of 5,000 acres. The species are well adapted to the site, and we are

going to grow trees until they are about 50 years old, and then we

are going to cut them in what is called a final harvest. We call it

the rotation age.
24

If we had a forest like that and managed it for 50 years, what

would it look like at the end of 50 years? You would have 100 acres

ready to plant or to regenerate naturally. These 100 acres might

be scattered around in the forest, but you would have 100 acres

like that. You would have 100 acres with one-year-old seedlings,

100 acres with two-year-old seedlings, etc., and you would have 100

acres with mature trees ready to harvest.

You would have logging and access roads that are well-engineered; regeneration you want to be prompt; and soil productivity

is maintained. You would have intermediate cuts—we call them

thinning to help other trees in the stand to grow to a greater size

quicker.

Biodiversity would be great because you would have a good distribution of age classes, and that has been mentioned before. Fires,

insects, and diseases tend to be most damaging to trees of certain

ages, so this will minimize the danger from fire, from insects and

diseases.

Thus, you have the good access roads, appropriate species, good

age-class distribution, and good forest management. That is the criteria of a healthy forest.

Likewise, the management tools necessary to have a healthy forest are obvious. One, you would have to have an adequate cadre

of professionals. I am talking about foresters, engineers, wildlife

managers, and others.

Two, you would have to have the flexibility to manage the forest

unhampered by poorly conceived environmental laws, by frivolous

appeals, and by tax codes that discourage long-term management.

Three, you need to have a strong forest research program in the

Forest Service and universities and in the private sector.

Four, forest management has to remain science-based with a

complete tool kit, and that has been mentioned previously, but I

want to mention some of the things we can’t afford to lose. Prescribed fire, herbicides, selection cutting, clear cutting, seed-tree

cutting, we need all those tools.

To put it in a few words, the answer to the forest health problem

is more and not less forest management, and the primary responsibility for managing our forests should be in the hands of those best

qualified for the job, foresters. Thank you.

[Statement of Harry Wiant may be found at end of hearing.]

Mrs. CHENOWETH. Mr. Wiant, thank you very much, and the

chair recognizes Dr. Schoenholtz.

STATEMENT OF DR. STEPHEN H. SCHOENHOLTZ, ASSOCIATE

PROFESSOR OF FOREST RESOURCES, MISSISSIPPI STATE

UNIVERSITY

Mr. SCHOENHOLTZ. Madame Chairman, committee members,

thank you for the opportunity to present my views on forest health

this afternoon.

Forest health means different things to different people depending on their forest management objectives and philosophies.

There is general agreement that our well-being and the wellbeing of future generations depend on productive, healthy forests.

However, some perceptions of forest health may vary depending on

individual preferences for forest use.
25

To maintain and manage our forests in an acceptable state for

future generations requires us to define forest health broadly

enough to encompass the many facets of forest ecosystems.

What do we look for when we try to assess forest health? An assessment of forest health should consider key indicators that can

be measured or described periodically to identify trends. We must

remember that some key indicators of forest health may vary

among different forest ecosystems.

For example, in many forests of the West, water limits plant

growth at least for part of the growing season, but excess water

may be the limiting factor in southern forested wetlands.

Key indicators may also vary among different management objectives. For example, I would argue that health indicators for intensively managed production forestry might differ from indicators

used in managing for wilderness values.

Often, the primary concern when assessing forest health is the

vegetation itself. Forest ecosystem health must include a level of

acceptable plant productivity and biological diversity which, in

turn, depend on the ability of the soil to supply necessary nutrients

and water.

Forest vegetation indicators of productivity and diversity would

include age, particularly of the overstory trees; structure, which is

the vertical and horizontal arrangement of vegetation (a critical

component of wildlife habitat); crown condition; foliar injury levels

in the crown and the leaves; species composition which is very important for diversity and also for assessing forest product values;

species diversity itself which translates into wildlife diversity by

providing habitat diversity; growth rates; mortality rates; regeneration rates; species replacement patterns; presence of insects or disease; and presence of exotic species. This is just a partial list of

some key indicators looking at the vegetation.

There is also a large range of soil attributes such as chemical,

physical, and biological properties that can be used as part of the

assessment of forest health. Some of the basic soil indicators would

include soil texture, which is the proportion of sand, silt, and clay

(soil texture indirectly affects many other soil properties).

We can look at maximum rooting depth where we have deeper

soils producing more productive forests and more resilient forests.

We can look at soil bulk density and water infiltration rate.

These are related to water and air movement. We can look at plant

available water capacity; total organic carbon and nitrogen, which

are very importantly related to organic matter; also nitrogen is

often a limiting factor in forest ecosystems.

We can also look at pH, which indirectly controls many of the

soil chemical reactions in the forest, and finally, we can look at soil

strength, which indicates physical damage, particularly compaction-type damage from heavy machinery.

We have a good understanding of expected changes in vegetation

over time (and we mentioned the U.S. Forest Service’s forest inventory process earlier today) in many of our forest ecosystem types.

We also have a well developed data base of inherent soil properties from our Natural Resource Conservation Service. We have

this for much of the country.
26

If these vegetation and soil criteria indicate deviations from expected trends or levels, then management practices to maintain or

enhance forest health should be considered. These management alternatives would include removal of undesirable species, thinning

to appropriate tree density or appropriate number of trees per acre,

supplemental plantings, use of controlled or prescribed burning,

manipulating vegetation to create specific habitat, possibly imposing stricter air quality standards, and fertilization.

Monitoring forest health will require manipulations of large volumes of spatial and time-dependent environmental data. This aspect of monitoring should be developed within a geographic-information-system environment that can accommodate incorporation of

new variables and can be developed as an adaptive management

tool.

Avoiding degradation of forest health is achieved by accepting

management techniques that do not adversely affect the forest or

the quality of the environment in which the forest grows. The forest management decision process should be based on potential impacts to indicators of forest ecosystem health.

It is essential that experience, feedback, and adaptability play

prominent roles in any assessment of forest health and the management of forests. Thank you.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you, Dr. Schoenholtz. Now, we will proceed to questioning of the panelists. Each member will have five

minutes for their questioning.

I will open with a question to Martin Moore. You mentioned the

effects on water resources caused by the high density of trees, and

you also noted that more than 5,000,000 acres of forest lands are

at high or extreme risk of loss to catastrophic fires.

You mentioned 240,000 homes, perhaps 600,000 humans. That is

startling. Could you explain further how fires on these lands will

impact water sources and wildlife, and the second question is, what

will the impact on the Mexican Spotted Owl be if nothing is done

to mechanically remove some of the excessive fuels?

Also, have they yet seen a Mexican Spotted Owl?

Mr. MOORE. Unfortunately, Apache County probably hosts most

of the Mexican Spotted Owls in Arizona. There are approximately

220-some-odd Mexican Spotted Owls in the Apache-Sitgreaves Forest in our area that we understand. Some are near interface communities, some are not.

If you don’t mind, I will answer the second question first. There

was a fire called the HB fire over in New Mexico. It destroyed—

they don’t know, they are still inventorying, but it did destroy some

Mexican Spotted Owl nesting sites.

We had the huge 60,000-acre fire up in the Four Peaks Wilderness area that destroyed the entire Mexican Spotted Owl habitat

on top of the Four Peaks Wilderness.

We know of approximately four Mexican Spotted Owl habitat territories that were burned in the 1980’s in what was called the

Dude fire near Payson, Arizona.

By the way, this is approximate—I believe it is 5,470,000 acres

at risk, or something like that was arrived at from the data gathered by the Forest Service from their fire management and fire risk

report, and their methodologies largely centered around interface
27

areas that would include campgrounds, near roadways, and near

communities. It may not be reflective of some areas of the interior

forest that are away from these areas.

As far as some of these numbers on impacts on streams and that

type of thing, the basic process works like this. You get a catastrophic wildfire. A catastrophic wildfire, and I describe it in the

written testimony a little bit, is the type of wildfire that burns

large acreages, sterilizes soil, destroys land-based and aquatic wildlife, and threatens human life and destroys the regenerative capacity of the ecosystem.

Basically what we have got is a situation where you get a waxy

layer down under the soil. You get a heavy rain that comes along

behind that and it just happened that those conditions happened

just right, or wrong in this case, with the Dude fire. The Dude fire

came. They had heavy monsoon rains right after that. There was

a lot of tearing up of the riparian bottoms. A lot of soil was washed

downstream, and there are a couple of communities downstream,

actually out of the forest where a lot of this soil washed in and flattened out the stream beds, and they have had incidents of flooding

where homes and bridges were destroyed and that kind of thing.

That is basically what you would be looking at. Then it would destroy the long-term ability of the soil to regenerate. When you

sterilize the soil like that, an ability for trees and that type of thing

to regrow, especially Ponderosa Pine, is very difficult.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. We have some areas that were burned in

Idaho in 1910, and they still don’t have any regenerative ability.

Mr. MOORE. Yes. As a matter of fact, if anyone is in Flagstaff

and takes a look at the hot fire that burned on I think it was the

north side of Mount Eldon, you can see that they have tried time

and again to replant trees up there and they just cannot get them

to take hold.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. Very interesting. Mr. Wiant, given the criteria

you described, maintaining soil productivity, a whole list of very,

very interesting, very good criteria, would you say that forest

health conditions tend to vary by ownership types with regard to

State forests, private forests?

Mr. WIANT. Yes. I think they tend to vary by the amount of management that it is possible to do on them. Unfortunately, I think

that some of our national forests are in terrible shape because we

have been able to do very little management and able to do less

every day, it seems.

I think some of the lands that are in best shape are those held

by corporations who have managed them intensively with good forest management, and then our private landowners still need a lot

of education, so there are some in between those extremes, I suspect.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. You mentioned the importance of providing

flexibility to use a variety of management tools. How do current

Federal laws limit a landowner’s flexibility to do what is necessary

to maintain or improve forest health?

Mr. WIANT. Certainly, our national forests are impacted by the

amount of documentation that is necessary before they can do anything. It is extremely expensive to the taxpayers out there, and I

happen to be one of them, and I kind of resent that.
28

Certainly, some of the laws make it very difficult for people.

There was a letter by Carl Winger, who was at one time a station

director for the Forest Service, in the Journal of Forestry recently,

and he was talking about one of the laws, and I think we all know

it is very important.

He describes what the country looked like at the turn of the century, and you have seen pictures at the time of the Civil War in

the east at least. It looked like the battlefield, the French forests

after the battles of the first World War.

The lands were really desolate, hardly any timber left, and I

won’t read that part to you, but I want to read one part of this letter, the conclusion, and I think it is very important.

He says that current land management practices are threatening

or endangering 1,300 species of the survivors of that period, as

claimed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, is simply not believable. How can we claim that the land management practices taking

place, at least in the east today, can be threatening species that

survived that catastrophic period at the turn of the century? It just

doesn’t make sense.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you, Mr. Wiant. It doesn’t. How has

the Society of American Foresters addressed the question of the

legal entanglements that we find ourselves in?

We talked about the socioeconomic problems that we must overcome. What about the legal entanglements that you see? Will any

recommendations be forthcoming either from your organization as

a whole or what do you recommend?

Mr. WIANT. I think the Society of American Foresters is trying

to stay apolitical, and that limits their ability to address some of

these things, so my answer to that previous question was my answer not SAF’s. I should label or maybe underline it somehow here

verbally.

But we have studied some of them, and I think that you would

find that we have policy statements that indicate that none of

these should limit our ability to practice good forestry, and that

should always be kept in mind by policy-makers.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. Mr. Wiant, how diverse is the membership of

the Society of American Foresters?

Mr. WIANT. It is very diverse. It ranges, I would say probably

there are a few members that think you shouldn’t cut any trees

and a few members who think you can cut them all and not worry

about the environmental consequences, but most members are

somewhere toward the center of that distribution, so it is quite a

varied organization.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you. For my final question, I would like

to ask Dr. Schoenholtz.

You noted that it is not possible nor is it necessary to consider

all aspects of a forest ecosystem in order to assess its condition, yet

the Forest Service decisions are frequently challenged because they

are not based on the very latest and newest information.

Is this a reasonable standard to hold the Forest Service to? What

are your feelings and your thoughts on that one?

Mr. SCHOENHOLTZ. My feelings are, if we try to assess or measure the health of all the components of an ecosystem, it would just

be an impossible task if you consider air quality, water quality, soil
29

quality, vegetation, wildlife habitat, soils, the various components

and how they interact.

My goal in presenting today was to try to pick indicators that integrate those various aspects, and in my opinion, the vegetation

and the soil are two key general indicators that integrate a lot of

the processes that go on in the system.

I don’t mean to state that any of them are less important than

others. That is a value judgment, but we need to find indicators

that integrate many of these processes, and in my opinion, vegetation, including growth rates, diversity, and structure of that vegetation, is an integrator of the soil, water, climate, atmospheric stress,

et cetera.

It also provides habitat for all the wildlife species that we are

concerned with. So if you are going to spend limited funding, you

have to pick key indicators that integrate many of the processes.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you, Dr. Schoenholtz. The chair now

recognizes the gentleman from Colorado, Mr. Schaffer.

