Rim Fire salvage plan ignites debate
By Michael Doyle, McClatchy Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON — The devastating Rim Fire around Yosemite National Park has now rekindled a fierce fight over salvage logging.
Some want to speed commercial removal of the wrecked timber left behind by the fire that has burned over 257,000 Sierra Nevada acres since mid-August. Others caution about the consequences of eliminating the standard regulatory and judicial reviews. The politically savvy agree that a far-reaching timber salvage bill newly introduced by Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Granite Bay, is only the start of serious debate.
“If this effort is anything more than just a press release, he’s going to have to be able to sit down and negotiate with the Senate,” Rep. Jim Costa, D-Fresno, said Friday.
The bill introduced late Thursday is a more aggressive version of a salvage logging amendment added, on a largely party line vote, a week ago to a separate piece of House legislation about public lands. Like McClintock’s House amendment, his bill effectively blocks lawsuits to challenge salvage logging plans.
the folks that jump at the opportunity to try and brush aside environmental review, and push for more heavier logging after major fires make headlines remind me of ambulance chasing lawyers…fire will always remain a destructive force in and around western forests and we are just beginning to understand different types of fires, how they might or might not benefit different forest environments, and how to fight or reduce the effects of catastrophic fires in ways that don’t do even more damage to the environment.
One thing that we do understand even if we choose to ignore it, is how development pressure continues to increase in forested environments and we have increasing amounts of urban-forest interface in mountainous regions of the west. It’s rather ironic that the push is to reduce the forest….the only totally safe environment from wildfire is if your home is in the center of a large parking lot! At that point, what is the point?