Tom Vilsack's Pipe Dream

Former Iowa Governor, Tom Vilsack, is the Obama Administration's agriculture Secretary.  By all counts, he is a capable guy.  And why wouldn't he be?  He comes from a farm state1  But a guest column he wrote July 4 for the Missoulian, Missoula Montana's daily newspaper suggests he is not very good at connecting the dots.

Vilsack wants Missoulian readers to know that the Agriculture Department is funding three western Montana biomass projects that "will help produce clean, renewable electric power while creating jobs producing energy out of the state's forest resources".

Nice idea, for sure, but whoever wrote Vilsack's guest column for him failed to mention the host of reasons this will  never happen, including the presence - in Missoula - of the Wild West Institute, one of the most litigious environmental groups in the country.  The Institute and its leader, Matthew Koehler, are the reason the Forest Service's Region 1 forest  management program is in shambles.  To be fair, Koehler has had help from the misnamed Center for Biological Diversity, and several so-called environmental groups in Spokane, Washington.

What Secretary Vilsack apparently does not realize is that private capital will not flow to biomass projects in western Montana - or anywhere else in the country for that matter - until congress fixes the litigation mess it created by allowing radical environmentalists taxpayer-funded access to the nation's federal court system.

Taxpayer-funded litigation is the reason why the Forest Service is no longer capable of managing the nation's national forests.  It is the reason Forest Service morale is at an all-time low.  It is the reason federal forests are dying and burning in some of the largest forest fires in history  And it is hte reason why most of the west's lumbermen are no longer interested in doing business with the Forest Service.

Very simply, the Forest Service is not capable of delivering the  biomass fiber needed to suppport the projects the Agriculture Department is funding in western Montana.  And that's a damned shame becaue milliolns of tone of dead and dying trees are choking the life out of what is left of Montana's national forests.

Until Congress fixes its litigation mess, the biomass program Secretary Vilsack trumpets in his Missoulian guest column will remain a pipe dream.

Click here to read Secretary Vilsack's Missoulian guest column.