Mr. SCHAFFER. Thank you again, Madame Chairman. I have a

first question for Mr. Wiant. You mentioned a number of restrictions and impediments that the Federal Government represents

from time to time in purposes of private forestry, I presume.

I would like you—you mentioned tax policy as well, just in general, but I would like you to be a little more specific if you could.

What are some areas that we might consider within the context

of tax policy that either promote or impede private forestry?

Mr. WIANT. All of a sudden, I am having a slip of memory here.

The tax that has been discussed so often that they are hoping is

changed, the tax law right now that deals with investments, capital

gains.

The capital gains change was made several years ago and has

had a great impact on private forestry. They are always very interested in seeing that change to be more favorable to them. That

would be the main one I would think of.

This is a long-term investment. You are talking about perhaps

50 years or so before you can recognize any return. An example of

this is, I know of a case in California recently where they had 500

acres of forest land that had been managed by a landowner, and

after he died, there was a disagreement about the value of the estate. So the Internal Revenue Service required that it be evaluated

and a forester attorney, a man who has both qualifications, was

able to show that in California because of all the restrictions on

forest management and the necessary plans that had to be turned

into the State before you could do anything, he was able to show

that 500 acres of California forest land had a negative value. As

I understand from his report to me, he was told by IRS that you

can’t show a negative value, but he did win when it got into court.

That is showing kind of the extreme, but when you can show

that 500 acres has a negative value because of regulation, there is

something wrong with the system.

Mr. SCHAFFER. Dr. Lynch, I have a couple questions for you with

regard to my local concerns that I bring here.

Specifically, what forest conditions in the Central Rockies concern you the most?
30

Mr. LYNCH. I think from this consensus and discussion that I

mentioned in my talk, the things that really are of concern to a

number of us would be first the fuel buildup that we see in the forests because of protection and custodial care.

We are concerned about the overstocking that exists in these

stands. Currently, I believe that we are at a point where we may

have more trees than we have ever had on the landscape and certainly, comparative photo studies by Thomas Veblen at the University of Colorado; Ric Laven, our own forest ecologist, pictures of the

Manitou Forest, for example, indicate that we have tremendous

numbers of trees now that we did not historically have.

We are concerned about the shift in the age classes. Many of our

stands are reaching an over-mature, old category and the concern

of everyone, the general consensus, was that we need to have a diversity of forest types across landscape areas that would consist of

a number of successional stages and certainly, a number of age

classes, and we just don’t have those.

Another concern would be the species shifts where we see trees

that are shade tolerant and understories that historically were not

there, at least in our studies, and we are concerned about the presence of exotics. We have a number of exotic species that are in

these forests, insect life particularly, that are of concern.

Mr. SCHAFFER. Could you comment on the prescribed burning

proposal, how you think it may affect Colorado and other western

States?

Mr. LYNCH. Yes. Prescribed burning is not a precise tool. I think

that is the overall message to carry. It has some limitations.

The manager of fires can control the amount of fuel and he can

control the ignition time and type of ignition. He can’t control fuel

moisture. He cannot control wind.

So there are limitations here to the use of this tool that are significant. If we are talking about forest restoration of the type that

we believe needs to be done in the Central Rockies, we are talking

about really burning thousands of acres of land, and we are talking

about smoke management problems that are of significant concern,

particularly air quality problems in our front range area where we

have air quality concerns that are significant now.

Mr. SCHAFFER. Thank you, Madame Chairman.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. Mr. Schaffer. The chair recognizes Mr. Peterson from Pennsylvania.

Mr. PETERSON. Thank you. I have a general question. Mr. Wiant

raised the issue, but I think I kind of sensed it in all of your testimonies.

You sort of rated who was managing the land the best, and I

think you gave the best grades to the corporations and maybe

lower grades to the Federal Government and private landowners,

small private landowners.

Is this the sort of common theme I have heard here from all of

you that as the Federal owner of a lot of land in this country, we

are custodian but we are not really managers; we are not really

managing the resource? Did I sense anybody that wasn’t saying

that in some way or another?

Does anybody want to say that is not what you said?
31

Mr. MOORE. To comment briefly, I think, at least from our perspective, our concern isn’t so much about the ability and capability

of the Federal land managers, the silviculturists and that to do

their job.

I think our concern is possibly more about the paperwork, need

for paperwork requirements, other types of restrictions, endangered

species consultations, court cases and other types of forest plan restrictions built by political processes that are tying the managers’

hands, and that is the complaint that we have heard from a number of managers in our area.

There are so many things that they see that they would like to

have done on the ground. They would like to see a good streamlining of the processes, and we are certainly not advocating the

total destruction of the processes, because there are important environmental considerations to take into concern, but at the same

time, we are not only destroying the natural ecosystem. We are destroying the communities that are built up around these natural

ecosystems because their economies are collapsing.

We have a number of areas back in our part of the State that

are having this difficulty, so I would say our answer is help the

managers to be able to get out there and manage in the field.

I think Mr. Dombeck’s testimony was well taken. They see a

number of things that they would like to do to help matters happen. We have seen, for example, we have a wildlife biologist under

me on staff, and we see months and months and months of appeals

on small timber sales, before you get on the ground and make

something happen, so those are definite concerns that we see.

Maybe private landowners or corporate entities may not be faced

with nearly as much.

Mr. PETERSON. Anyone else?

Mr. LYNCH. Yes. I would like to comment because I was a Federal forest manager for a number of years, 15 years. I was a district ranger, and as I look at the responsibilities of the past now

that relate to the bureaucratic process, and I really mean that, the

bureaucratic processes that are in place, managers do not have the

flexibility to confront the problems that they once did.

In Colorado, we see private landowners that manage very intensively. We see landowners that have very little education and do

virtually nothing and have unhealthy forests as a result.

But when we look at State and Federal ownerships, for example,

we have State forest side by side with Federal forests. The State

people can address the problems, move quickly, have the opportunities and flexibility and policy to deal with those, where the Federal

forest managers just cannot get out of the morass that they are

bound with.

These are competent people. I don’t in any way wish to malign

them. Many of them were my students, and what I see is that the

processes have reached the point where they do not have the flexibility they once had.

Mr. WIANT. I would like to second that. I think the Federal lands

are suffering from unclear objectives. They really don’t know exactly what they should be managing for, the products they need to

be producing.
32

The timber expertise in the Forest Service is decreasing all the

time. They are hiring fewer and fewer foresters and they have been

doing that for a number of years. So people that really know how

to evaluate timber, to manage timber, are decreasing.

The loss of production capacities is impacting us all. In the

northwest, the mills haven’t just shut down. Many of them have

moved out, and once we lose those production capacities, even if we

have use for smaller materials, it is going to be a terrific investment over a long time to ever recapture that loss.

Mr. MOORE. I would like to add one more thing briefly. We appreciated, we understood that Congressman Pombo had introduced

a bill in relationship to flood control, because I guess California is

having severe flooding problems, and to streamline environmental

and particularly endangered species processes, to be able to get

those projects moving and to get that happening.

We wondered if a similar bill would be a possibility, especially

in the extreme areas of wildland/urban interface hazard and possibly a drought situation, if that is something that couldn’t be

looked at also.

Mr. PETERSON. If I could just respond for a moment. I come from

the east, but a lot of the managers in ANF have come from the

west.

I agree with you. They are highly skilled individuals and fine

quality people, but I guess it appears that the political pressures

from whoever have sort of veered us from what was normally a

good management practice and a multi-use practice of the tremendous amount of land owned by the Federal Government.

A lot of the rhetoric that has been out on the street is far from

the fact, but somehow, we need to have a meaningful dialog so the

general public understands the real issues, and when we deal with

the real facts, we usually do the right things.

I guess I would like to commend all of you for coming here today

and sharing, but I guess somehow, we need to form a plan of getting away from the political pressures and back to allowing good,

true managers to manage our national forests, part of our heritage,

and one of our most renewable resources.

I hope you will help us do that.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. Mr. Peterson, thank you very much. Gentleman, I thank you very much for taking your time and coming

out here, and sharing with us this most valuable and instructive

information.

I would invite you to stay for the third panel, if you possibly can,

and you are now excused from the witness table, and we will call

the third panel.

I call to the witness table Kenneth Kane from Keith Horn, Incorporated, consulting foresters, from Kane, Pennsylvania; Steven

Holmer, Campaign Director of the Western Ancient Forest Campaign, Washington, D.C.; Ed Muckenfuss, Regional Manager,

Westvaco Company, Summerville, South Carolina; and Bill Wall,

Wildlife Biologist, Potlatch Corporation, Lewiston, Idaho.

I would like to call on the gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Peterson, to introduce Kenneth Kane.
33

Mr. PETERSON. Thank you, Madame Chairman. First, I would

like to submit for the record because I was not here when the hearing started, so I would like to submit this statement for the record.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. With no objection, so ordered.

[Statement of Hon. John Peterson may be found at end of hearing.]

Mr. PETERSON. Secondly, Madame Chairman, I want to thank

you for first holding this oversight hearing and for giving me the

opportunity to introduce a constituent and friend of mine who we

are very pleased to have travel here from Pennsylvania today.

I want to commend you for holding this hearing so we can get

advice in finding solutions to the threats on the nation’s forests. It

is an important issue to many of us.

I have the good fortune of representing the Allegheny National

Forest, the only national forest in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

For that reason, I am especially pleased to have with us a constituent from Pennsylvania’s fifth congressional district, Mr. Kenneth Kane. Mr. Kane is vice president of Keith Horn, Incorporated,

a small private forest consulting business in Kane, Pennsylvania.

Mr. Kane brings to this hearing a professional background of 13

years as a private forest manager, coupled with an in-depth understanding of the health and management of the resources on and in

the Allegheny National Forest.

He is also chairman of the Pennsylvania Division of the Society

of American Foresters. He is chairman of the Pennsylvania chapter

of Association of Consulting Foresters in America.

At this time, I would like to welcome Mr. Kane, and I want to

thank you for making the journey down here.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. Mr. Kane, excuse me. Before you begin your

testimony, as a committee policy, we have all of our witnesses take

the oath, so would you all stand, please, and raise your right hand.

Do you solemnly swear or affirm under the penalty of perjury

that you will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the

truth, so help you God?

Thank you. Mr. Kane, please proceed.

STATEMENT OF KENNETH KANE, KEITH HORN, INC.,

CONSULTING FORESTERS, KANE, PENNSYLVANIA

Mr. KANE. Thank you, Congressman Peterson, for the very nice

introduction.

Madame Chairman and members of the Subcommittee, I appreciate the opportunity to join you this afternoon to discuss forest

health in the Allegheny region, which includes the Allegheny National Forest.

Let me turn now to the two questions which you have asked us

to reply to.

Question one, what criteria determines if a forest is healthy? To

answer this question for the Allegheny plateau, you must remember that essentially the entire forest in the region was clear-cut between 1880 and 1930. The vast clear-cutting of that era virtually

eliminated the beech, hemlock old-growth forest of the region. The

hardwood forest which emerged did so naturally without planting.
34

So, within the forests of the Allegheny region and other secondgrowth forests in the eastern hardwoods, forest health is typically

determined by answering some basic questions.

One, what is the condition of the crown, stem, root, and leaf of

the tree?

Two, is there an adequate diversity of trees, shrubs, flowers, and

other plant species present in the forest?

Three, are there trees of various sizes?

Four, are preferred tree and other plant species regenerating

naturally, or are nonpreferred species becoming dominant?

It is important to emphasize that forest health criteria are defined by the landowner. Public forestry issues are very dynamic,

because the objectives of the public change constantly. That is not

the case in the private sector, where most forest landowners have

two primary objectives, production of wood products and continuity

of ownership.

So where do we stand? At present, forest health in the Allegheny

region is threatened by native and exotic insects, disease, and

mammals.

In addition to those problems, the forests of the region are simply

growing old.

Hardwood forests change dramatically between 125 and 150

years of age. Specifically, species diversity drops from a wide variety of shade intolerant species to a handful of shade tolerant species. This decrease in tree species diversity is one measure of an

unhealthy forest.

The forests of the Allegheny region are recognized internationally

for the high quality hardwood timber they produce. The unique

unglaciated soils of the region produce the world’s best quality

black cherry in stands that reach economic maturity at 80 to 100

years of age.

We have reached the point in time where the Allegheny plateau’s

biological and economic maturity coincide. Thus, we must address

the needs to regenerate these forests for both financial and biological reasons.

But in addition, the public generally prefers to hunt, camp, hike

in maturing 70-year-old Allegheny hardwood forests rather than

decadent 150-year-old forests.

Having examined the criteria for a healthy forest in our region

of the country, let me turn now to your second question, which is

what management tools are most appropriate to maintain or improve forest health.

As a practicing forester, I recommend that landowners take certain actions to maintain the health and vitality of the forests within the Allegheny region.

One, employ sound silvicultural practices and professional forestry.

