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Green group lawsuit blocked forest thinning BY MARK FLATTEN AND DAN NOWICKI Plans to cut fire danger by thinning trees in an Arizona forest now being destroyed by the nation's largest active wildfire were blocked for three years by a Tucson environmental group, a Tribune investigation has found. The U.S. Forest Service approved a plan to thin trees and remove volatile debris in parts of the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest on the Mogollon Rim in September 1999, according to court records. The plan was halted after the Center for Biological Diversity appealed the decision, then sued in May 2000, claiming the Forest Service had not followed regulations. The matter is still pending in federal court. Environmentalists say they can't be held responsible for the fires raging out of control in Arizona. But the lawsuit all but halted any kind of fire prevention work in the Apache-Sitgreaves forest, said Pat Jackson, regional appeals and litigation officer for the forest service in New Mexico. About 90 percent of the management area where forest thinning was blocked by the lawsuit has burned, he said. "We're litigating while the forest burns," Jackson said Friday. Federal officials say lawsuits and protests have virtually halted their efforts to thin overgrown forests throughout Arizona to reduce the risk of cataclysmic fires like the ones that have consumed more than 400,000 acres along the Mogollon Rim, and are still burning out of control. Wildfires in Arizona and Colorado have ignited calls for reform of often conflicting laws governing forest management. Challenges from environmentalists, logging companies, ranchers and homeowners have paralyzed the decision-making process and delayed desperately needed work for years, according to forest officials. Jackson said the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Phoenix by the Center for Biological Diversity is a stark example. It has prevented work to reduce fire hazards on all but 306 acres of the Apache-Sitgreaves, Jackson said. An agreement reached with the center in August 2000 allowed small-scale thinning of trees up to 6 inches in diameter near Forest Lakes, about halfway between Heber-Overgaard and Payson, Jackson said. Brian Segee, of the Tucson center, said the lawsuit was filed because the Forest Service wanted to cut large trees "some more than 16 inches in diameter" in what amounted to a logging contract rather than thinning to prevent forest fires. Segee said it is wrong to blame his group or other environmental organizations for the inferno. "It's sheer scapegoating," to blame environmental groups for the Rodeo-Chediski fire, Segee said. "These guys want to use this to further whatever their political agenda is." Wally Covington, a forestry professor at Northern Arizona University and a longtime advocate of culling forests to reduce fire dangers, said most mainstream environmental groups support the concept. Disputes typically arise over the issue of how many trees should be removed, and how big they can be, he said. Things such as diameter caps or arbitrary limits on the percentage of trees cut are not effective means of thinning, he said. Any thinning proposal that includes commercial logging is likely to be challenged, he said. "There has been opposition from some of the zero-cut environmental groups," Covington said. "They have concerns that this is just the camel's nose under the tent, that this will be the re-establishment of timber-based logging in the western forest lands. The anti-cut groups are bitterly opposed to that." It took almost two years for the recommendation to do large-scale thinning in Apache-Sitgreaves to reach John Bedell, the forest supervisor named as the defendant in the lawsuit. In that time, extensive environmental studies were conducted to comply with the requirements of a half-dozen different laws aimed at protecting everything from endangered species to antiquities in the region, known as the Baca Ecosystem Management Area, court records show. Bedell adopted the management plan for about 28,000 acres in the area that is now part of the Chediski fire. In his findings supporting the plan, Bedell warned of the fire risks. "Stand overstocking is causing an increased risk of catastrophic wildfire," Bedell said in his 1999 decision. The plan called for a combination of tree, brush and debris removal, as well as controlled burns, to treat different areas of the Baca. It would have permitted the commercial cutting of up to 31 million board feet of timber from the area. A board foot is one inch by one inch by one foot. The Center for Biological Diversity appealed Bedell's decision to the regional forester in New Mexico, who in December 1999 sided with Bedell. In May 2000, the center filed a lawsuit and sought an injunction to block any implementation of the proposal. That virtually halted any fire prevention thinning in the Apache-Sitgreaves, Jackson said. The only exception is the 306 acres near Forest Lakes. There, the Forest Service was allowed to do limited thinning of trees up to 6 inches in diameter, court records show. Segee said the center also agreed to fire treatments on an additional 1,000 acres south of Forest Lakes, but that agreement could not be found in the court file. The center's lawsuit contends the forest service did not follow administrative procedures under the National Environmental Policy Act, one of several laws that govern Forest Service actions. Among the specifics alleged were that the Forest Service did not adequately analyze impacts on the endangered birds such as the pygmy nuthatch, the yellow-bellied sapsucker and the northern goshawk. Jackson characterized the suit as a "process claim" which does not charge environmental damage would be caused, but rather that the paperwork and procedures were not completely complied with. Much of the dispute between the Forest Service and the center involves which trees should be cut, Segee said. The fire hazard is caused by an abundance of trees less than 6 inches in diameter that have grown throughout the forest, Segee said. Under the Baca plan, about 26 percent of the wood that would have been thinned would be from trees larger than 16 inches in diameter, he said. "It's a timber sale,' Segee said. "It's not a fuel remediation treatment." Jackson said effective fire management cannot be achieved with an arbitrary cap on tree diameter, particularly one as small as 6 inches. That would not allow the removal of dead or diseased trees that will pose a fire hazard, or thinning of trees that create a canopy that fuels the type of crown fire amid the treetops as was seen in the Rodeo-Chediski blaze, he said. Lawsuits and the bureaucratic malaise like the one involving the Baca proposal are fueling renewed efforts in Congress to reform laws governing the Forest Service. What happened in the Apache-Sitgreaves shows the urgency for reform, said Rep. J.D. Hayworth, R-Ariz., whose district includes the areas where the fires are burning. Hayworth blamed groups like the Center for Biological Diversity for bringing forest management to a standstill throughout the western United States. "Where is your biological diversity if everything is incinerated?" Hayworth said. Hayworth said he has had preliminary discussions with Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo., about drafting bipartisan legislation “to put some sanity into forest management again.†Hayworth revealed no specifics Friday. Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., blamed "radical environmental groups," including the Center for Biological Diversity, for creating a paralysis in the Forest Services decision-making. Other environmental organizations such as the Grand Canyon Trust and the Nature Conservancy have been cooperative with fire remediation efforts, he said. But all it takes is one lawsuit from one group to block sound management, he said. "They just run the Forest Service through fits," Kyl said. "They end up doing so much paperwork that is redundant and unnecessary that they don't want to even put these things out because it just takes too much of their time and effort and all they do is get sued. Frankly, the Forest Service is partly to blame here because they've given up in a lot of these cases. But I can understand why." The Center for Biological Diversity is involved in a dozen lawsuits involving federal agencies in Arizona alone. Segee said only two "the Baca and a separate action on the north rim of the Grand Canyon" seek to block timber sales. The Forest Service has said there are 5,000 actions pending against the agency, but some environmental activists said they doubt that number, if accurate, represents challenges and lawsuits filed only by environmentalists. Timber companies, housing developers and off-road vehicle groups also frequently go to court with the government, said Sharon Galbreath, executive director of the Southwest Forest Alliance. "It's unfair and "cheap politics" to single out environmentalists, said Sandy Bahr, a lobbyist with the Sierra Club's Grand Canyon Chapter in Arizona. "If they would focus on thinning the small trees and, especially, on areas around communities where they can make the most impact, I think they will find that their projects move forward," she said. Tribune writer Mark Flatten can be reached by e-mail at mflatten@aztrib.com. Dan Nowicki can be reached by e-mail at dnowicki@aztrib.com.
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