Supporters of forest management to mitigate worsening wildfires in Western states won and lost in the new compromise farm bill released Monday night by House and Senate negotiators.
The Trump administration, congressional Republicans, and the forestry industry, had hoped the final legislation, which will likely get a vote this week, would contain provisions in the House-passed version of the bill to expand the pace and scale of certain forest-thinning projects to help relieve wildfires.
Thinning involves crews removing small trees to reduce the amount of fuel in dry forests.
Democrats and environmentalists pushed back, saying those measures went too far in removing environmental reviews, and the issue became a point of contention in negotiations over the farm bill, which primarily sets and funds agriculture and food policy.
They argue that Republican solutions to combat wildfires cannot be taken seriously if GOP lawmakers and the Trump administration don’t also appreciate the role of hotter and drier weather caused by climate change for making fire seasons longer and fires more destructive.
The final deal would ease environmental reviews for some projects, like the removal of trees damaged by insects or disease. It would also reform the “good neighbor authority,” making it easier for officials to work together on projects that straddle federal, state, local, tribal, and private land.
It also includes provisions to support development of wood products that can help store carbon and improve the market for timber removed from forests.
However, the bill does not go as far as House Republicans or the Trump administration wanted. For example, it leaves out a provision meant to limit lawsuits by environmentalists that would have required courts to find that plaintiffs are “likely to succeed on the merits” of a lawsuit before it proceeds.
“The 2018 farm bill extends important and needed forest management authorities,” Bill Imbergamo, executive director of the Federal Forest Resource Coalition, a coalition of forest products companies, conservation groups, and county governments, told the Washington Examiner. “That said, the bill leaves many forest management challenges — like rampant litigation and failure to manage the nation’s largest national forest, the Tongass — unaddressed.”
Environmentalists, however, were mostly happy with the result.
“It’s heartening to see this bill’s near-complete rejection of the horrendous anti-environmental policies offered by House Republicans,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Despite a few unfortunate concessions to the timber industry, lawmakers rejected the Trump administration’s shameless effort to exploit the Camp Fire tragedy to promote unfettered clear-cutting.”