Two, use modern silvicultural methods in timber harvesting scenarios. These practices are site-specific and model natural occurrences.

Three, employ qualified resource managers to monitor forest conditions closely. This is necessary to follow insect populations and

assess the effects of disease, drought, and other phenomena.
35

Four, control large deer populations, increasing the use of silvicultural regeneration tools such as fence enclosures and herbicides. Promote sport hunting to reduce deer overpopulation.

Five, use aerial application of natural pesticides. This is necessary to control exotic and abnormal native insect infestations.

In addition to these tools that are available to the resource manager, I believe that Congress and the Administration have continuing roles to play, and given this opportunity, I offer two concluding suggestions for your consideration.

First, you must continue to fund and promote forest research.

Research at the Forest Service’s Northeast Experiment Station in

Warren, Pennsylvania, has provided the modern silvicultural methods used throughout the Allegheny region. Over 1,100 forest managers have attended the training sessions offered by the station.

Second and finally, there is a pressing national need for education programs for forest landowners, professionals and the public.

Professionals need to better understand the modern tools available

to them. Landowners and the public need to better understand the

forest ecosystem and the necessity of using sound science as the

basis for management decisions.

Thank you for the opportunity to present this statement. I will

be happy to answer any questions.

[Statement of Kenneth Kane may be found at end of hearing.]

Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you, Mr. Kane, for your very interesting testimony, and I would like to now call on Steve Holmer for

your testimony.

STATEMENT OF STEVE HOLMER, CAMPAIGN DIRECTOR,

WESTERN ANCIENT FOREST CAMPAIGN, WASHINGTON, DC

Mr. HOLMER. Thank you, Chairman Chenoweth. Thank you for

this opportunity to testify.

The Western Ancient Forest Campaign represents organizations

and individuals nationwide who are dedicating to protecting forest

and aquatic ecosystems on the national forests.

I would like to begin by saying that I totally disagree with the

statement that only managed forests are healthy forests. Our forests did just fine for millions of years before management was invented, and to put it plainly, the lack of humility before God’s creation to make that kind of statement, I find rather astounding.

There is increasing evidence that demonstrates that over the

past three decades, our national forests have suffered too much logging, too much road building, and too much cattle grazing and fire

suppression with little concern about the impact these activities

have on our clean water supplies, fish and wildlife, recreational opportunities, and the ecological integrity of forest ecosystems. Too

much management is the problem, not the solution.

A recent mapping project by the World Wildlife Fund concluded

that only two percent of the original forests remain in the lower 48

States. The Eastside Forests Scientific Society panel report concluded that the few remaining roadless areas in eastern Oregon

and Washington are still threatened, and that very little of the old

growth Ponderosa Pine ecosystem remains.

The scientists’ report recommends no logging of old-growth forests or trees of any species older than 150 years or greater than
36

20 inches in diameter; no logging in aquatic diversity areas; and to

establish protected corridors along streams, rivers, wetlands, and

lakes; no logging or road building in roadless areas.

Both the PACFISH and INFISH Federal interim guidelines for

protecting imperiled fish stocks concurred with the conclusion that

we need to protect roadless areas in riparian zones to restore declining fisheries.

These are the critical first steps toward proper management and

rehabilitating faltering forests and aquatic systems in the inland

west. The Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project report came to similar

conclusions, and also stated that timber harvest through its effect

on forest structure, local microclimate, and fuel accumulation has

increased fire severity more than any other human activity. The

notion that we can salvage-log the forest to reduce fire risk is not

supported by any empirical scientific evidence.

The State of Idaho has over 960 streams which are polluted and

rated as water quality limited by the Environmental Protection

Agency because of too much contamination in the streams. Over

half these streams are being degraded by logging. Flooding, exacerbated by logging and road building in the Coeur D’Alene watershed

is steadily sending millions of pounds of lead contaminated sediments into Lake Coeur D’Alene and ultimately, into the city of Spokane’s watershed.

In Oregon, seven people were killed this year as a result of

mudslides. Numerous scientific studies have been published, including one by the U.S. Forest Service that conclude logging and

road building increase the risk of severity of landslides and flooding.

Across the west, fish stocks continue to decline, and many species, such as the Coho Salmon and Bull Trout are being considered

for listing under the Endangered Species Act.

The private and public forests of the southeast United States are

threatened by unsustainable logging. There are now over 140 chip

mills in the southeast, and according to industry and the Forest

Service, the growth-to-harvest ratio of softwoods in the south went

negative in 1991. Further, hardwood forests are expected to exceed

growth within the next two to ten years.

This is not only evidence that the industry is unsustainable, but

that chip mills are depleting the forests, thereby impacting water

quality, habitats, ecosystem health, and local forest-dependent

businesses.

These are the facts as presented by the scientific community, industry, and government agencies. These are the real forest ecosystem health problems which this committee has chosen to ignore

in favor of arguments that all come to the same conclusion, more

logging.

Claiming to address the overstocking and fuel loading problems

caused by fire suppression and grazing cattle, the 104th Congress

passed the Salvage Logging Rider which suspended environmental

laws and the citizens’ right to have those laws enforced and participate in how their own lands were being managed, but no effort was

made to address the more fundamental problems of too much grazing and too much fire suppression.
37

Under the rider, we witnessed the logging of ancient forests that

have been protected by the courts. Under the rider, the guise of

logging dead and dying trees was used by the Forest Service to log

large, live green trees.

Unroaded areas, which represent some of our nation’s last unprotected wilderness were entered and logged. The government’s own

interagency report on the implementation of the rider confirmed

these abuses.

In the aftermath of the rider, several lessons are clear. Our environmental laws and public processes should never again be suspended. Ancient forests, roadless areas, and riparian zones need

permanent protection, and the U.S. Forest Service needs to be reformed and made more accountable to the public.

To address these threats to the health of our forest ecosystems,

we would like to make several recommendations which we would

urge the committee to adopt.

Prohibit new road building on the national forests and prohibit

the use of purchaser road credits to build new roads; prohibit logging and road building on unstable and potentially unstable national forest land; restore accountability by reforming or abolishing

off-budget funds.

As Representative Vento mentioned, the interagency report concluded that the salvage fund created an incentive for the agency to

choose logging projects when other activities such as prescribed fire

or stream restoration would have been more appropriate, and this

is because they get to keep most of the receipts by choosing salvage

operations.

The next point is to end money-losing timber sales. The annual

report of the White House Council of Economic Advisors shows that

the Forest Service spent $234,000,000 administering the timber

sale program than were returned in receipts.

Generally, the Forest Service subsidizes timber extraction from

public lands by collecting less revenues than it spends on timber

program costs, the report says. We urge the committee to end subsidized logging in the national forests.

At Senator Craig’s recent forest management workshop, the GAO

testified that during 1995, the Forest Service spent $215,000,000 of

the taxpayers’ money that they cannot account for. We urge the

committee to use its oversight authority to find out what happened

to the taxpayers’ $215,000,000.

Further, we urge the committee to look at the full range of values our forests provide, such as clean water, fish and wildlife habitat, and recreational opportunities.

According to the Forest Service’s resource and planning assessment, by the year 2000, recreation in the national forests will

produce over $1 billion for the economy while logging will only

produce $3,500,000. The value of clean and stable water flows from

our forests is estimated in the trillions.

Recently, Chief Michael Dombeck testified, ‘‘The unfortunate reality is that many people presently do not trust us to do the right

thing. Until we rebuild that trust and strengthen those relationships, it is simply common sense that we avoid riparian, old

growth, and roadless areas.’’
38

We urge the committee to support Chief Dombeck’s effort to reform the agency and restore the public’s trust by adopting his common-sense recommendation and the other recommendations in this

testimony including the restoration of eastern old growth, since

there is almost no old growth left in the east.

The idea that we need to cut down the eastern old-growth forests

is simply absurd. We need to restore old growth ecosystems in the

eastern United States.

In closing, I would like to quote a Republican president who

helped make this a great nation by protecting some of our national

forests, Teddy Roosevelt, who said, ‘‘The nation behaves well if it

treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to

the next generation increased and not impaired in value.’’

I believe the United States is a great nation, but I feel that we

are now risking that greatness by lacking the foresight and courage

that made us great to begin with. We can choose to squander our

remaining unprotected wild places, or we can be revered by future

generations as Teddy Roosevelt is for having the vision and greatness to protect our nation’s natural heritage.

Thank you for this opportunity to testify.

[Statement of Steve Holmer may be found at end of hearing.]

Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you, Mr. Holmer. The chair would now

recognize Ed Muckenfuss, a regional manager from Westvaco Company.

STATEMENT OF ED MUCKENFUSS, REGIONAL MANAGER,

WESTVACO COMPANY, SUMMERVILLE, SOUTH CAROLINA

Mr. MUCKENFUSS. Madame Chairman and members of the Subcommittee, thank you for this opportunity to contribute my ideas

on what constitutes a health forest and what management practices contribute to establish and maintain them.

My name is Ed Muckenfuss, and I am Southern Regional Manager of Westvaco Corporation’s Forest Resources Division. In my

Region in South Carolina, we manage nearly 500,000 acres of company forest and advise private landowners who own another

400,000 acres.

Westvaco owns forest land primarily to provide a sustainable

source of wood fiber for its mills. We also manage them to provide

habitat for wildlife and clean water for the lakes and streams that

adjoin them.

The key word here is manage. We firmly believe that in order for

a forest to be healthy, it must be actively managed.

Healthy forests are forests that are growing vigorously and that

have a diversity of age classes and forest types which enables them

to resist disease and insect epidemics and helps to reduce the intensity of wildfires when they occur. The diversity of forest ages

and types also provides a range of habitats for wildlife.

While some percentage of old-growth habitat is desirable, extensive areas of old-growth conditions or any single age class condition

puts the entire forest at risk for catastrophic insect attacks and

wildfires.

The photograph you see here is an aerial view of some of our forest in Kentucky. This forest is actively managed to maintain
39

healthy tree densities and various forest types interspersed across

the landscape.

We consider this a healthy forest that achieves our objectives of

providing a sustainable supply of wood fiber for our mill, diversity

of wildlife habitats, and protection of the lakes and streams adjacent to the forest.

There are criteria that we use to determine the health of our forests. Number one, suitability of tree species to the site; two, the

density of the trees relative to the ability of the site to support

them; three, diversity of age classes across the landscape; four, the

amount of fuel loading on the site; five, the condition of riparian

areas for protecting lakes and streams; six, diversity of forest types

across the landscape; seven, the relative abundance of noxious insects and the disease incidence rate; and eight, the availability of

nutrients to sustain vigorous tree growth.

As I have said, healthy forests are the result of good, active management. Older forests eventually become overcrowded and lose

their vigor, making them susceptible to disease and insect

epidemics. Without management, these conditions set the stage for

catastrophic events like the fires in Yellowstone National Park.

Here are the management practices that we use to improve or

maintain forest health. Number one, good inventory information;

two, landscape scale planning that provides for protection of riparian areas and diversity of age classes and forest types; three, provisions to regenerate with tree species appropriate to the site; four,

intermediate stand treatments to control density and fuel conditions; five, careful inclusion and management of old growth or overmature stands; six, soil amendments as necessary to maintain productivity for intensive management; and seven, effective control of

insect and disease epidemics.

In many ways, forests are like people. When they are young and

growing, they usually can withstand pathogens and parasites with

their natural defenses. As they grow older, they become increasingly susceptible, and therefore, require more care.

Inadequate management has put many forests in the United

States at risk. In some forests, neglect has skewed forests toward

stands of older age classes and allowed many stands to become

overcrowded and overloaded with fuels.

In other forests, poor management practices have removed most

of the healthy and vigorously growing trees, leaving the old and

weak.

In either case, these forests are ripe for epidemic of disease and

insects and the catastrophic wildfires that often follow.

We believe that by applying the management practices I have

outlined, these forests can be returned to healthy conditions and

provide for the needs of many generations to come. Without adequate levels of management, however, they will increasingly fall

victim to catastrophic events which will result in losses that will

deprive our children of their benefits.

Thank you again for this opportunity to express my views on this

important subject.

[Statement of G. Edward Muckenfuss may be found at end of

hearing.]
40

Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you very, very much. That is a very impressive picture, and I thank you for your testimony.

The chair now recognizes Bill Wall, from my own district in

Idaho, an outstanding wildlife biologist, and I thank you very much

for being here with the committee this afternoon.

Dr. Wall.

STATEMENT OF BILL WALL, WILDLIFE BIOLOGIST, POTLATCH

CORPORATION, LEWISTON, IDAHO

Dr. WALL. Thank you, Madame Chairman and members of the

Subcommittee. I currently serve as chair-elect of the AF&PA Wildlife Committee, and for the past five years, have worked to develop

landscape management processes Potlatch Corporation in Idaho.

I would like to share with you some thoughts, and I am going

to share four key points up front, and then get into answering the

two questions that were asked of the panel.

First, I think we should consider that forest health should be

equated with sustainable forest system health, not merely green

trees.

