Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell testifies before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources and answers questions posed by Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman, U.S. Senator from New Mexico

[Editor’s Note: Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell testified June 14 before the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, chaired by New Mexico Senator, Jeff Bingaman. Bingaman hails from a state that has significant forest health problems. Before he was named Forest Service Chief, Tidwell was Northern Region Forester. As such, he presided over a region with forest health problems that are exceeded only by those confronting the Forest Service in the Southwest. Yet neither Bingaman nor Tidwell seemed willing to cut to the chase as it concerns the forest health-wildfire crisis sweeping the West’s federal forest estate. For reasons born of his own frustrations – and his desire to make certain the Americans know the truth about this catastrophe – Evergreen Managing Director, Jim Petersen, has crafted his own version of the exchange that should have occurred between Tidwell and Bingaman.]

Senator Bingaman: Thank you for taking the time to come visit with us today, Chief Tidwell. Given the terrible wildfire now burning in Arizona, I was wondering if you could give us some idea just how bad things are in the West’s national forests.

Chief Tidwell: We have one helluva mess on our hands, Senator. Depending on which of our more recent estimates you care to accept, somewhere between 40 and 70 million acres of our western national forest reserve is in what we call “Condition Class III.”

Senator Bingaman: And what does “Condition Class III” mean, Chief?

Chief Tidwell: It means these forests are dead or dying and are ready to burn?

Senator Bingaman: Assuming the worst, just how big is 70 million acres?

Chief Tidwell: It’s a little over 109,000 square miles, Senator.

Senator Bingaman: Oh my, that seems like an awfully large area. Can you translate that so my Senate colleagues from the East can understand how much forest we’re talking about?

Chief Tidwell: Sure Senator. It’s an area about 363 times larger than the five boroughs of New York City and about 232 times larger than Los Angeles, those being our nation’s two most populated cities.

Senator Bingaman: Wow! I had no idea. Are you telling me this 109,000 square miles faces the same risk as the area now burning in the Wallow Fire?

Chief Tidwell: That’s right Senator, though I should add that the Wallow Fire now covers about 840 square miles, an area about 3.6 times the size of New York’s boroughs and about twice the size of Los Angeles.

Senator Bingaman: Chief Tidwell, how did we get into this mess?

Chief Tidwell: It’s a long story Senator, but the short answer is mismanagement rooted in bad public policy.

Senator Bingaman: How so, Chief? Can you explain?

Chief Tidwell: Congress got caught up in the silly idea that we can leave our forests to nature and expect that we’ll always like the outcome. What’s been forgotten is that nature is indifferent to human need and wildfires, like the Wallow Fire, don’t care what they burn: homes, habitat, trees, people or the future. When we leave forests to nature, as so many people today seem to want to do, we get whatever nature serves up, which can be pretty devastating at times. But with forestry we have options and a degree of predictability not found in nature.

Senator Bingaman: But surely Mr. Tidwell you realize that many of our constituents disagree with your point of view of this subject. They trust nature more than they trust the Forest Service.

Chief Tidwell: Congress created the National Forest System more than 100 years ago for the specific purpose of helping the nation’s citizens meet their need for water, forest products and other renewable natural resources. Since its founding in 1905, the Forest Service has been the congressionally designated caretaker and manager of these resources. I am unaware of any law ratified since then that passes management responsibility to any other group or agency.

Senator Bingaman: Are you saying that you think the U.S. Forest Service can do a better job of managing the nation’s federal forests than nature can do?

Chief Tidwell: Yes, I am, Senator. But the Congress – that would be you Senators and your colleagues in the House of Representatives – have tied our hands. We can’t do a damned thing without risking lawsuits filed by environmental groups that would rather see the nation’s federal forests left to nature’s vagaries. Even the long term thinning programs fire ecologists have been recommending for many years are routinely appealed and litigated. We have something close to 310 million people in our country. We cannot come close to meeting their need for resources, especially water, if we are stripped of our ability to actively manage federal forests in our care.

