Kerry unveils new forest plan that would cut timber subsidies
VERDI, Nev. – Democrat John Kerry would cut $100 million in annual government subsidies to the timber industry to pay for a new Forest Restoration Corps that would invest in the long-term health of national forests, his campaign said Tuesday.
Shifting spending from commercial logging operations on federal lands would allow for creation of new jobs while restoring forests, streams and rangelands that have been mismanaged or severely damaged by wildfires, campaign aides told the Associated Press.
The new program, reminiscent of the Civilian Conservation Corps that President Franklin D. Roosevelt established during the Great Depression, is one of the highlights in a three-page plan titled “John Kerry’s Forest Plan: Putting Communities First.”
A retired Forest Service official, local Democrats and union firefighters who work for the Nevada Division of Forestry joined campaign officials in unveiling the plan Tuesday at Verdi near the site of a wildfire that burned 1,200 acres on the western edge of Reno two weeks ago along the Nevada-California line.
Similar events were planned today in Washington state, Arizona and Colorado and on Friday in Oregon, said Sean Smith, Nevada communications director for the Kerry-Edwards campaign.
Among other things, a Kerry administration would pledge to annually budget to cover all federal firefighting costs, make necessary additions to aerial firefighting fleets and focus reduction of fuels in overstocked forests on those areas posing the most immediate threats to communities.
“George Bush has taken advantage of public support for ‘healthy forests’ to enable timber companies to log in remote and pristine areas of our public lands,” the plan states.
Kerry would support “balanced forest management proposals and seek out input from the public rather than this extreme, one-sided approach benefiting big timber companies like the Bush administration has taken,” Smith said.
Robert McDowell, who retired 18 months ago after more than 30 years with the Forest Service, most of it at Lake Tahoe, said Kerry recognizes “forest management can benefit our nation’s economy while protecting our watersheds and natural resources.”
“Today, the real cost of firefighting is not reflected in the president’s budget,” McDowell said.
Kerry would support protection proposals like the Clinton administration developed for the 11 national forests of the Sierra Nevada “through a collaborative, 10-year process and then subsequently (was) abandoned by the Bush administration,” the plan states.
Washoe County Assessor Bob McGowan, a Democratic activist, said the so-called “Sierra Nevada framework” was started under the first Bush administration and included public comment and input from 47,000 people over nearly a decade.
“This administration – whether it is Yucca Mountain or stem cell research or Sierra Nevada forests – seems to want to put politics ahead of science,” McGowan said.
Smith said the $100 million for the Forest Restoration Corps would come out of the agency’s timber program but the plan did not specify the accounts.
The Bush administration currently targets only about one-half of the Forest Service’s fuels reduction program on areas closest to communities while Kerry would spend a minimum of 70 percent of that money on those areas, Smith said.
Representatives of the Forest Service and its parent Agriculture Department in Washington, D.C., referred calls to the Bush-Cheney campaign, which dismissed the proposal as campaign politics aimed at building support among environmentalists while ignoring concerns of mainstream Westerners.
“It’s simply another example of John Kerry saying anything to anyone who is willing to listen in hope of getting elected,” campaign spokesman Danny Diaz said Tuesday from Virginia.
“Over the course of his career, he has catered to extreme environmental organizations. This is nothing more than a smoke screen by the Kerry campaign to try to cover up for an obvious vulnerability on issues critical to Western voters,” said Diaz, who criticized Kerry and Sen. John Edwards for missing the vote last year on the Healthy Forests Restoration Act.
An aide to Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., said Kerry’s plan ignores significant public input that went into creating the Healthy Forests Restoration Act.
“I think this was a partisan event. Sen. Kerry needs to go back and look at the act,” said Amy Spanbauer, Gibbons’ communications director. “More forest managers support the healthy forests act and understand its need and goals than what Sen. Kerry would like you to believe.”