Second, the intermountain west is a forest system in a health crisis and is right now beyond acceptable biological risk. The application of active forest management including timber harvest and controlled fire or silvicultural tools for restoring forest system health,

and analysis tools which are the new ones that we have been generating over the past ten years or so. Our capabilities have really

expanded, such as ecological landscape classification systems, GISbased landscape planning, watershed analysis are all tools that we

can use to help guide our active forest management to restore

health in our forests.

Third, forest health criteria must be defined on the ecological capability where forested landscapes are located. Ecologists have described how physical land characteristics, weather disturbance factors interact to define different types of forest ecosystems across

the country. Fourth, each region will have a different criteria which affects

risks to various forest values, thus general health criteria must be

applied specifically within the ecosystem one is addressing.

Health and management criteria must also address several

spacial scales from forest stands to watersheds to broader landscapes. We must not reach an either/or scenario of healthy trees or

other forest values such as wildlife habitat. Rather, we should take

an approach of both-and, healthy, diverse forest landscapes,

healthy watersheds, as well as wildlife habitats.

To answer the first question on some of the criteria for considering healthy systems, the appropriate ecological representation of

all the floral composition and structure across landscapes is one

key. Each forest system has a broad range of conditions which are

necessary for healthy forest systems. A healthy system is one that

has a full, diverse array of those forest structures and communities.

Sustainable site productivity is the next key. Maintenance of soil

characteristics which sustain the productive resilience of forest systems is critical. Sustainable and functional watersheds, quality

stream conditions for salmon and fish, at least in our area, are dependent on functioning riparian habitats.
41

A healthy forest is one that maintains a full complement of functional habitats for native species across broad landscapes which encompass a variety of ownerships and land management objectives,

and finally, acceptable risk from catastrophic disturbance such as

wildfire, disease, insect outbreaks, as well as flooding.

Disturbance to forest systems, whether natural or manmade is

necessary to maintain functioning and specific values of timber,

water, and wildlife.

Now, some suggestions on some of the analysis tools and management techniques which can be applied to achieve those sorts of

goals.

One, it has been interesting that industry has taken a lead role

in the northwest in developing watershed analysis capabilities.

These can be used to define risks to watershed functions from

unhealthy forest conditions, to develop site-specific best management practices for the specific watersheds in which they are applied rather than a cookie-cutter approach which we have seen out

of the Federal agencies, and define restoration and active forest

management needs for reducing risks within those watersheds.

Ecological landscape classification systems help us to define the

ecological capability of the ecosystem in which we are working, to

understand historical disturbance regimes resulting in stand and

landscape conditions, and to help us define appropriate ecological

representation accross landscapes.

A GIS-based landscape planning process is the new tool that is

allowing us to begin planning for those various conditions.

Finally, timber harvest and silvicultural methods that recognize

the needs within these ecosystems that help us create the right

structure and composition of vegetation across the landscape in addition to providing for wildlife habitat, functioning watersheds, and

the types of economic returns that we need to maintain our communities in the west.

Finally, the thing that has really impressed me in the opportunities that exist relative to this issue and many other forest and natural resource management issues are the new partnerships that

are beginning to develop, those that are being developed between

public and private.

I have participated in quite a few and have been very excited

about the outcomes of those. Also, the ability of industry to work

at times with the Forest Service to develop new types of information, new tools, and to apply those to reach the ecological as well

as economic goals that we are attempting to across landscapes.

Thank you.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you, Dr. Wall, very much, and I thank

the panel for their testimony.

We will now recognize the members for questions, and I want to

remind the members we have five minutes for questioning, and I

would like to first recognize the gentleman from Colorado, Mr.

Schaffer.

Mr. SCHAFFER. Let me start by going back to a question that I

had asked earlier with respect to prescribed burns. I would like to

hear you all respond to this whole topic, the Babbitt proposal that

has been announced and just where you see this fitting in in sound
42

forest management practices, in particular, for Mr. Holmer’s comment that no forest management would be preferable.

What about this Babbitt proposal of management by prescribed

burn?

Mr. HOLMER. Our concern has been that there has been an overemphasis on management. We support the idea of prescribed burning, and we will support thinning in the urban/wildland interface.

We do feel that the old growth areas, the unroaded areas, the riparian zones need to be put off limits as the key first step to restoring the ecosystems, and I think that you will find that if those

steps are taken, it will also do a great deal to help deal with the

problem of polarization, because the most contentious timber sales

that people deal with are in these critical areas, and so by realizing

the ecological importance as well as the social conflict that is surrounding these areas, by resolving that, I think you will find that

it is easier to come to grips with how to manage the rest of the

landscape, and again, I think prescribed burning and restoration of

national fire regimes is the only way that in the long run we are

going to be able to accomplish that.

Mr. SCHAFFER. Any of the others?

Dr. WALL. Fire in many of our forest systems has always been

a natural disturbance factor, and there are many species that depend on fire being introduced, but fire can also be catastrophic and

destroy wildlife habitat as well as the types of riparian zones that

Steve is wanting us to protect and maintain.

It is a judicious use of fire that we are looking for and one that

we can control in most cases, not to say that on occasion, wildfires

will occur, especially in wilderness areas, et cetera.

To back up and say that we should exclude fire again I think

would be a definite mistake. Fire is an integral tool, and as was

suggested earlier in this panel, we need to have all the tools in our

toolkit, and we need to be able to use those appropriately in the

appropriate times.

Mr. MUCKENFUSS. Fire is an absolutely essential tool in the

southeast. It is a matter of timing and conditions. There is no question that fires will burn in the southeast sooner or later.

Through the judicious use of prescribed fire, we are able to apply

this very important management tool with proper timing and

under conditions which create low-intensity fires that help reduce

fuel loading as well as to create additional benefits from the standpoint of habitat for wildlife and so forth.

Fire has traditionally been used in the southeast by Indians and

early settlers to do the same things that we accomplish with fire,

and should we lose fire, it will change the entire ecosystem of the

east coast for the worse.

There is not a tool that is more important to manage forests and

that applies no matter what snapshot in time you would like to

pick as to what kind of forest you would like to have. It is extremely important for longleaf, wire-grass ecosystems as it is for

plantations.

Mr. KANE. I would concur that the use of fire is a critical tool;

however, in the east, it is not as widely used as it is in other parts

of the country because in our area, we have approximately 11 fire

days that would qualify for prescribed burning.
43

However, it is going to be used to a limited extent in our area

to reestablish some species that were lost because with the advent

of science and the internal combustion engine, the wildfires that

ran through the east during the steam years from the steam locomotives really allowed more species diversity and allowed the oak

species to be more prevalent in the current forest than what we believe it can be in the future forest, because of just the nature of

the species.

We are going to use prescribed burning even in the east, so it is

a critical tool.

Mr. SCHAFFER. Madame Chairman, I don’t have any more questions. Thank you.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. Mr. Schaffer, thank you very much. The Chair

now recognizes Mr. Peterson.

Mr. PETERSON. Mr. Holmer, if you were suddenly appointed by

the President and confirmed by the Senate to be the czar over all

of public land, when and where would we cut timber?

Mr. HOLMER. Excuse me? Would I support——

Mr. PETERSON. If you were given the role of being in charge of

our national forests, you were just absolutely in charge, where and

when would we cut timber, or wouldn’t we?

Mr. HOLMER. That is an interesting question. Our organization

does not support any specific level of timber target. We have not

taken a position on no logging, but what we do support is the use

of conservation—biology, and the latest scientific information.

They are a few examples of this being conducted on a limited

scale such as the Northwest Forest Plan. There is a new report out

on the Sierra Nevada ecosystem, another process underway in the

inland west in Idaho, Montana, eastern Oregon and Washington.

We would want to look at the whole ecosystem. In our view, our

forests have been seriously overcut for the past three decades, so

it could be quite possible that we are in a deficit situation right

now, which would mean giving the forest time to heal.

Another key problem is the lack of protection for critical components of the ecosystem, such as old growth, roadless areas, and riparian zones, so restoring those areas and protecting those areas

would be my first priority.

Mr. PETERSON. What part of the country are you from and where

have you spent most of your personal time in the forest?

Mr. HOLMER. Actually, mostly in the east. I went to high school

in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia, and I went to college at

Penn State, so I have spent a fair amount of time on the Allegheny,

and as my resume there says, I have been to national forests in 14

different States, and I have also had extensive experience with

overflights and having a chance to see our forests from the air.

Mr. PETERSON. Do you believe the Allegheny National Forest has

been overcut?

Mr. HOLMER. I am not familiar enough with the situation in the

Allegheny to say that. I would say from my personal experience

there, I was shocked at how many roads I saw. You can travel

down certain roads seemingly in the middle of nowhere, but it

seemed like it was a suburb because there were so many spur

roads going off to the side to drill pads or timber sales or one activity after another.
44

I would have to say I was somewhat shocked at how industrialized that forest was.

Mr. PETERSON. Who do we own the forest for?

Mr. HOLMER. Well, the forests are owned by the American people, and the mandate is fairly clear, to protect the full range of values on public lands, and there is abundant evidence that not all the

values are being protected right now.

When you look at the problem of clean water, when you look at

the problem of declining biodiversity, there is every indication that

not all the values are currently being protected, and when you look

at the root cause, things like road building, logging, and grazing repeatedly come to the front as the reasons why these other values

are being diminished.

Mr. PETERSON. I guess having spent my entire life very close to

the ANF and often in the ANF, I would take some exception to you.

I am an avid hunter myself, love to hike and spend time in the

woods, in the forest, and I guess I would like to ask you how many

people will go five miles off a road today?

When you talk about these huge blocks that are to be locked up,

you are talking about a minute number, part of the society today

that will travel a mile from their car because they are afraid.

I believe in having some real diversity, having some old growth,

but how much, how big, for whom? I want to tell you, it is a very

small part of the population that get five miles from their car

under any circumstance in any forest.

Mr. HOLMER. I understand what you are saying, but I think that

one of the values that these forests provide are fundamental ecological services, so recreation isn’t always the key factor to look at.

We get a lot of clean water supplies off our national forest lands.

This last year, the city of Salem, Oregon, had to close down their

water treatment facility because there was so much sediment in

their streams.

When you look at the full range that the forests provide, roadless

areas are the key refuges for our biodiversity and they help control

our water flows and help prevent flooding by remaining intact.

There is a lot of fundamental services that most people don’t

even think about, and most economists have been unable to quantify up to this date.

Mr. PETERSON. I guess I am here to say for the record that the

Allegheny River and the Clarion River that flow from the ANF are

the finest quality water-wise today than they have been in many,

many years, and I think it is because of good practices, a lot of

good environmental policy.

We have made great progress, and I can’t let you get away with

saying that we are not going in the right direction, that we haven’t

improved water quality in that region, because we have.

Mr. HOLMER. I appreciate you saying that, and I do know that

there are some very beautiful places on the Allegheny that I enjoy

visiting very much.

Mr. PETERSON. A quick question for Mr. Kane. You mentioned

about education for the private landowner. The largest part of timber, at least in the east—I don’t know that it is true in the west,

is still owned by private landowners and small plots.
45

Is government playing an adequate role in helping people understand the value of their forests?

I know of cases where somebody only owned 20 acres. They sold

it for a pittance, but it was worth quite a lot of money if it would

have been marketed properly and cut properly.

Mr. KANE. That is exactly the case. The education is truly a moving target. In the computer age as information is doubling in less

than a decade, there is so much for people to know out there, and

they own a piece of property for income and to pass something on

to their children and for many reasons, but they don’t take the

time to truly understand the ecosystem.

I think the education process is not only for the landowner, but

for the general public. Very few people in the general public truly

understand the forest and what it provides to them and how, and

how managing the resource is so much more important than just

hands off, because there is no way with the population of our society and the impacts our society has had on the forest ecosystem

that we can say hands off, because even by standing back, we have

touched it.

Mr. PETERSON. I would like to thank you personally and all of

you for coming today.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you, Mr. Peterson. Bill Wall, I have

some questions for you. That doesn’t surprise you, does it?

Dr. WALL. Not at all. Thank you.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. Among the criteria that you described, you

mentioned the state-of-the-art forest management practices and

controlled fire. What practices are you referring to specifically for

the record, and do both public and private landowners have these

practices available for their use?

Dr. WALL. Yes, they do have them available for their use, but at

this point, I think the timber industry has figured out, has taken

the lead in figuring out some of the tools that we are applying to

landscapes in understanding how to use computer technology and

have the actual data in hand in order to apply those techniques.

We have some historical mistakes to correct, and we are learning

very rapidly with those, and I would also suggest that our abilities

to gather data, process that information and develop an overall

feedback and learning process as we apply these things, the

buzzword is adaptive management, is there inside industry and

they are taking those sorts of lead roles at this point.

We have the opportunity to work with our neighbors on public

lands to help generate the types of information that we need and

to work to apply that information.

The specific techniques on the ground that are beginning to be

applied are a completely different way of road building as well as

timber harvesting techniques that are far more sensitive, that take

into consideration physical site characteristics, and then turn

around and apply specific types of applications to specific types of

land that historically, we were not able to quantify or classify in

the past.

