Forest Service Begins New Planning Rule for Forest Management

On December 17, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack announced that the Forest Service would, as expected, be undertaking a new rule-making process to create and implement a broader and more collaborative way to manage our National Forests.  According to Vilsack this includes protecting watersheds, restoration, managing for the effects of climate change, working across landscapes, and improving collaboration all while helping local economies.

The Obama administration's attention to forest planning regulations follows illegal attempts to weaken protection for our national forests under the Bush administration.  The Bush administration's 2008 planning rule was struck down in court last June after it was shown that they had failed to consider the environmental impacts of changing the rule.

Following Secretary Vilsack's announcement, the Forest Service published a Notice of Intent to prepare an environmental impact statement for creating such a planning rule.  That notice is available for public comment through late February.  The Sierra Club is working closely with coalition partners to craft comments and suggestions to make sure the final planning regulations meet the needs of our national forests and grasslands while also managing to make them more resilient in the face of climate change.  We will continue to work directly with the administration to help move the process along.

Comments

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[generic propicia]

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[davis mounger]

Two areas that need to be addressed in some form are roads and fire. I know that a planning rule isn't supposed to nail down too many particulars, but I think that these areas are such a big part of the agency's budget that there needs to be at least some language that addresses them. The FS spent years on the Roads rule and the Roadless rule and it didn't seem to add up to much. The FS has been adding user created roads to its inventory and created both an ecological disaster in some places, as well as a planning and budget headache. There should be some language that could be very basic, saying that roads should be decomissioned if they are not a part of the existing inventory, or do not serve a long term need.

Fire management made up 37 percent of the FS's budget last year. Anything that makes up over a third of this agency's expendatures needs to have some sort of guidelines.