Senator Bingaman: But don’t you win some of those court cases?

Chief Tidwell: We do, Senator, but not enough of them. And even when we win we often lose since we have to pay our court costs from limited management budgets. Please understand that litigation is mainly a delaying tactic designed to discourage private capital investments in the kinds of wood processing infrastructure we need to create viable markets for the kind of fiber that we need to remove from national forests.

Senator Bingaman: Well, maybe the taxpayers need to foot the bills for the cleanup work you believe we need to do in these forests you say are ready to burn.

Chief Tidwell: Senator, there isn’t enough gold in Fort Knox to pay this bill. We need to create the opportunity for the private sector to solve this problem, but it won’t happen so long as private investors know that they can be sued at any moment by radical environmentalists who oppose their projects. If Congress takes uncertainty off the table, the private capital needed to create necessary technologies and markets will arrive in a heartbeat. Given the current financial crisis facing our country, I see no alternative but to do the groundwork necessary to clear the way for the private sector to do the work and profit from it. Let’s remember that private investment also creates private sector jobs in rural communities that have been economically devastated by the litigation-driven collapse of the federal timber sale program.

Senator Bingaman: You say “radical environmentalists.” What do you mean by that?

Chief Tidwell: You have people living in your home state, and in Arizona, who say they are all for the kind of thinning work we are recommending, just as long as we dig holes in the ground and bury the logs. It is a misnomer to call these people environmentalists. They are obstructionists. The true environmentalist understands the need for forest stewardship. Obstructionists hate the free enterprise system so much that they will do everything in their power to prevent private capital from ever flowing to this problem. They don’t want any industry working in federal forests because they believe the sale of federal timber to anyone is immoral and unethical. They’d rather see the trees die and burn.

Senator Bingaman: But don’t these people constitute a very small minority?

Chief Tidwell: They are, Senator, but you and your House colleagues gave them all of the legal and administrative tools they will ever need to make certain that our thinning programs never get off the ground on the scale that is needed.
Senator Bingaman: And what scale would that be?

Chief Tidwell: We are at or near the mid-point in a 10,000-acre stewardship project on the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, where the Wallow Fire is centered. It’s the biggest such project we’ve ever gotten off the ground. We ought to have hundreds of these projects underway all over the West, but we have one. Part of the problem is inadequate funding, but the larger problem is a collaborative process that makes progress nearly impossible.

Senator Bingaman: How is that?

Chief Tidwell: One of my own employees, a top flight man in Idaho, recently described the collaborative process as a process whereby timber communities discuss the terms of surrender with environmentalists. When I first heard this, I was offended. But after I thought about it for a while, I had to agree with him.

Senator Bingaman: But Chief Tidwell, the Congress has a lot invested in this process. We see democracy in action. What do you see?

Chief Tidwell: I see a process that has no credibility with ordinary people who know that environmentalists can sue if they don’t like the outcome. They think the process is rigged against them, and I have to say they’re right. If their vision for the future of forests out their back door clashes with the vision of environmentalists in far off cities, guess who is going to lose? People living in rural America have been disenfranchised. They no longer have any control over their forests or the destinies of their communities.

Senator Bingaman: How would you suggest we instill some credibility in the process?

Chief Tidwell: First you have to fix the Equal Access to Justice Act. That law was passed to give poor people equal access to the court system. But now we have an environmental industry worth billions of dollars using that same law to force taxpayers to reimburse them for the legal expenses. If you want most of this litigation – which I regard as harassment – to go away you have exclude environmental zealots – obstructionists - from the Act.
Senator Bingaman: That won’t be an easy sell in the Senate or the House because most of us here are lawyers. But let me ask you if there is anything else you would do to restore credibility?