Using those sorts of techniques has allowed us to understand

much better how to manage our forest resource and to apply that,

not only to the timber values that we are seeking, but also to main-
46

tenance of biodiversity of wildlife habitat as well as our functioning

riparian and aquatic systems.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. You recommended using a coarse filter approach for landscape planning. Could you help me understand that

better and also explain it for the record?

Dr. WALL. Sure. There was a lot of discussion earlier from various folks on this panel about a diverse array of structures and

composition across the landscape.

A coarse filter approach is an approach to a broad scale landscape rather than a stand-by-stand approach, although we recognize the need to use the stand-by-stand approach, in taking the full

complement of wildlife species that exist across that landscape,

quantifying the types of habitats needed by those various species,

and then through a planning process, making sure that we apply

the appropriate techniques across space and through time to maintain the habitats necessary to maintain the species that we would

find in any one location.

Along with that is an understanding of the ecological background

or capability in which you are working which can be completely different depending on where you are. Even in Idaho, the fact that we

have on our land base specifically a range from 40 or about 35

inches of rainfall all the way up to 80 inches of rainfall means that

we have to think through the application of maintaining habitats

and the application of specific practices depending even on just

rainfall conditions.

What we are talking about is taking a broader scale approach to

understanding how to maintain habitat through time and across

space.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. And Dr. Wall, as you take that approach, are

you considering the native species in the entire course of the forest? Are we moving back to replanting and reforesting to the native

species so that they will be more resistant to attack, whether it be

fire or insects or whatever it might be?

Dr. WALL. Most definitely. In fact, we are depending again on

our ability to classify the site. We are putting species and in some

cases, five different species within one stand back on specific sites.

Potlatch specifically has worked with the Forest Service through

time to develop resistant strains of white pine, and in order to

bring white pine back into the ecosystem which was native there,

it is necessary to return to some early successional stages, because

that species is not shade tolerant and does need sunlight.

We are actively working to restore some of the white pine sites

as well as maintaining all of the rest of the native species that

exist in northern Idaho on our land base.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. I have one more question for you, Dr. Wall.

Will the Forest Service’s ecoregion assessments, such as the Columbia River Basin ecosystem management project, help address the

issues that we are trying to address as far as healthy forests and

necessary criteria? Will it help on the public lands?

What is your feeling about that?

Dr. WALL. Well, it has tremendous potential, but at the same

time, potential and reality are two different things, and the ability

to apply the understanding that is gained from broad scale assess-
47

ments is, as we well recognize, a problem associated with the realities of regulations and the bureaucracy in which they work.

The other thing that I would suggest is that broad scale looks

help us set context for the large scale. Where we make the mistake,

I think, is in learning how to apply ecosystem management is trying to take information from the broad scale and bringing it all the

way down to a very fine scale or local situation.

What, in my mind, has to happen after working in ecosystem

management concepts for the past ten years is that we need to understand that broad scale context, but at the same time, we have

to build site-specific strategies underneath that in order to achieve

the specific goals, so we end up working from stands to watersheds,

to landscapes, and then this broad scale context, so what we end

up with is a simultaneous top-down approach which is a look at the

broad scale, but building with good, fine information and capability

at the fine scale and meeting somewhere in between in order to

meet the objectives that we are setting for ourselves.

Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you, Dr. Wall. I appreciate all of your

testimony very, very much. Mr. Holmer, I really appreciate your

testimony today. We haven’t always agreed, and most times, we

don’t, do we? But I am really surprised that no other environmental organizations wanted to take the opportunity to testify

today.

I appreciate your being here, I really do. I would like for you to

tell your colleagues in the environmental community that the

record will remain open for about ten days if they would like to

submit testimony for the record.

I also would like to invite you very sincerely to our forests out

in the west. The dynamics out there are quite different than the

forests in the east, and our fuel load in many areas in western forests are about 12 feet tall, and it really is a puzzle as to what to

do. Because of our very strict ambient air quality standards, we

can’t even burn trash piles, so we really wonder about how far we

can go in managing the forest by fire.

I thank you very much for your testimony, gentlemen, all of you.

Thank you very much. I wish we had more time, but I will study

your testimony and be very open to hear from any of you any time.

Thank you very much.

[Whereupon, at 4:40 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned; and

the following was submitted for the record:]

STATEMENT OF JOHN E. PETERSON, A U.S. REPRESENTATIVE FROM PENNSYLVANIA

Madame Chairman, it’s a pleasure to be here today to participate in this oversight

hearing in the Forest and Forest Health Subcommittee. This hearing is especially

important to me as I represent the only national forest in Pennsylvania, the Allegheny National Forest. I look forward to the dialogue we are about to open concerning the management of our nation’s forests and criteria for determining healthy

forests.

The Allegheny National Forest (ANF), more than 500,000 acres, lies completely

within my Congressional District (PA-5). The ANF is a unique and diverse asset

that is enjoyed by residents of the Commonwealth and visitors from across the nation.

Although my views about the beauty and diversity of the Forest are subjective,

the ANF does indeed have a very long list of attributes. Nearing the top of that list

is worldwide recognition of the hardwood timber that grows on the Forest, black

cherry in particular. In fact, the ANF is the single-largest source of high-quality

black cherry.
48

While many of us are familiar with forest health problems as they relate to Western states, the forest health concerns of Eastern forests can be quite different. However, one common, pervasive problem is weather. On the ANF, it has been periodic

drought that has caused notable damage. Specifically, in 1988 and 1989 almost

18,000 acres experienced significant oak mortality. Also, tornadoes and hail storm

damage has been detrimental to health of the Forest.

As an Eastern forest, the ANF experiences threats from exotic sources like the

forest tent caterpillar, gypsy moth, and cherry scallop shell moth. In 1994 alone,

cherry scallop shell moth severely defoliated cherry on close to 40 percent of the

ANF as it was the primary tree pest. Given these problems of such complex nature,

research becomes a prime tool in determining methods to treat and prevent repeated instances.

Madame Chairman, I would be remiss if I did not mention how pleased I am to

have with us here today a constituent from my District, Mr. Kenneth Kane. Mr.

Kane is Vice President of Keith Horn, Incorporated, a small group of consulting foresters from Kane, PA. I believe Mr. Kane’s expertise in the field of private forestry

as a hands-on manager makes him uniquely qualified to testify about forest management tools and the criteria of determining a healthy forest.

I look forward to hearing from all of our panelists today as this Subcommittee

seeks answers to these very important questions concerning the health and longevity of our nation’s resources.

STATEMENTBY THE HONORABLE GEORGE RADANOVICH, A U.S. REPRESENTATIVE FROM

CALIFORNIA

Thank you, Chairman Chenoweth, for providing this forum today to discuss the

issue of forest health. No single issue is more important in this Subcommittee than

addressing the long-term health of our federal forests. It is just that simple.

Your decision to focus this hearing on ‘‘what criteria should be used to determine

if a forest is healthy or unhealthy, and what management tools are most appropriate for maintaining or improving forest health,’’ is a sound one. In order to better

address the needs of the forest, we must first understand both what has worked and

what we have done wrong in our management of this valuable resource.

Furthermore, we need to re-examine the role of the courts in our forest management plans. Today, the laws guiding federal forest lands are often made not by

sound scientific evidence, but instead by the courts. Lawsuits filed by extreme environmental organizations have contributed to the substantial reduction in timber

harvests in recent years—including the salvage of dead, dying and diseased timber

necessary to reduce the fuel load that has built up in our national forests. As we

move forward in this process, we must remember that lawyers and judges don’t improve the health of our forests, forest managers do.

Our national forests—I believe—are in critical condition. The volume of dead,

dying and diseased trees has reached epidemic level in recent years. These severe

conditions have produced a rash of wildfires in recent years, destroying wildlife and

habitat and forcing a substantial reduction in timber harvest levels not only in my

district, but also the entire nation. For the sake of our forests, we must reverse this

disheartening trend.

Sound science, education and a recognition that the forests provide both an ecological and economic role in society are necessary in order to move away from the

conflict and controversy that has surrounded our forest debates and towards a locally-driven consensus-based forest management program. A forest is a sustainable

resource. If properly managed, it can provide equally for both the environment and

the economy. A healthy forest is a win-win for both the environment and the communities who depend on the forest for their livelihoods. That is why we must place

forest health legislation at the top of our agenda in this Subcommittee.

Again, thank you Chairman Chenoweth for putting this hearing together today.

I look forward to the testimony of our witnesses today as we begin a very important

dialogue on the management of our federal forests.

STATEMENT OF HARRY V. WIANT, JR., PRESIDENT, SOCIETY OF AMERICAN FORESTERS,

ON BEHALF OF MYSELF AS A PROFESSIONAL FORESTER

Mrs. Chairman, my name is Harry V. Wiant, Jr., President of the Society of

American Foresters (SAF). The over 18,600 members of the Society constitute the

scientific and educational association representing the profession of forestry in the

United States. SAF’s primary objective is to advance the science, technology, edu-
49

cation, and practice of professional forestry for the benefit of society. We are ethically bound to advocate and practice land management consistent with ecologically

sound principles. I am especially pleased to be here today to discuss the subject of

Forest Health and to thank the Subcommittee for its continued support of professional forestry. I thank the Chair for the opportunity.

The public policy activities of SAF are grounded in scientific knowledge and professional judgment. From this perspective we review proposed forestry and related

natural resource programs to determine their adequacy to meet stated objectives

and public needs.

I wish to point out that I speak here today in two distinct capacities. First, I will

address the views of the elected Council of the Society of American Foresters as expressed in its recent report entitled A Framework for Considering Forest Health and

Productivity Issues prepared by SAF’s National Task Force on Forest Health and

Productivity. I wish to submit the full report for the record. I will also speak as a

forester and citizen independent of the Society of American Foresters who is concerned with forest health issues.

SAF has been involved in maintaining the health and productivity of American

forests since Gifford Pinchot, first chief of the Forest Service, founded the organization in 1900. As a diverse organization encompassing all facets of forest management, the concept of forest health is one we have struggled with in recent years.

Our recent report comes to these conclusions:

Professional foresters believe there are serious forest health and productivity

questions in many parts of the country.

Forest health is an informal and technically inexact term.

Assessment of forest health and forest productivity requires an understanding of

both the condition of the forest and the objectives for the management of that forest;

recognizing that objectives are set by landowners be they private, public, tribal or

trust, and also by society through policy and regulation.

Forest health is determined at the local level; therefore, a single national prescription to achieve healthy forests is inappropriate.

I will now express my personal views, once again pointing out that these are not

necessarily the opinions of the Society of American Foresters, which I would like

noted in the record.

As humans, we experience the joys of birth, the vigor of youth, slowing down with

age, and, finally, death. With proper attention to health, our productive years may

be extended. Few of us believe a ‘‘hands-off’’ approach is appropriate to maintain

human health. Trees, and forests, go through similar phases. Believing that a vigorously growing forest, within the limitations of site quality and age, that is not seriously threatened by insects, diseases, fire, or other hazards is healthy, my over 40

years of experience as a forester leads me to the firm convictions that:

A well-managed forest (along a spectrum from intensive management to wilderness management), with management addressing landowner or societal objectives,

is the healthiest possible.

In an unmanaged forest, there is no opportunity to address declining health.

Picture a well-managed 5,000-acre forest, comprised of trees well adapted to the

site, and being managed with a rotation age (the age at which the final harvest of

trees occurs) of 50 years. After 50 years of management, 100 acres (perhaps not in

a single location on the forest) are being regenerated by natural or artificial means,

100 acres have 1-year-old seedlings, etc., with 100 acres ready for the final harvest.

Logging and access roads are well engineered, regeneration is prompt, and the soil

productivity is maintained.

Hazards to forest health, such as fire, insects, and diseases, generally are most

damaging to trees of given ages. The age-class distribution of the well-managed forest minimizes those risks. With proper intermediate cuts (cuts made to provide

spacing for crop trees to maintain vigorous growth, to salvage diseased and damaged trees, etc.), productivity and biodiversity are generally maximized.

The criteria to judge whether a forest is healthy becomes obvious:

Soil productivity is protected and maintained with well-engineered logging and access roads and prompt regeneration.

The forest is comprised of species well adapted to the site.

There is an approximately balanced age-class distribution.

Well-maintained logging and access roads facilitate forest management and protection.

Fuel levels, diseases, insects, and other potential hazards (deer, for example) are

at reasonable levels.

The management tools necessary to maintain or improve forest health are evident

also, including:
50

An adequate cadre of professional foresters, wildlife managers, recreation specialists, engineers, hydrologists, and others is available to provide the expertise needed

to produce the commodity and non-commodity values desired.

There is flexibility to manage the forest, unhampered by poorly conceived ‘‘environmental’’ laws, frivolous appeals, and tax codes which discourage long-term investments in timber management.

There are strong forest research programs in the USDA Forest Service, universities, and the private sector.

