Dear Chief Tony Tooke,
December 10,
2017
To: Oregon Congressional Delegation
Re: Resilient Federal Forest Act (HR 2936)
We are experiencing catastrophic wildfires for
the following reasons: (1) suppression
of fires for the last century (2) decades of even-aged management producing
overgrown plantations prone to fires, and (3) drier and warmer summers due to a
changing climate. We don’t want to
repeat past management practices that got us into this situation, in addition
to the declining fisheries, landslides, loss of wildlife habitat and degradation
of our watersheds. In many ways we are still paying for decades
of mismanagement of our public forests.
Categorical
Exclusions (CE) have their place where there are no environmental concerns. But placing an upper acreage limit for using
a CE (for example, allowing up to 10,000 acres for salvage logging without an environmental
analysis with the excuse that there are no environmental concerns in that size
project area) is ludicrous. What about the effects of any new road
construction, reconstruction, watershed analysis and other resource protection
needs? Using a CE in this way is a
prescription for disaster and destroys the public’s trust. A CE
should not be used to appease the timber industry with mass production of
timber sales which could lead to speculation, as in the 1980’s, or to
supplement the overcutting of their own timber lands and/or the export of those
private logs to China.
There is a
need for separate funding for wildfire suppression through FEMA and more appropriated
funds to land management agencies for: fire prevention by thinning, prescribed
burning, development of fuel breaks, and harvest prescriptions for controlling
insect and disease infestations.
Please keep
me informed on the status of this act as it progresses in the Senate.
Mike Burke
855
Wildflower Lane
Oakland, OR
97462
farmhand.mike@gmail.com