Chief Tidwell: There are a couple of things. First, I’d put a ‘loser pays’ clause in these laws that allow for litigation. That would put an immediate stop to the lawyer fishing expeditions that are designed to test the limits of the law, or get some liberal federal judge to misinterpret or, worse, reinterpret a well-intended law.
Senator Bingaman: You said there were a couple of things you would do. What else?

Chief Tidwell: There is a lot of junk science floating around out there today. When Congress funds politically motivated science – research projects designed to produce a predictable and politically inspired outcome – you get bad science.
Senator Bingaman: Can you give us an example?

Chief Tidwell: I can, Senator. It is widely believed that the northern spotted owl can only survive in vast old growth reserves where timber harvesting is prohibited. But after more than 30 years of research we don’t have a single peered reviewed study that proves this assertion. What we do know is that owls are very adaptable; that they sometimes nest and breed in intensively managed forest plantations that aren’t much more than 40 or 50 years old.
Senator Bingaman: Are you suggesting that we turn our national forests into tree farms?

Chief Tidwell: No, I’m not Senator, but with all due respect, I am suggesting that it is time that we get serious about spotted owl research, and I’m suggesting that we ought to manage this nation’s federal forests for the benefit of all Americans, not just those with the best lawyers.

Senator Bingaman: And you think the Forest Service is capable of managing our national forests in the way you suggest?

Chief Tidwell: Not at the present time, Senator. It will take some time to rebuild our intellectual and professional capital. Our best forest management people were either run off or quit in disgust. We don’t have as many people on board today to do the things we need to be doing to reduce the risk of wildfire in at risk forests. But we could staff up in a few years if the new folks had my assurance – and yours – that they could do the jobs we hired them to do, and we had the ability to train them to overcome the complexities of managing the national forests.

Senator Bingaman: Have you given any thought to zoning our national forests – that is, putting lands into use classifications for which they are best suited?
Chief Tidwell: Yes, we have. There are definitely areas best suited to recreation and other areas that well suited to timber production. But it doesn’t matter how you zone the forest if you leave the door open to litigation because there will always be someone out there who is unhappy with the classification system. And there will always be people who believe that timber harvesting should be prohibited in national forests and that we should allow nature to rule.
Senator Bingaman: We have a lot of work to do don’t we, Chief.

Chief Tidwell: Yes we do, Senator, and we don’t a lot of time left in which to get started. I heard Secretary Vilsack say recently he hopes we can eventually treat one million acres annually. At that rate it will take us at least 40 years to take care of the worst acres we have today. By then a lot of other acres that aren’t quite as bad at the moment will be in much worse shape. The job is perpetual, Senator. That’s what active management is all about.
Senator Bingaman: So you are saying we need to treat more than a million acres annually?

Chief Tidwell: That’s right, Senator, and that’s why the federal government needs to clear the way for entrepreneurship and private capital. That means we need to make it worth their while, not by subsidizing what they do but by treating the whole forest.
Senator Bingaman: What do you mean by that?

Chief Tidwell: Well, for one thing, we need to move away from these silly diameter limit regulations that prevent the harvest of trees larger than about 10 inches in diameter. It is bad biology. Nature doesn’t manage forests this way and we can’t either. Think about it this way: what if you had a town in which most folks were old and dying. You’d eventually lose your town wouldn’t you, Senator. It’s the same with forests. If we don’t promote a wide range of age classes in trees we eventually lose the forest.
Senator Bingaman: How so?

Chief Tidwell: Well, Senator, wildfires are annually consuming hundreds of thousands of acres of old growth that Congress set aside in no harvest reserves under the Clinton Forest Plan. These reserves are supposed to provide habitat for threatened and endangered species, including spotted owls and marbled murrelets. This is wishful thinking, magic wand forestry, and it won’t work. As I said earlier, nature is indifferent to human need, but it turns out that nature is also indifferent to the needs of spotted owls and other threatened endangered species. If we are serious about protecting species we have to manage their habitat to keep it healthy, just as we would weed a vegetable garden. This means we have to cut some timber periodically, but that is not something we are permitted to do under the provisions of the federal Endangered Species Act.