Forest management remains science based, and the ‘‘toolkit’’ available to managers (prescribed fire, herbicides, selection method, clearcutting, etc.) is maintained.

To put this in few words, the cure to our forest health problems is more and not

less forest management! The primary responsibility for managing our nation’s forests should be in the hands of those best qualified by training and experience, the

foresters.

Thank you.

STATEMENT OF HON. STEPHEN H. SCHOENHOLTZ, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, FOREST

AND WILDLIFE RESEARCH CENTER, MISSISSIPPI STATE UNIVERSITY

Madam Chairman, Committee Members:

Thank you for the opportunity to present my views on useful criteria to assess

forest health, and management tools appropriate to maintain or improve forest

health. Forest health means different things to different people depending on differences in forest management objectives and philosophies. Therefore, defining forest health is currently a topic of intense debate. There is general agreement that

our well-being and the well-being of future generations depends on productive, sustainable, healthy forests. However, some perceptions of forest health vary depending

on individual preferences for forest use. To manage and maintain our forests in an

acceptable state for future generations, requires us to define forest health broadly

enough to encompass the many facets of forest ecosystems.

Evaluating forest health is a daunting task. Forest components such as plants,

animals, soil, water, and air have many complex interactions that we may recognize,

but do not fully understand. Evaluating and monitoring health of some components

may be difficult and/or expensive. Forests are constantly changing. This must be

recognized when assessing their health. Some indicators of forest health at one

stage of forest development may not be important at other stages. Furthermore, separating human-induced change (e.g. increased ozone or acidic deposition, historic

farming, tree harvesting, burning) from natural change (e.g. wildfire, insect outbreaks, severe storms) can be difficult. Finally, the question of scale must be addressed in the assessment of forest health; that is, forest health can be considered

at the stand level (10’s of acres) or at regional or national levels (millions of acres).

What do we look for when we try to assess forest health? We must keep in mind

that forests consist of components in addition to trees. These components include

other vegetation, animals, soil, air, and water. An assessment of forest health,

therefore, should consider key indicators that can be measured or described periodically to identify trends. Key indicators should also effectively integrate the status

of all forest ecosystem components. It is neither possible nor is it necessary to consider all of the processes and components of a forest ecosystem in order to make

useful assessments about forest health or the consequences of forest management

for forest health. We must focus our efforts on identifying key indicators, the knowledge of which will permit acceptably accurate assessments of forest health. We must

remember that some key indicators of forest health may vary among different forest

ecosystems, among different spatial and temporal scales, and among different scientific and managerial objectives.

There is great merit in trying to identify indicators of forest health in spite of the

difficulties involved because these indicators are essential for understanding and

predicting forest health. To be useful in society over a range of ecological and socioeconomic situations, key forest health indicators should meet the following suitability criteria (after Doran and Parkin 1994): integrate ecosystem properties and

processes; be accessible to many users and applicable to field conditions; be sensitive

to variations in management and climate; and where possible, be components of existing data bases.

Measurements of forest vegetation meet these suitability criteria. Vegetation is

often the component of primary concern when assessing forest health. However, it

also provides habitat for animal communities and it interacts with other ecosystem

components such as soil, air, and water. Forest ecosystem health must include a

level of acceptable plant productivity. This productivity depends on development of
51

efficient leaf area and on maintaining low stress levels in plants. This, in turn depends on the ability of the soil to supply necessary nutrients and water.

A list of basic forest vegetation indicators includes: age; structure; crown condition; species composition; species diversity; growth rate; mortality rate; foliar injury;

species replacement patterns; regeneration rate; presence of insects or disease; and

presence of exotic species.

We have a good understanding of expected temporal patterns in many forest ecosystem types. If these criteria indicate deviations from expected patterns, then management practices to maintain or enhance forest health should be considered.

These management alternatives include: removal of undesirable species; thinning

to appropriate tree density; supplemental planting; use of controlled burning; fertilization; manipulating vegetation to create specific habitat; and imposing stricter

air quality standards.

Soil is recognized as a critical component of forest ecosystems and, as such, quality of soil has a profound effect on the health and productivity of a given ecosystem.

Soil is a dynamic, living, management-responsive resource whose condition is vital

to both forest ecosystem function and to global balance. Health and quality of soils

determine plant, animal, and human health. Criteria for indicators of soil quality

and health relate mainly to their utility in defining ecosystem processes and integrating physical, chemical, and biological properties, their sensitivity to management and climatic variations, and their accessibility and utility to society. Ultimate

choice of specific indicators for assessing soil quality and health will depend upon

identification of strategies for sustainable management of our forest resources.

There is a large range of soil attributes, such as chemical, physical, and biological

properties and processes that can be used to indicate soil quality. Some of these attributes have wide utility and can serve a range of purposes.

These basic soil indicators include (after Doran and Parkin 1994): soil texture;

maximum rooting depth; soil bulk density and infiltration; plant-available water capacity; total organic carbon and nitrogen; pH; electrical conductivity; and soil

strength.

Other measurements will probably be needed depending on management objectives, local conditions, and existing data bases.

Our knowledge of factors affecting forest health is incomplete. To be acceptable

evidence of change in forest health these conditions must be met: (1) changes in

vegetation must be attributable to differences in environmental conditions (e.g. soil

properties, air quality, climate); (2) changes must be evident for a sufficient time

so that short-term, temporary differences are not mistaken; and (3) judgements

should be based on adequate knowledge of forest factors affecting health.

Monitoring forest health will require manipulations of large volumes of spatial

and time-dependent environmental data. This aspect of monitoring should be developed within a Geographic Information System environment that can accommodate

incorporation of new variables and can be developed into an adaptive management

tool.

Avoiding degradation of forest health is achieved by accepting management techniques that do not adversely affect the forest or the quality of the environment in

which the forest grows. If a negative effect is an unavoidable consequence of the

management goal, then future forest health problems need to be averted by incorporating the appropriate ameliorative techniques into management decisions for the

forest. This requires an understanding of what has been changed in a negative way

and the correct ameliorative practice needed to restore forest health.

Although we lack empirical evidence for judging the degree to which some criteria

can be altered without concomitant loss of forest health, we must harness what we

know about forest ecosystem function in a form that is useful for managers and policy makers in order to help those responsible for making effective decisions about

forest management and environmental regulations. The forest management decision

process should be based on potential impacts to indicators of forest ecosystem

health. Since our knowledge base is incomplete it is essential that experience, feedback, and adaptability play prominent roles in any assessment of forest health.

Literature Cited:

Doran, J.W., and T.B. Parkin. 1994. Defining and assessing soil quality. Chapter

1. In J.W.

Doran, D.C. Coleman, D.F. Bezdicek, and B.A. Stewart (eds.), Defining Soil Quality for a Sustainable Environment, SSSA Special Publication Number 35, Am. Soc.

Agronomy, Madison, WI.
52

STATEMENT OF MIKE DOMBECK, CHIEF, FOREST SERVICE, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF

AGRICULTURE

Madam Chairman and members of the Subcommittee:

I am pleased to appear before this subcommittee for the first time as Chief of the

Forest Service. As some of you may know, I am no stranger to the Forest Service,

having grown up 25 miles from a town of 1,500 people in northern Wisconsin’s beautiful lake country, in the Chequamegon National Forest. In my Forest Service career, I have worked at various levels of the organization in the West, Midwest, and

Washington D.C., before going to the Department of the Interior. I am glad to be

back. I am accompanied today by Dr. Ann Bartuska, Director of our Forest Health

Protection Staff.

Success Stories in Forest Ecosystem Restoration

Today, I will begin my testimony with several concrete examples of efforts to restore the health of our nations forests. These examples demonstrate we can improve

the conditions of forest ecosystems.

Longleaf Pine in the Southeastern United States

Of all the southern pines, many consider the longleaf pine the most valuable in

terms of quality of wood products, the most aesthetically pleasing, and the most resistant to fire and to insect and disease attacks. In presettlement times, approximately 60 million acres of longleaf pine stands extended from East Texas through

the lower coastal plain to Virginia. This ecosystem was maintained by frequent lowintensity fire from lightning strikes or human-caused ignition. By the early 1900’s,

the area of longleaf pine forests had been reduced to about 3 million acres, mainly

due to the exclusion of fire from the ecosystem and because of extensive conversion

of forest lands to agricultural uses.

We are now artificially regenerating longleaf pine on the most appropriate sites

where it originally grew. We work with other federal agencies, state forestry organizations and private land owners in this effort. We are also involved in cooperative

research on longleaf pine ecosystems with partners such as the Alabama Alliance

with members representing Tall Timbers Research, Inc., universities, private landowners, and environmental organizations. The Forest Service is now making restoration of longleaf pine ecosystems a priority as the national forests revise their

land and resource management plans. Through these efforts, we are establishing

new stands of longleaf pine and are providing a wide array of ecological, social and

economic benefits.

Seedling Resistance to White Pine Blister Rust

In 1909 and 1910, white pine blister rust was from contaminated nursery stock

from Europe and was introduced to the east and west coasts. The first infection in

Idaho was discovered on the Cour D’Alene National Forest in 1923. Since then, it

has spread throughout the white forest pine type in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and

western Montana. In the west, blister rust has typically killed 90 percent or more

of the western white pine. Stands where white pine formally dominated have been

converted to grand fir, cedar, hemlock and Douglas-fir. Control efforts were largely

successful in the east, but proved ineffective in the vast expanse of western

wildlands.

Disease-resistant white pines were observed in infected areas. In the 1950’s and

1960’s, we began a successful breeding program to develop resistant white pines.

Today, we have saved the species from extinction and are reintroducing resistant

white pine seedlings as fast as we can working toward the restoration of the western white pine ecosystem in our Northern Region.

Prescribed Fire and Thinning on the Boise National Forest

The past decade brought severe drought and fire to the Boise National Forest in

south central Idaho. Catastrophic wildfires burned as never before and the damage

to the forest ecosystem and dependent communities has been severe. The conditions

that have made the Boise so susceptible to catastrophic fire are evident. Once fire

resistant forests dominated by ponderosa pine have been replaced by far more dense

stands of trees—including many of species that would be naturally limited—existing

under conditions that cannot be sustained. These overstocked, highly stressed

stands have resulted in fuel loads that, when ignited, experience very largestandreplacement fires far more often than historical conditions provided.

The Boise National Forest has been a leader in identifying addressing forest

health problems in ponderosa pine ecosystems. Using the latest technology to identify areas at highest risk to catastrophic fire, the Boise prepared over 16,000 acres

for prescribed burning this year. Through the increased use of prescribed fire and

landscape-wide thinnings, we are changing tree composition, stand structure, and
53

tree density to restore ponderosa pine ecosystems. The value of this work is obvious.

It costs $20 to $50 an acre for prescribed burning compared to $400 to $4,000 an

acre to suppress wildfires.

Before turning to the issue of forest health and how to measure it, I would like

to talk about the broader issue of management of National Forest Systems (NFS)

lands.

Management of The National Forests

There is an ongoing dialogue in this nation over how national forests and rangelands should be managed. This dialogue is healthy. Dialogue and information are

the essence of democracy. The people we serve, all of the people, are now more fully

engaged in defining our course. The task for the Forest Service is not to dictate the

outcome. Rather, we need to be the facilitators, the suppliers of knowledge and expertise, the educators and communicators who help people search for solutions.

Today, faced with competing demands, new pressures on the land and greater

challenges than ever before, resource management has become more contentious

and more heated. We in this room can help to change that. I believe that if we work

together, we can usher in a new era of resource stewardship and a deeper commitment to conservation; a commitment marked by a willingness to hear all sides of

the debate; a commitment to remain open and responsive to new ideas, new values,

and new information; a commitment to leave our lands healthier and our waters

cleaner.

I call this commitment of working with people to maintain and restore the health

of the land, collaborative stewardship. Collaborative stewardship rests on one very

basic premise: We simply cannot meet the needs of people if we do not first secure

the health of the land.

Forest Health in the United States

While our forests are generally healthy, past timber harvest practices such as selective removal of pine overstory in the Inland West with the subsequent ingrowth

of fir understory and the elimination of fire from these fire-dependent ecosystems

have increased the risk of catastrophic wildfires, and increased the severity of

drought, insect infestation, and disease. Serious forest health problems do exist and

forest management practices must be improved based on the best available science.

Most people support the goal of sustaining healthy forest ecosystems. Yet, over

the past year, the words ‘‘forest health’’ have become unnecessarily value laden and

incorrectly characterized to imply ‘‘log it to save it.’’ If we are to move beyond the

divisiveness associated with implementation of the salvage rider, we must begin a

more productive and credible dialogue about ‘‘forest health.’’ To so do we must abide

by three principles.

First, unhealthy conditions in our forests developed over many decades—any solution will require time and commitment to implement. We must look at restoration

of forest health as an investment: an investment in the land; an investment for our

children’s futures; an investment that will ensure productive, healthy and diverse

national forests.

