REGULATION IN BRIEF: 
Healthy Forests Initiative

(More Resources)

November 07, 2003            No. 4
Background:  Unnaturally dense, diseased, and insect-infested conditions have placed the nation’s forestlands at risk. These unhealthy conditions threaten the nation’s forests, wildlife, and environment as well as people’s lives and homes. Congress needs look no further than the recent wildfires in California to be reminded of the devastation of these catastrophic fires.

The President’s healthy forest initiative, introduced in Congress as the Healthy Forest Restoration Act of 2003 (H.R. 1904), would give local forest managers the long overdue tools they need to protect the nation’s forest ecosystem and the communities and lands that surround them from future catastrophic wildfires. As passed in the House in May, the legislation would:

• Allow forest managers to “thin” forests, to perform “prescribed burns,” and to treat forests against insect and disease infestation.
• Streamline the administrative appeals and court challenges to fire-prevention strategies on up to 20 million acres of forest near residential communities, municipal water supplies, areas with threatened or endangered species, and areas where trees are infected with certain insects. 
• Permit forest managers to develop one plan for public comment rather than allowing the public to weigh in on the universe of option available, and on the 20 million acres most in need of treatment, remove the option of doing nothing.

The Senate did not act until October, in the wake of the catastrophic wildfires in California.. Its version, however, includes big government regulatory policies that undercut the original intention of the initiative. Among them:

• a new Americorps-style jobs program to “monitor” forestlands and protect the biosphere;
• a new federal regional zoning plan run by the National Park Service covering 2 million acres in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut, but likely to expand to other areas in the future; and
• a new regulatory scheme for so-called “invasive species.”

Status:  The legislation now goes to a House-Senate conference committee to reconcile difference in the bills.

Discussion:  The nation’s forestlands are at risk. Federal land managers estimate that about 190 million acres of forestlands are at unnaturally high risk of catastrophic wildfires and insect and disease outbreaks because of unhealthy forest conditions. The status quo of taking care of the nation’s forests—leaving them alone—has failed, and done so at a great cost to forest lands, communities surrounding these lands, and the wildlife that live in these forests.

It is time that Congress to let local forest managers do their jobs—to manage the nation’s forest lands by implementing scientifically-supported management with and give them flexibility they need and the technology available to responsibly manage the nation’s wildfire prone forest lands. 

Action item:  Give forest managers the flexibility and resources needed to save and protect the nation’s forest ecosystems, without the big government provisions such as those proposed by the Senate. 

This brief was prepared by Heritage Senior Policy Analyst Charli E.Coon.

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