National Forests are the cornerstones of efforts to connect fragmented habitat and restore wildlands in the western United States. The conservation community will soon emerge from the conservation wilderness, so to speak, of 8 years of the Bush Administration. Hopefully, the next administration will work with a Congress with a stronger conservation agenda, if we can rely on polling that indicates a party change for several congressional seats.

Whoever occupies the White House in 2009, we need to be equipped with vision for management of National Forests that is informed by practical on-the-ground knowledge and strong working relationships with future leaders in the agency. Because our membership includes conservation-minded agency personnel, and because of our long history protecting forests through support of Forest Service whistleblowers, FSEEE is in a unique position to cultivate the knowledge and relationships necessary for future conservation successes.

To meet this need, FSEEE’s Policy Analyst, James Johnston, has embarked on an ambitious tour of every national forest in the country. On June 18, 2008, James began the summer leg of the tour. Following are the main goals of this project:

1. meet with forest leadership of each National Forest;

2. whistleblower outreach;

3. meet with local conservation groups;

4. media outreach, including giving interviews about FSEEE’s National Forest Tour to local media outlets and creating media presentations with images and compelling facts about National Forests;

5. share the results of a Forest Service survey and learn about Forest Service success stories and challenges;

6. document National Forests with photographs and writing;

7. create written recommendations for National Forest management for the incoming administration, Congress and the conservation community that clearly identifies key challenges and opportunities; and

8. maintain a blog of the forest tour.

FSEEE is well suited to carry out this project because we have access to and relationships with Forest Service employees who are performing the forest planning functions involved. We enjoy support from within the Forest Service at all ranks, but weighted more heavily among the employees doing the day-to-day work—in this case the forest plans.

Please feel free to follow along with James’ journey on his blog at:

Last year the Forest Service approved the use of 26 toxic herbicides and pesticides across thousands of streamside acres in The Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area (LBL). The chemical spraying will be financed with your tax dollars; $100,000 will be paid to two Kentucky farmers to grow genetically engineered corn and soybeans in prime wildlife habitat on your public lands.

That’s right. The Forest Service is using federal tax subsidies, intended for private farmland owners, to fund herbicide and pesticide use and farming of non-native corn and soybeans on federal land so that they can feed deer and turkeys for hunters.

FSEEE believes the Forest Service has illegally enrolled the LBL’s bottomland acres in the farm subsidy program, for which only private farmlands are eligible—not lands owned by the federal government. Enrolling the LBL acres in the subsidy program allows the two farmers to collect $50,000 a year each in federal farm subsidy payments, without which they couldn’t economically crop the LBL acres. These farmed acres should be allowed to grow back to the native forests for which LBL is famous. Why should public land be used for subsidized private farming and subject to an onslaught of pesticides?

On June 2, 2008, FSEEE filed its second lawsuit challenging genetically engineered corn and soybean farming on 3,000 acres of bottomlands at the Land Between The Lakes National Recreation Area (LBL). The first lawsuit was settled after the Forest Service agreed to do an environmental analysis and give the public the opportunity to comment on the LBL’s commercial farming practices.

The Forest Service claims the chemicals pose no substantial environmental or safety risks, however, FSEEE can prove pesticide use threatens significant environmental harm.

A decision in the case is expected within a year.

In 2007, the Forest Service spent more than $1.8 billion dollars on fire suppression. Overzealous firefighting is a major cause of forest health issues—in addition to promoting overgrowth of brush that causes fires to burn longer and hotter, the Forest Service dumps 40 million gallons of toxic fire retardant each year. The retardant includes chemicals toxic to fish and has wiped out all aquatic life for miles when dumped into streams.

In our first lawsuit to modify the Forest Service’s firefighting practices, FSEEE was able to force the Forest Service to analyze the effects of its use of toxic fire retardant. In our follow-up case, we must now require the government to be truthful about its own findings. Our new lawsuit, filed April 2, 2008, challenges the sufficiency of the Environmental Assessment prepared by the Forest Service, specifically the finding that the toxins in fire retardant have no significant impact. In addition, this new action challenges the biological opinions issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service, upon which the Forest Services relies.

Ironically, the agencies have chosen to ignore their own scientific findings. The evidence of their own government scientists clearly shows that there are dozens of species that will be harmed by the continued use of the toxic fire retardant. The Forest Service is turning a blind eye to this evidence and taking the position that it does not need to make any changes to its use of the retardant.

On June 11, 2008, the federal district court in Montana issued a Case Management Order that sets a firm schedule for the Forest Service to file the administrative record that incorporates the findings of scientists from the Forest Service, the National Marine Fisheries Service, and the Fish and Wildlife Service by the end of the summer. In the fall, we’ll file a motion to have the court decide the merits of the case, based on the facts established by the record, in order to made permanent, positive changes in Forest Service fire management.

Cattle grazing on National Forests wreaks havoc on the environment. Streamside habitat is trampled and often destroyed, displacing or eliminating fish and other aquatic creatures, and invasive plant species are spread that squeeze out native vegetation.

One such creature threatened by grazing is the Oregon Spotted Frog, located in southern British Columbia, Washington and Oregon. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service found that the frog warranted inclusion on the endangered species list but did not add it due to a lack of funding.

The Fremont-Winema National Forest in Oregon has a forest plan that requires cattle to be excluded from streamside areas if they harm sensitive species habitat. A 2004 Species Assessment by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service found that livestock grazing negatively impacted the frog populations and the Forest Service agreed. Unfortunately, the Forest Service reversed its position when pressured by the grazing permit holders.