Second, restoring forest health in not simply a forestry issue. A healthy forest is

one that maintains the function, diversity, and resiliency of all its components, such

as wildlife and fish habitat, riparian areas, soils, rangelands, and economic potential

and will require active management. It will require road maintenance and obliteration; use of prescribed fire; grazing management; thinning of green trees; salvage;

and, other forest management practices. We must use all available tools and continue our search for new ones.

Third, we must more effectively communicate the many environmental and economic benefits of restoring forest health as well as the consequences of inaction. If

people do not support restoration of forest health, then all of our best efforts will

be wasted.

I would like to concentrate my remarks today on how we can work together to

develop a strong network of healthy forests.

Forest ecosystems are dynamic and ever changing. We now know the futility of

trying to maintain static and predictable forest conditions. We recognize that natural disturbances such as fire, flood, insects, disease, and hurricanes are not only

inevitable, they are necessary to maintain the health, diversity, and productivity of

a forest ecosystem. Understanding the role and function of natural disturbances and

the effects of human-induced ones is prerequisite to restoring and sustaining

healthy ecosystems. How we integrate these relatively straightforward concepts into

our restoration efforts is the challenge.

Inventory and Assessments
54

Establishing priorities for restoration projects requires a clear understanding of

forest ecosystem conditions and trends. Programs such as Forest Inventory and

Analysis and Forest Health Monitoring provide information to assess national conditions and trends. These data assist us in the development of regional assessments

such as the Interior Columbia River Basin Assessment, the Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project, and the Southern Appalachian Assessment. At this regional scale,

all of the critical issues are described, alternative solutions proposed, and implementation considerations identified as background material for potential land management decisions. The point is that without good base-line data, we cannot make good

management decisions.

Actions

The Forest Service has identified a series of management actions to address the

critical issues of forest health mentioned. These include: •Increasing the role of prescribed fire and fuels treatment;

•In partnership with the Animal and Plant Inspection Service, reducing the introduction, spread, impact and increase control of exotic pests—both plant and animal; •Accelerating restoration of riparian functions;

•Increasing thinning in dense forests;

•Increasing monitoring of forested and rangeland ecosystems;

•Increasing use of science in resource-decision making;

•Increasing technical and financial assistance to non-industrial private forest

(NIPF) landowners.

The Forest Service will work with its partners using these priority actions to address critical forest health issues.

Specifically, the FY 1998 budget proposes a significant increase in fuels management under our wildland fire management proposal. The fact is we have less of a

‘‘fire’’ problem then we do a ‘‘fuels’’ problem. We must make fuels management a

significant part of our overall fire management program and, ultimately, this investment in fuels reduction will result in long term savings in fire suppression costs.

We have also proposed increases for timber stand improvement activities and forest

vegetation management. We hope you will support the 1998 budget proposal.

In addition, we will shortly share with you a legislative proposal to create a new

permanent fund called the ‘‘Forest Ecosystem Restoration and Maintenance Fund’’.

This fund would provide additional resources for reducing fire hazards and improving the structure and health of forests.

Another specific action involves cooperative efforts encouraged by our State and

Private Forestry programs. Increasingly, the nation is dependent on non-industrial

private forest lands (NIPF), which comprise 50 percent of privately owned forest

lands, to meet timber demands. Some NIPF lands are not as healthy or productive

as the owners would like. The Forest Stewardship Program and the Stewardship Incentives Program provide technical and financial assistance to NIPF owners in

meeting their objectives for good land stewardship.

Other programs such as Economic Assistance and Agroforestry help develop the

linkages between healthy wildland communities and healthy human communities.

The Urban and Community Forestry program provides financial and technical assistance to communities in how to plant species of trees that are less likely to succumb to insects and diseases and other damaging agents. As you can see, forest

health is not simply a salvage issue; it is an ecosystem restoration issue with broad

opportunities and complex solutions.

One Approach to Forest Ecosystem Restoration

An outstanding example of the type of collaboration necessary to restore forest

health is happening in the eastside forest ecosystems of Oregon. A blue ribbon panel

of scientists convened by Governor Kitzhaber identified ways we could speed the

healing of these ecosystems, methods which may be broadly applicable to all forested regions of the West. The Kitzhaber report embraces the full spectrum of forest

and watershed management and restoration activities such as riparian restoration,

noxious weed management, prescribed fire, grazing management, and thinning. It

also contains a common sense recommendation that initial forest ecosystem restoration efforts focus on less controversial areas avoiding riparian, old growth, and

roadless areas.

I have asked Governor Kitzhaber, Congressman Bob Smith of Oregon, and a

broad range of public interests—environmental and industry—how we can move forward and begin the restoration of the eastside forest ecosystems. Last week I spoke

with the Governor and his collaborative citizen’s council. I have already met with

the heads of the Fish and Wildlife Service, National Marine Fisheries Service, the

Environmental Protection Agency, and the Bureau of Land Management to discuss

how we can constructively employ the approach outlined by Governor Kitzhaber. All
55

parties have expressed strong interest in moving ahead with restoration of our forest ecosystems. I believe this is the sort of approach that will help rebuild trust and

support for forest ecosystem restoration activities.

Criteria and Indicators for Forest Health

Because the issue of forest health transcends national boundaries, we have been

working internationally to address forest health concerns. Building on our Forest Inventory and Analysis and Forest Health Monitoring programs, the United States,

as one of 12 countries, was signatory in 1995 to the Santiago Declaration. Signatory

countries contain more than 40 per cent of the world’s temperate and boreal forest

lands. This landmark document lists 7 criteria that characterize how we must manage for sustainable forestry along with indicators for measuring sustainability. The

criteria include: conservation of biological diversity; maintenance of productive capacity of forest ecosystems; maintenance of ecosystem health and vitality; conservation and maintenance of soil and water resources; maintenance of forest contribution to global carbon cycles; maintenance and enhancement of long-term socioeconomic benefits to meet the needs of societies; and legal, institutional and economic framework for forest conservation and sustainable management.

Summary

The message I wish to leave you with is that we can accelerate the healing of

our forests. And we can do so in a balanced and measured approach. This is not

about the ‘‘cut it to save it’’ misnomer that presently surrounds the words ‘‘forest

health’’. It is about sitting at the same table with the regulatory agencies, state,

other land managers, and citizens and taking action before we are confronted with

incredibly costly—both socially and environmentally—conflagrations.

The consequences of inaction far outweigh the fiscal costs of forest ecosystem restoration. Catastrophic events such as floods, fire and landslides, are occurring at increasing frequencies with ever more devastating consequences. Noxious weeds are

diminishing the productivity of hundreds of thousands of acres of public land. Devastating fires are increasingly encroaching upon the urban-forest interface. Last

year alone, over 6 million acres of public land burned. Healthy forests will provide

the resiliency to minimize the severe consequences of these events. Without decisive

action these problems will only worsen.

Restoration will not be quick. And in fact, it will be very expensive. But we must

look at these sorts of activities as investments in the land—investments that will

immediately reduce the risk of catastrophic fire and, in the long run will greatly

enhance forest productivity, health, and diversity. It took many decades for today’s

unhealthy forest conditions to develop; it will take many years to reverse them.

Thanks for inviting me to be here today. I’d be pleased to answer any questions.

TESTIMONY OF STEVE HOLMER, CAMPAIGN COORDINATOR, WESTERN ANCIENT FOREST

CAMPAIGN

Chairman Chenoweth, thank you for this opportunity to testify on the management of our National Forests. The Western Ancient Forest Campaign represents organizations and individuals nationwide who are dedicated to protecting forest and

aquatic ecosystems on the National Forests.

Increasing evidence demonstrates that over the past three decades, our National

Forests have suffered too much logging, too much roadbuilding, and too much cattle

grazing and fire suppression with little concern about the impact these activities

have on our clean water supplies, fish and wildlife, recreational opportunities and

the ecological integrity of forest ecosystems.

The Facts: Our National Forests Imperiled

A recent mapping project by the World Wildlife Fund concluded that only 2% of

the original forests remain in the lower forty eight states. The Eastside Forests Scientific Society Panel report concluded that the few remaining roadless areas are

threatened and that very little of the old growth Ponderosa pine forest remains. The

report recommends: no logging of old growth forests or trees of any species older

than 150 years or greater than 20 inches in diameter; no logging in aquatic diversity

areas and to establish protected corridors along streams, rivers, lakes and wetlands;

no logging or roadbuilding in roadless areas.

Both the PACFISH and INFISH federal interim guidelines for protecting imperiled fish stocks concurred with the conclusion that we need to protect roadless areas

and riparian zones to restore declining fisheries. These are critical first steps towards proper management and rehabilitating faltering forest and aquatic ecosystems in the Inland West.
56

The Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project report came to similar conclusions and also

stated that, ‘‘Timber harvest, through its effects on forest structure, local microclimate, and fuel accumulation, has increased fire severity more than any other recent

human activity. ‘‘ The notion that we can salvage log the forests to reduce fire risk

is not supported by any empirical scientific data.

In the state of Idaho, over 960 streams are polluted and rated as ‘‘water quality

limited’’ by the Environmental Protection Agency because of too much contamination in the streams. Over half of these streams are being degraded by logging.

Flooding, exacerbated by logging and roadbuilding in the Couer d’Alene watershed

is steadily sending millions of pounds of lead contaminated sediments into Lake

Couer d’Alene and ultimately into the city of Spokane’s watershed. In Oregon, seven

people were killed this year as a result of mudslides. Numerous scientific studies

have been published, including by the U.S. Forest Service that conclude that logging

and roadbuilding increase the risk and severity of landslides and flooding.

Across the West, fish stocks continue to decline and many species such as the coho

and bull trout are being considered for listing under the Endangered Species Act.

Over 70,000 jobs of a once booming commercial fishing industry have been lost because the fish are gone. Clean drinking water for millions of Americans originates

on the National Forests and yet there is no protection for this resource. Last year,

the city of Salem, Oregon was forced to close down its water treatment system because of the huge amount of sediments filling the river. The City of Portland estimated that it would have cost $200 million to build water treatment facilities if the

Bull Run watershed that provides their water was not protected from logging and

roadbuilding.

The private and public forests of the Southeast are threatened by unsustainable

logging. There are now over 140 chip mills in the Southeast that average over

300,000 tons of chips a year, 100 of these were sited within the last ten years. At

300,000 metric tons of chips per mill per year, nearly one million acres—1,562

square miles—of southeast forest are being fed annually to the chip mills. And because chip mills grind up trees of any size, clearcutting is the most common method

of logging used to feed the mills. According to industry and USFS, the growth to

harvest ratio for softwoods in the South went negative in 1991. Hardwood harvests

are expected to exceed growth within the next 2-10 years. This is not only evidence

that the industry is unsustainable, but that chip mills are depleting the forests,

thereby impacting water quality, habitats, ecosystem health and local forest-dependent businesses. In addition, chip mills employ very few workers. A typical chip mill

has a sourcing radius of 75 miles yet only employs from 4 to 10 people and the hardwood consumed by a single chip mill in one month could run an average size sawmill for an entire year. Hardwood chip exports increased 500% from 1989 to 1995.

These are the facts as presented by the scientific community, industry and government agencies. These are the real forest ecosystem health problems which this

Committee chooses to ignore in favor of arguments that all come to the same conclusion: more logging.

The Lessons of the Logging Rider

Claiming to address the overstocking and fuel loading problems caused by fire

suppression and grazing cattle, the 104th Congress passed the Salvage Logging

Rider which suspended environmental laws and a citizen’s right to have those laws

enforced and participate in how their own lands were being managed. But no effort

was made to address the fundamental problems of too much grazing and too much

fire suppression.

Under the rider we witnessed the logging of Ancient Forests that had been protected by the courts. Under the rider, the guise of logging dead and dying trees was

used by the Forest Service to log large, green trees. Unroaded areas, which represent some our nation’s last unprotected wilderness were entered and logged. The

government’s own Interagency Report on the Implementation of the Rider confirmed

these abuses.

The logging rider ignored science by suspending procedural laws such as the National Environmental Policy Act that requires the best available information be applied before the government takes a proposed action. The logging rider allowed the

agency to ignore economics and offer timber sales that they knew would lose money.

The agreement implementing the rider reinstituted timber targets. This kind of discredited mandate forces the agency to ‘‘get-the-cut-out’’ by making bad management

decisions that ignore scientific evidence and economic common sense, and that have

devastating consequences for the environment.

The logging rider overturned the fundamental notions of democracy by banning

citizen appeals and the system of checks and balances that has made our system

work by allowing the Forest Service to ignore the objections of other federal agen-
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cies. Eliminating citizen appeals and meaningful judicial review has no place in the

American system which is based on the right of every citizen to participate and ensure that the government is not acting above the law.

To their credit, Clinton Administration officials admitted that signing the rider

was the worst mistake of their first term and they issued the Glickman Directive

which halted some but not all of these abuses.

In the aftermath of the rider, several lessons are clear. Our environmental laws

and public processes should never again be suspended. Ancient Forests, roadless

areas and riparian zones need permanent protection. And the U.S. Forest Service

needs to be reformed and made more accountable to the public.