Senator Bingaman: Are you suggesting we alter the Endangered Species Act so that it allows for the harvest of some big trees as well as the small ones in forests in which habitat is at risk?

Chief Tidwell: I am, Senator, and not just for reasons having to do with habitat conservation or, more broadly, forest health or resiliency. The bigger trees have enough economic value in them that they often turn money-losing thinning projects requiring significant taxpayer subsidy into a money making project that returns a few dollars to the taxpayers.

Senator Bingaman: Really? I had no idea. How would that work?

Chief Tidwell: Well, let’s use Arizona as an example, since that is where the Wallow Fire is burning. There were 15 sawmills in Arizona in 1990. They generated about $550 million a year in the state’s economy, and they provided a quite profitable market for Forest Service timber. Then radical environmentalism reared its ugly head in the court system and today so much industry is gone that the taxpayers now have to subsidize what little work we are getting done. If we want private capital to flow back into Arizona we have to provide assurances that the fiber will be available. Otherwise, this state – and yours – will eventually lose its forests because, as I said earlier, there isn’t enough gold in Fort Knox to pay for the kind forest restoration work I think the American people would like to see.

Senator Bingaman: When you think of forest restoration, what do you envision?

Chief Tidwell: Well, Senator, that’s a big question. A lot of attention has been focused on restoring natural processes. I’m not even sure what this means. It certainly isn’t something we can measure. But we can measure forest growth and forest death, and we can measure public satisfaction, and I’m here to tell you that death – we call it mortality – exceeds growth in our sickest western federal forests. I can also tell you that many Americans are very concerned about the loss of their forests in fires like the ones that are burning today in Arizona and New Mexico. They’ve seen photographs, many taken in our own research forests, that show the aesthetic benefits of carefully designed thinning programs – and believe me it looks a whole lot better than what we see in the aftermath of stand-replacing wildfires.

Senator Bingaman: Where would you suggest we start?

Chief Tidwell: Frankly, Senator, I don’t think we’ll get much of anything done if we don’t first put people back into the environmental equation, and in my mind this means we have to restore public credibility to our forest planning and management processes. But before we can do that Congress has to fix the litigation and regulatory messes it’s created over the last 30 or 40 years. You probably meant well, but you’ve made one helluva mess that only you can clean up.

Senator Bingaman: Mr. Tidwell, I can’t recall the last time we’ve heard such candor expressed by a Chief of the Forest Service.

Chief Tidwell: Well, sir, I can’t recall the last time I’ve spoken so frankly about our national forests, but the Forest Service has run from this problem for too many years. We hid behind our belief that we should not take sides in controversial issues that are best left to elected officials. But I think we ought to be on the side of the truth, and I fear we’ve disappointed the public by not speaking truthfully about forest conditions that require immediate action. We say we are protecting forests and wildlife and watersheds and recreation, but we aren’t doing any of it. Instead, we’ve surrendered to some really screwy ideas about forests and nature that just don’t make any sense at all in our advanced society. We’ve lost our way, Senator, and we won’t find it until we find our voice and begin to speak honestly about what’s happening in our forests, and what we can do about it. That’s why I came here today, Senator, to clear the air and to say what we Forest Service chiefs should have said maybe 20 years ago. It’s not too late, but time is running out and I don’t want to look back on my time as chief and say, “Gee, I wish I’d said something before it was too late.”

Senator Bingaman: Thank you Mr. Tidwell. I think the Congress has some explaining – and some apologizing – to do too. Thank you for reminding us that we are supposed to serve all of the American people, not just special interest groups, and that those we serve have high expectations none of us are meeting, especially as it concerns our nation’s forest heritage.

Jim Petersen is the Executive Director of the non-profit Evergreen Foundation. He has been writing about forestry and federal forestry issues for nearly 40 years