Decentralize Our Forests!

By Tommy Keswick

Despite more than 740,000 acres being burned, at least 22 people dying, and almost 3,600 homes being destroyed in Southern California fires, the Forest Service may still be rewarded for its mismanagement. The destructiveness of these fires could have been avoided had there not been a policy of excessive central control over U.S. forests by the Forest Service.
Although environmentalists decry certain aspects of the Bush-backed “healthy forests” legislation, primarily loosened restrictions on logging, the policy of increasing funding for Forest Service budgets lives on as it did under the Clinton administration. Between 1990 and 2000 the budget for fuel treatment increased from about $10 million to around $70 million. This increase in funding did not prevent major fires in the year 2000. Even after that disastrous season, fuel treatment budgets tripled. Congress acted quickly to allocate more money to fuel treatment after Southern California fires last month, but clearly the record shows this extra money will only go up in flames.
When the Forest Service has no incentive to truly be productive with its land flagrant mismanagement will occur. The Forest Service generates the greatest revenues from timber sales and while spending on timber production was increasing, actual harvests were significantly decreasing. Between 1991 and 1996, the annual average in board feet decreased by more than half: from over 8 billion to less than 4 billion. More money seems to be a disincentive to fight mismanagement rather than a solution to the problem.
The Forest Service’s primary objective of suppressing fires whenever and wherever they occurred has come under criticism in the last few decades. Environmentalists hold that forests fires occur naturally and should be left alone to help sustain the ecosystem. Other groups argue that because of the Forest Service’s policy of fire suppression, excess fuels have built up and therefore the danger to people and structures from more catastrophic blazes has increased. The Bush “healthy forests initiative” attempts to deal with the excess fuel issue through a program of thinning a certain amount of forest.
On the other hand, research done by Randal O’Toole of the Thoreau Institute seriously questions the dogma that excess fuel causes more dangerous fires. Studying the last half-century of fire data, he concludes that for the most part fires have not been increasingly bigger, more dangerous, and more expensive to put out. Comparing the amount of acres burned each year with data from the drought index, O’Toole finds that more acres burn relative to how dry the forest is due to drought rather than how much excess fuel the forest contains.
Disputes over the best methods in avoiding forest fires seem to cause the Forest Service to make blanket policies that affect all the diverse land under its charge. For example, according to the Forest Service, eighty percent of forests in the Southeast are adapted to having frequent, less-severe fires. A policy of suppression in these areas could have a negative impact on the ecosystem. On the other hand, two thirds of Western forests are adapted to infrequent, severe fires regardless of fuel loads. Fuel treatment in these forests would simply be a waste of time and resources.
Forested lands in the National Forest System not only lose money every year, but are in poor ecological health. More than half of the land controlled by the Forest Service has been rated by its own measures to be very unhealthy or in deteriorating health.
In contrast, International Paper, which owns land primarily for timber harvesting, does not fail to use the land in diverse, environmentally friendly ways and to profit from it. On one swath of its land, twenty-five percent of the profits are made from hunting, fishing, hiking, and camping fees. Because people use the land in this way, International Paper also has an incentive to improve nature on its land. Practices that improve the welfare of all species on the land, including non-game species, are put in place because people are willing to pay for a better experience in their outdoor activities.
No matter how many politicians promise “healthy forests,” none will truly be able to deliver until the whole system of forest management is restructured. The most important step would be one of decentralization -- moving forest management and policy decisions down to the state and county levels where policymakers have the local knowledge to make more appropriate decisions for their local forests.

Tommy Keswick is currently in Washington, D.C. doing a public policy research internship. He will graduate from UC Berkeley next semester with a degree in History.