Restoring Accountability

To address these threats to the health of our forest ecosystems we would like to

make several recommendations which we urge the Committee to adopt.

Working in conjunction with over forty other organizations, we have developed a

Grassroots Forest Initiative to identify some specific ideas to help restore accountability to the agency and help stop the abuses that continue to threaten our forest

heritage. Here are the four points in the initiative:

1. Prohibit new roadbuilding on the National Forests by ending any appropriation

for new roads and by prohibiting the use of purchaser road credits to build new

roads. Given the ecological importance of roadless areas and with over 370,000 miles

of logging roads, eight times the length of the Interstate Highway, and a massive

backlog of roads in need of maintenance, it does not make sense to build new roads.

2. Prohibit logging and road-building on unstable and potentially unstable national forest land. Recent landslides in the West have demonstrated some of the

‘‘hidden costs’’ to public safety and the environment of subsidized logging and road

building on steep, unstable slopes.

3. Restore accountability by reforming or abolishing off-budget funds. There is a

growing consensus that the various off-budget funds—the Knutson-Vandenberg

(KV), Brush Disposal and Salvage Funds—which total nearly a billion dollars a

year, must be either reformed or abolished. The Interagency Report on Implementation of the Rider concluded that the salvage fund created an incentive for the agency

to choose logging projects when other activities (such as prescribed fire or stream

restoration) were more appropriate, because the agency could keep most of the receipts for the salvage logging operations. We strongly oppose tying restoration

projects to timber sale receipts.

4. End money-losing timber sales. The annual report of the White House Council of Economic Advisors shows that the Forest Service spent $234 million more than

it collected in timber receipts in 1995. ‘‘Generally, the Forest Service subsidizes timber extraction from public lands by collecting less timber sale revenues than it

spends on timber program costs,’’ the report says. According to the Government Accounting Office (GAO) the timber sale program lost nearly $1 billion from 1992-

1994. For the sake of both the environment and the taxpayer, it is time to end subsidized logging on the National Forests.

This initiative has been signed by over one hundred groups including the Sierra

Club, The Wilderness Society, California Wilderness Coalition, Inland Empire Public

Lands Council, Oregon Natural Resources Council, Northeast Ohio Sierra Club,

Northwest Ecosystem Alliance, and the Western North Carolina Alliance.

At Sen. Craig’s recent forest management workshop the Government Accounting Office testified that during 1995, the Forest Service spent $215 million dollars of

the taxpayer’s money, that they cannot account for. We urge the Committee to use

its oversight authority to find out what happened to the taxpayer’s $215 million, determine why the agency can’t account for it and document how they will ensure this

abuse of the public’s trust will not occur again.

We urge the committee to look at the full range of values our forests provide such

as clean water, fish and wildlife habitat, and recreational opportunities. According

to the Forest Service Resources and Planning Assessment, by the year 2000, recreation on the National Forests will produce over $100 billion dollars for the economy

while logging will only produce $3.5 billion. The value of clean and stable water

flows from our forests is estimated in the trillions.

Old Growth, Roadless Areas and Riparian Zones Need Protection

In testimony before the Senate Energy Committee on February 25, 1997, Chief

of the Forest Service Michael Dombeck testified, ‘‘The unfortunate reality is that

many people presently do not trust us to do the right thing. Until we rebuild that

trust and strengthen those relationships, it is simply common sense that we avoid

riparian, old growth and roadless areas.’’ We urge the Committee to support Chief

Dombeck’s effort to reform the agency and restore the public’s trust by adopting his

common sense recommendation and the other recommendations in this testimony.
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In closing, I would like to quote a Republican President who helped make this

a great nation by protecting some of our National Forests, Teddy Roosevelt, who

said, ‘‘The Nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it

must turn over to the next generation increased and not impaired in value.’’

I believe the United States is a great nation, but I feel that we are now risking

that greatness by lacking the foresight and courage that made us great to begin

with. We can choose to squander our remaining unprotected wild places, or we can

be revered by future generations as Teddy Roosevelt is, for having the vision and

the greatness to protect this nation’s natural heritage.

Thank you for this opportunity to testify.

STATEMENT OF KENNETH C. KANE, KEITH HORN, INC., CONSULTING FORESTERS,

KANE, PENNSYLVANIA

Madame Chairman and members of the Subcommittee, I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss forest health on the Allegheny region

which includes the Allegheny National Forest (ANF). You have asked those testifying before the Subcommittee to address two specific issues:

1. What criteria determine if a forest is healthy or unhealthy? and

2. What management tools are most appropriate to maintain or improve forest

health?

I will address both of your questions directly. However, let me first provide some

background information which will help set the stage for my presentation.

My name is Kenneth C. Kane. I am Vice President of Keith Horn, Inc. consulting

foresters in Kane, Pennsylvania. I am a graduate of Penn State’s School of Forest

Resources where I received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1982. I have lived in

the Allegheny region my entire life and have studied and worked with the forests

of this region for over 20 years. For the last 13 years, I have been a full-time, handson manager of private forest land. I am Chairman of the Pennsylvania Division of

the Society of American Foresters and also Chairman of Penn Chapter of the Association of Consulting Foresters of America. I am also president of the Kane Area

School Board and active in other community and industrial organizations, including

the Allegheny Forest Alliance. I am testifying on my own behalf.

The Allegheny National Forest

For many years, the Allegheny National Forest has been the single largest source

of high-quality black cherry, a species of wood in great demand here in the United

States and around the world. Continued harvest and regeneration of the ANF’s

black cherry trees is a top priority for hardwood lumber producers located near the

ANF and for veneer manufacturers throughout North America.

It is fair to say that the ANF is the flagship national forest in the Northeast. In

the last seven years (fiscal years ’90-’96) the ANF produced $132.6 million in timber

sale revenues. The Forest Service estimates that costs attributable to the ANF timber program during that period were $29.1 million. Thus, the net profit to the

United States was $103.5 million. Of that amount, $33.8 million was returned to

the counties through the Twenty-Five Percent Fund. [Attached is a chart (Fig. 1)

which illustrates the ANF’s profitability.]

Fortunately, Madame Chairman, the ANF has no widespread threatened or endangered species listings or other over arching legal/political issues driving its timber program into a tail spin of oblivion. However, there are other challenges ahead,

and we must act now to protect the enormous values of this national forest.

The ANF: A Forest at Ever-increasing Risk

Like other national forests in the Eastern US, the Allegheny National Forest is

a second-growth forest with mostly even-aged timber stands. In general, these

stands were created 50-90 years ago and are now extremely well-stocked with black

cherry and other valuable hardwood trees. Black cherry is a shallow rooted tree species; mature trees are highly susceptible to wind-throw damage. Thus, the stands

on the ANF that are heavy with mature black cherry trees are at ever increasing

risk.

Attached to this statement are two charts that illustrate my point. The first (Fig.

2) shows the distribution of timber stands by 20-year age classes. As you can see,

nearly all of the timber stands on this 503,000 acre national forest are either 51-

70 or 71-90 years old. The second chart (Fig. 3) illustrates the fact that the ANF

is an incredibly productive timber-growing forest. More than four-fifths of this forest

is highly suited for the production of black cherry, oak, and other species.
59

As mentioned earlier, the ANF is the single most important source of high quality

black cherry logs. Given the importance of this species to the domestic furniture

business and to America’s veneer and lumber exports, we need to do everything possible to ensure that the ANF will always be a source of black cherry. That’s why

we have to maintain and improve the health of this and other national forests.

Question One: What Criteria Determine If a Forest Is Healthy?

To answer this question for the Allegheny Plateau, you must remember that essentially the entire forest in the region was clear-cut between 1880 and 1930. [Such

clear-cutting was very common throughout the East. In fact, nearly all eastern hardwood forests are the result of the clear-cuts which occurred at or near the turn of

the century.] The vast clear-cutting of that era virtually eliminated the beech-hemlock, old-growth (climax) forests of the region. The hardwood forests which emerged

did so naturally (without planting).

So, within the forests of the Allegheny region and other ‘‘second-growth’’ eastern

hardwood forests, forest health is typically determined by answering some basic

questions:

•Individual Tree Vigor. What is the condition of the crown, stem, root, and leaf

of the tree?

•Species Diversity. Is there an adequate diversity of trees, shrubs, flowers, and

other plant species present in the forest?

•Size Class Diversity. Since not all trees grow at the same rate, are there trees

of various sizes?

•Presence of Desired Natural Regeneration. Are preferred tree and other plant

species regenerating naturally or are non-preferred species becoming dominant?

It is important to emphasize, however, that forest health criteria—like other forest management parameters—are defined by the landowner. One of the reasons why

national forest health seems to be a moving target is that public forestry issues are

very dynamic. In other words, the objectives of the landowner (the public) changes

constantly. That is not the case in the private sector, where most forest landowners

have two primary objectives: (1) production of wood products; and (2) continuity of

ownership. [Some forest lands in our region have been held by the same family since

1855.]

So, where do we stand? At present, forest health in the Allegheny region is threatened by native and exotic insects, disease, and mammals. The Gypsy Moth and

Beech Scale Nectria complex are two examples of exotic threats and over-browsing

by white tailed deer (which reduces desired vegetation such as hardwood seedlings

and thus species diversity) is an example of a native mammal threat.

In addition to these problems, the forests of the region are simply growing old.

Typically, forest professionals find that forests in the Allegheny region that are 50

years of age are generally healthier than forests which are 75 years old, which are

healthier than forests that are 100 years old, etc. This is attributed to the fact that

hardwood forests—like humans—experience reduced resilience as they approach the

end of their natural life span (which is about 125 years for the forests and a bit

less for humans). Hardwood forests change dramatically between 125 and 150 years

of age. Specifically, species diversity drops from a wide variety of shade intolerant

species (including black cherry, ash, tulip poplar, etc.) to a handful of shade tolerant

species (mostly sugar maple, hemlock, and beech). This decrease in tree species diversity is one measure of an unhealthy forest.

As mentioned earlier, the forests of the Allegheny region (especially the ANF) are

recognized internationally for the high-quality hardwood timber that they produce.

The unique unglaciated soils of the region produce the world’s best quality black

cherry in stands that reach economic maturity at 80 to 100 years of age. We have

reached the point in time on the Allegheny Plateau where biological and economic

maturity coincide. Thus, we must address the needs to regenerate these forests for

both financial and biological reasons.

But, in addition, the public generally prefers to hunt, camp, hike, etc. in maturing

70 year old Allegheny hardwood forests rather than decadent 150 year old forests.

This is attributed to reduced diversity in the oldest forests and the presence of

dense underbrush (e.g. beech brush, striped maple, and fern) which result from deer

over-browsing. Also, the 150 year old forests are generally less ‘‘scenic’’ because they

are more likely to have a higher percentage of beech infested with the Beech Scale

Nectria complex (an exotic disease which causes the trees to snap off at mid-stem).

Question Two: What Management Tools Are Most Appropriate?

Having examined the criteria for a ‘‘healthy’’ forest in our region of the country,

let me turn now to your second question which is: What management tools are most

appropriate to maintain or improve forest health? As a practicing forester, I rec-
60

ommend that landowners take certain actions to maintain the health and vitality

of the forests within the Allegheny region:

•Employ Sound Silvicultural Practices and Professional Forestry. [This is self-explanatory.]

•Use Modern Silvicultural Methods and Timber Harvesting Scenarios. These practices are site specific and model natural occurrences.

•Employ Qualified Resource Managers to Monitor Forest Conditions Closely. This

is necessary to follow insect populations and assess the effects of disease, drought,

and other phenomena.

•Control Large Deer Populations. Increase the use of silvicultural regeneration

tools such as fence enclosures and herbicides. Promote sport hunting to reduce deer

over-population.

•Use Aerial Application of Natural Pesticides. This is necessary to control exotic

and abnormal native insect infestations. [This was done with great success in 1994

cooperatively on both private and public land in Northwestern Pennsylvania and

Southwestern New York against an unprecedented population of the Elm Spanworm

and Forest Tent Caterpillar. Similar efforts have also worked effectively against the

Gypsy Moth.]

In addition to these tools that are available to the resource manager, I believe

that Congress and the Administration have continuing roles to play. And, given this

opportunity, I offer the following thoughts for your consideration:

•Continue to Fund and Promote Forest Research. Research at the US Forest Service’s Northeast Experiment Station in Warren, PA has provided the modern silvicultural methods used throughout the Allegheny region. Significantly, over 1,100 forest

managers have attended the training sessions offered by the Station.

•Enact Tax Incentives. The Internal Revenue Code needs to be changed to provide

tax incentives for private, non-industrial landowners to follow sound forest management practices. Particular emphasis should be given to changes to the capital gains

and estate taxes.

•Increase Forest Education. Finally, there is a pressing national need for education programs for forest landowners, professionals, and the public. Professionals

need to better understand the modern tools available to them. Landowners and the

public need to better understand the forest ecosystem and the necessity of using

sound science as the basis for management decisions.

Thank you, Madame Chairman, for the opportunity to present this statement.
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