On March 11, 2008, FSEEE filed suit in federal court to compel the Forest Service to follow its own management plan and exclude cattle from sensitive streamside areas. On April 18, we filed our motion to stop grazing on the site while the court case is pending, and the Forest Service then agreed to build a protective fence.

We visited the site June 11, 2008, to observe the stake lines for the new fence and the Forest Service is proving to be a good steward so far. We will continue to monitor the progress and enforcement of the fence lines as well as request that the Forest Service do an environmental analysis on their recent decision to increase the number of cows on the grazing allotment.

On March 3, 2008, 48-year-old Tongass wildlife biologist and FSEEE whistleblower Glen Ith passed away unexpectedly of sudden cardiac death, an abrupt loss of heart function often associated with undiagnosed coronary artery disease.

In 2005 and 2006, Glen appealed and won challenges to the Overlook and Traitor’s Cove timber sales based on the Forest Service’s illegal building of logging roads. Later in 2006, Glen appealed the Scott Peak Timber sale, which is slated to log millions of board feet of temperate old-growth rainforest on Kupreanof Island. The appeal was followed by Glen’s 2007 court case challenging the Scott Peak sale, on the grounds that it failed to consider the environmental harm set forth in his wildlife report. The case was pending at the time of his death.

Glen’s widow, Marketa, wanted to substitute for Glen as the plaintiff in the Scott Peak case, since the matter was so important to Glen. Using an untested provision of the law, the lawyer obtained by FSEEE for Glen was able to convince the court to let Marketa continue the case. On June 3, 2008, the federal district court in Alaska made her the new plaintiff.

In the words of one of his friends, Dave Beebe, “Glen Ith represented the finest example of scientific and professional integrity within the ranks of the Forest Service. Glen’s extraordinary service to the public was in his willingness to act according to his conscience instead of altering his science to fit political directives. Glen endured agency machinations designed to use his case as an example for any other biologist who didn’t bend to marching orders from DC. Glen stood firmly by his professional integrity and matters of personal conscience at great personal cost to himself and his family.”

National Forests in the Pacific Northwest are among the most biologically productive—and most heavily logged—of any in the country. Standard operating procedure for northwest region forests has always been clear-cutting, usually of the oldest trees, and replanting with dense, biologically impoverished tree farms.

Years of litigation and citizen advocacy, led by FSEEE, have curtailed many of the worst clearcutting abuses on these public lands. Now FSEEE is leading a multi-stakeholder effort to promote restoration forestry as an alternative to clear-cut strip mining.

On the Willamette National Forest, once the largest producer of old-growth timber in the United States, FSEEE is advising the Forest Service on thinning in tree plantations and young Douglas-fir stands in the wildland-urban interface near the former timber town of Oakridge.

We have also convened a group of stakeholders on the Malheur National Forest—once the largest timber producing forest in the inner-Columbia River Basin—to plan several sales that would thin younger trees in fire-maintained stands and would introduce prescribed fire to maintain old-growth forest conditions.

These efforts promise to permanently replace logging of old-growth trees with more responsible land management, and to serve as models for forests in other parts of the country.

The Forest Service has named rampant off-highway vehicle (OHV) use as one of the four major ecological threats to National Forests. Not all of the country’s National Forests have gotten the message. The Willamette National Forest is making plans to create a bigger dirt bike playground in the heart of the Oregon Cascades, right on top of one of the most important artifacts of Oregon’s pioneer heritage, the Santiam Wagon Road.

Built in 1865, the road is protected by the National Historic Preservation Act and the Antiquities Act, among other statutes. The Santiam Wagon Road special interest corridor on the Willamette National Forest includes the longest stretches of any historic wagon road in western Oregon. FSEEE filed administrative comments on January 17, 2008, in opposition to allowing OHV use on this historic treasure. We plan to appeal and possibly litigate the project this year.

While other public forests in the Pacific Northwest are abandoning old growth clear-cutting, forests managed by the Bureau of Land Management are being ordered by the Bush Administration to increase old growth clear-cutting by more than 700%. The massive increase in old growth liquidation is being proposed in the Western Oregon Plan Revision (WOPR), the result of a sweetheart settlement between the Bush Administration and the American Forest Resources Council, a timber industry lobbying group. If the WOPR were implemented, protections for endangered salmon built into the Northwest Forest Plan would be stripped away. Late successional reserves and critical habitat units for the northern spotted owl will also be opened up to clear-cutting.

Wasson Creek is one of the many special areas protected by current management plans that would be opened to logging under the new WOPR. It is the largest roadless area in federal ownership in Oregon’s coast range. Wasson Creek’s very pure, cold water is important for endangered salmon runs and its spotted owl habitat is the most productive in the region, which is essential to maintain considering the continued decline of the owl.

We’re also organizing a grassroots campaign to highlight Wasson Creek. FSEEE has been taking dozens of members of the public down to Wasson Creek, and planning events around the state to introduce people to this special area.

On January 11, 2008 FSEEE filed detailed administrative comments with the BLM opposing the WOPR. Our biggest priority in 2008 will be appeals and litigation to prevent the WOPR from taking BLM lands back to the dark ages of old-growth clearcutting.

You can help too. Please call your representative today and ask them to reject WOPR.

Call the Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask for your representative.