Doolittle: Endangered Species Act endangers forests

Inside Washington

California's 4th U.S. House District, represented by Republican John Doolittle, includes some of the most scenic landscape in the United States. It stretches from Yosemite National Park in the south to Lake Tahoe in the north.

The federal government owns three-fourths of the land in this district, much of it set aside in national forests.

On July 8, Doolittle visited with the editors of HUMAN EVENTS to discuss how environmentalists and the poorly drawn federal laws they exploit are increasing the risk of devastating forest fires in his region of the country.

Two days after this interview, the U.S. Forest Service bolstered Doolittle's arguments by revealing that nearly half of the forest-thinning projects it has proposed since 2001 have been stalled by administrative appeals and lawsuits, most of which have been filed by environmentalists who want to shut down logging in U.S. forests.

Human Events: Given the devastating forest fires they've already had this year in Arizona and Colorado, do you worry that conditions are ripe for some big fires in California this year, too?

Doolittle: Always. I've been worried about that for years.

HE: Do you believe that some of the environmental policies pursued by the federal government in recent years have contributed to the risk of forest fires in the West?

Doolittle: Without question. I believe they are the primary reason we have the conditions we have. I would argue that our forests are in the worst condition they've ever been in. And that's attributable, in part, to misapplication of the Endangered Species Act.

HE: How so?

Doolittle: Well, here's an example in my district. Wetsel-Oviatt, a small lumber company, just won a huge victory in the U.S. Court of Claims. The judge found that the Forest Service acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner without any basis in fact, relying on faulty data concerning the spotted owl, as a way to dramatically reduce the amount of logging done in the El Dorado National Forest.

HE: So this company in your district sued the Forest Service over that?

Doolittle: They did. And, of course, for a small company they were looking at some very big legal fees in taking on the federal government.

HE: Their business was curtailed because of the spotted owl?

Doolittle: Their business was curtailed by the action of the Forest Service to protect the spotted owl, based on data that the Forest Service knew to be faulty. The government awarded the company $9.5 million. But the case took years to fight and the legal fees the company racked up were over a million dollars. And this was not a big company like Kimberly-Clark or Boise-Cascade. It was a small, familyowned operation.

This kind of misapplied environmentalism, based on false science, is what is killing us in the West. It's particularly devastating in California and in the Northwest.

The year I was first elected, 1990, turned out to be one of the modern apexes of the logging business. Since then logging has dropped by four-fifths. That has had a significant economic impact on some communities in my district where three-fourths of the land is owned by the federal government, much of it in national forests.

In some communities, less than 10% of the land is privately owned. If you can't log in those areas, there's just nothing to replace it. That's the center of economic activity.

HE: So how exactly did they curtail logging in these communities?

Doolittle: Through environmental lawsuits, Sometimes through collusive lawsuits that came. about when a friendly Clinton Administration invited environmental groups to file cases that resulted in settlements, that basically roped off a lot of the land to logging.

HE: And how did that lead to an increased risk of fire?

Doolittle: What's ironic is that logging keeps the forests healthy. In some ways a national forest is just a great big garden. A garden doesn't happen on its own, it requires careful management. So do the forests. If you don't take care of them they become tangled with undergrowth that works just like kindling. We could now let nature take care of the forests on its own, but that would mean more of these massive forest fires we have been seeing.

HE: HUMAN EVENTS Assistant Editor David Freddoso asked some of your colleagues a couple of weeks ago whether, given the recent forest fires, President Clinton made a mistake in banning new fire roads in many national forest lands. Rep. Major Owen, a Democrat from New York, conceded he had no clue on this issue. Do you have a hard time communicating to congressmen from the Northeastern United States just exactly what the problem is in our national forests?

Doolittle: We have a very hard time. Part of the problem is that federal regulators treat the East differently. There's a double standard for environmental enforcement. If Eastern congressional districts got the same kind of treatment we get out West, Eastern congressmen would be up in arms.

For example, here in the Washington, D.C., area they have been able to move ahead with construction of the new Woodrow Wilson Bridge despite the fact that there are endangered species in the area.