Those hoping for a little sanity in federal public-lands policy got an early Christmas present when Sen. Jon Tester’s wilderness bill, the disingenuously named Forest Jobs and Recreation Act (FJRA), was cut from the trillion-dollar must-pass 2012 omnibus budget.
Tester’s bill was quietly shuffled through one Senate committee hearing (on “miscellaneous public lands and forests bills”) on May 25, 2011. The transcript is a fascinating (and stultifying) lesson in Senate “process,” and is worth a look.
So, rather than be “marked up” sometime in the past six months and voted upon for release from the committee for a full Senate debate and vote on the “merits,” FJRA was quietly stabbed into the omnibus as a rider, and just as quietly chopped loose in House/Senate negotiations.
Credit (or blame) for FJRA’s setback has been assigned to Congressman Denny Rehberg, who just happens to be challenging Tester for Montana’s “junior” seat in the U.S. Senate in 2012.
Rehberg spokesman Jed Link summed up the Congressman’s opposition by pointing out to KXLH TV that “new wilderness areas are guaranteed in the Tester bill, but new jobs are not.” Link is correct. FJRA permanently designates almost a million acres of new wilderness (660,000 acres) and restricted use “recreation areas” up front, regardless of whether FJRA actually helps re-start forestry or creates new recreation opportunities.
In truth, FJRA creates no jobs. Instead, as RY Timber resource manager Ed Regan conceded to the Helena Independent-Record, FJRA “probably wouldn’t create new jobs, but it would preserve (existing jobs at the collaborating mills) a lot longer” – and darn few jobs at that.
FJRA has no language moderating the lawsuit environment that is killing both our forestry sector and our forests, so let’s pretend nobody sues: The proposed 100,000 acres of “mechanical treatment” would happen in ten years – an average of 10,000 acres a year. With Montana’s average cut per harvest acre at 5,500 board feet a year, FJRA’s total output can be optimistically pegged at 55 million feet a year.
However, in his Senate testimony, proponent Sherm Anderson stated his mill (Sun Mountain, purchased from Louisiana Pacific in 2003) processes 50 million board feet a year. Furthermore, TimberLine reported in 2004 that RY’s Townsend and Livingston mills can crank out about 165 million feet a year. FJRA’s “jobs” output is nowhere near what these mills could use – or need – before we factor in the other partners, Pyramid and Roseburg.
What if we ignore the forestry guys, focusing on the forest itself? The Beaverhead/Deerlodge (B-DNF) is Ground Zero of one of Montana’s most massive forest die-offs ever, horizon-to-horizon red-and-dead, a shocking, shameful waste. On the forest, 1.9 million acres are “suitable” for logging – meaning if every FJRA stick came only from B-DNF, after 10 years a puny 5 percent of the forest would be treated, with the rest still ripe for megafire.
I’m sorry, but FJRA is pathetic tokenism in the face of an epic disaster – and I’m even sorrier that the timber industry “partners” are so desperate and beaten down that they would agree to this travesty.
Forget the scorched-earth radical Greens who would be overjoyed if every single mill in Montana was scrapped and hauled away. The “moderate” environmental groups are justifiably concerned if these mills die, but only because they might bleed from the political shrapnel. If they truly cared about saving their timber “partners” from oblivion, they would support language that would exempt FJRA projects from litigation. They didn’t, and won’t.
How about you, the humble proletariat public that wants well-managed, healthy forests?
Are you happy to trade FJRA’s token-at-best, no-guaranteed amount of logging on a landscape that objectively needs far more for a guaranteed million acres of wilderness and wilderness “lite?”
Or do you think Montana deserves a “Forest Jobs and Recreation” bill that holds off the wilderness until the “jobs and recreation” actually happen?
Nonetheless, Tester promised he’ll keep pushing what he calls “a good piece of legislation.” FJRA could still be voted out of committee, or, yep, jammed into another appropriations bill any time between now and the end of the 112th Congress.