Watch CBS News

To Log Or Not To Log

Embarking on a three-day Western swing expected to haul in at least $5 million for Republican politicians, President Bush is taking a stand on one of the region's thorniest issues by proposing that more logging in national forests would help prevent devastating wildfires.

The plan is to be unveiled Thursday when President Bush travels from his Texas ranch to southwestern Oregon, near the California state line, for a briefing on local fires that have ravaged the area and an aerial view of the damage. The president will then be ferried to the still-smoldering Squires fire, where some forest areas have been entirely stripped of vegetation and crews are working to install erosion-prevention equipment.

The Bush plan would make it easier for timber companies to get approval to cut wood in fire-prone national forests.

CBS News White House Correspondent Mark Knoller says the plan - called the Healthy Forests Initiative - is based on the idea that many forests have grown unnaturally dense and therefore susceptible to fire because of a lack of forest thinning projects.

Reaction to the proposal is falling along both party lines and timber lines - that is, those who do and don't benefit from the logging industry.

Shawn Keough, executive director of the Associated Logging Contractors of Idaho, calls the president's expected announcement Thursday "very welcome news."

William Meadows, president of The Wilderness Society, bashes the plan as "nothing more than a Trojan horse, designed to promote unhealthy logging of our forests, instead of focusing efforts on saving homes and lives. Once again, it seems that sound science and community protection have lost out to industry influence and contempt for laws that protect our environment."

"Science tells us that wildfires are a natural part of a healthy forest ecosystem," adds Meadows, bolstering his argument. "Drought is the primary cause of the severe fire seasons we've been experiencing... Our resources need to be focused on the areas where our communities and forests intersect, not on increased logging far from homes."

The Bush administration insists that changes in the national forests are necessary to clear forests of a decades-long buildup of highly flammable materials.

"For the good of our economy, we need common sense forest policy," said President Bush during a stop at Mount Rushmore last week. "We can and we must manage our forests. We must keep them disease-free. We must have reasonable forest policies so as to prevent fires, not encourage them."

Mr. Bush will round out his appearances in Oregon - a state he barely lost to Democrat Al Gore in the 2000 election - with a fund-raising roundtable and dinner in Portland. The $600,000-to-$900,000 take was to be evenly split between the state GOP and Republican Sen. Gordon Smith, one of the Democrats' top targets, who was spending much of the day at Mr. Bush's side.

On Friday, President Bush heads to California to headline three events expected to give Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon's campaign a much-needed $3 million boost. An additional $1 million would go to the California Republican party.

While in California, the president will speak to a group of Hispanic community advocates and announce new proposals for narrowing the achievement gap in education between minorities and whites.

The president was returning to his ranch Saturday night, after more dollar-gathering events in New Mexico for GOP candidates for governor and Congress.

This year's wildfires across the West have renewed the perennial debate between conservationists who oppose cutting in the nation's woods and logging interests who argue that underbrush and deadwood increase the risk of fire. Wildfires have burned nearly 6 million acres this summer from Alaska to New Mexico - twice as much as in an average summer. Federal spending to combat wildfires could reach $1.5 billion this year.

President Bush's plan would streamline the government's process for reviewing the environmental effects of proposed logging projects; change the standards by which those proposals are approved; and allow government agencies to negotiate contracts giving timber companies and other entities the right to sell the wood products they harvest in exchange for removing them from the forest.

Another key aspect of the proposal would make it harder for environmental groups and others to appeal logging plans.

The administration said some of the proposed changes could be made within the executive branch, while others would require congressional approval. Several Western lawmakers already are drawing up legislation to speed cutting of overgrown forests.

"Needless red tape and lawsuits delay effective implementation of forest health projects," said a White House fact sheet on the initiative. "This year's crisis compels more timely decisions, greater efficiency, and better results to reduce catastrophic wildfire threats to communities and the environment."

A senior administration official allowed that large, commercially desirable trees with high fire risks - either in dense stands or already dead - could be felled as part of what the official called President Bush's "more active management" of forest growth.

But environmentalists said the plan could gut safeguards that have protected forests for decades and allow timber companies to not only thin forests of brush, but cut trees - including some more than a century old.

"We're very concerned they will use the fires to further an agenda they've had for a long time - and that is to change key environmental laws" that serve to protect the forests from logging, said Linda Lance, a Wilderness Society vice president.

View CBS News In
CBS News App Open
Chrome Safari Continue
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.