Clearcutting
can change fire climate so that fires start more easily, spread faster,
and burn hotter than they would under natural conditions. The effect
of these changes on the fire control problem is extremely important.
For each person required to control a surface fire in a mature stand burning
under average conditions, 20 will be required if the area includes clearcuts.
Salvage logging is often recommended to remove trees from a forest where fire has occurred in order to preserve the maximum economic value of the timber. But 50 scientists, in an open letter to President Clinton, dated September 19, 1994, stated that, “Because salvage logging removes natural fire breaks, it homogenizes the landscape and increases susceptibility to catastrophic fires and insect outbreaks.”
Insects also play an important role in forest
ecosystems, as a food source, by helping create nesting cavities for birds
and through recycling organic matter in the soil. Yet former Forest
Service Chief Jack Ward Thomas, in testimony before the Senate Subcommittee
on Agricultural Research, Conservation, Forestry and General Legislation
on August 29, 1994, acknowledged that: 1) the Forest Service logs in insect
infested stands not to protect the ecology of the area, but to remove trees
before their timber commodity value is reduced by the insects; and 2) that
the Forest Service fights forest fires to maintain high timber commodity
value of stands, not to protect forest ecosystems.
The Payette National Forest in Idaho logged 10,000
acres under the guise of “salvage logging,” claiming that those forests
were “dying” from insect infestations. However, they left test plots of
a few hundred trees - which were still alive more than a year after the
logging occurred. Ms. Julie Weatherby, a Forest Service entomologist,
wrote a memo to the Forest Supervisor, embarrassed to report that the trees
were not dying. She correctly surmised that the still-living trees
were a political liability, and would call into suspicion their earlier
“salvage logging” operations.
The passage of a salvage logging amendment to
a fiscal year 1995 Interior Appropriations bill was a dramatic example
of Congress, the timber industry, and the Forest Service working to increase
the amount of logging on National Forests under the guise of restoring
forest health. The bill purported to be responding to a “forest health
crisis” that included fire risk and insect infestation, but in the letter
to President Clinton mentioned above, more than 50 forest experts from
across the United States disputed that claim. The salvage rider expressly
overrode virtually all existing federal environmental
laws. Language was included that restricted
judicial remedies and prevented citizens from gaining relief in court.
Under the salvage rider, tens of thousands of acres of healthy forest
were logged, threatening water supplies, endangering protected species,
causing soil erosion and imperiling communities that depended on fishing
and recreation. Perhaps the most serious consequence for communities
was that the increased logging also led to increased flooding and mudslides.