Debunking the 'Healthy Forests Initiative'
The Healthy Forests Initiative (HFI) is President Bushs response to the past years forest fires. The initiative is based on the false assumption that landscape-wide logging will decrease forest fires.
This premise is contradicted by the general scientific consensus, which has found that logging can increase fire risk. This disconnect between what the administration says and what science says about logging and fire reveals the administrations true goal which is to use the forest fire issue to cut the public out of the public lands management decision making process and to give logging companies virtually free access to our National Forests. The HFI, if fully enacted, would:
Limit environmental analysis and limit public participation by
(a) excluding environmental analysis for any site-specific project the Forest Service and BLM claim will reduce hazardous fuels, including post-fire salvage projects;
and by
(b) limiting public participation by allowing 'hazardous fuels reduction projects' to be categorically excluded and suspends citizen's rights to appeal projects.
Accelerate aggressive 'thinning' across millions of acres of backcountry forests miles away from communities at risk to forest fires.
-Pat
WBP|films
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