To protect forests, fix Cottonwood first
Jon Haber's lawyerly explanation of the rationale behind the Ninth Circuit court's 2015 Cottonwood decision [Missoulian, July 9] does a nice job of explaining why Montana's congressional delegation - including U.S. Senator Jon Tester - favors legislation that would overturn the ruling.
Cottonwood requires the U.S. Forest Service to consult with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service [USFWS] every time it adds a new species to its Threatened and Endangered Species list.
This may seem like a conscientious approach to wildlife habitat conservation but, as a practical matter, it adds unnecessary years to a forest planning process that is so overburdened that 99 of the Forest Service's 128 forest plans - documents that are supposed to be updated every 10 years - are 15 years old or older.
Thus, the entire federal forest planning process has become a lucrative feeding ground for serial litigators and their environmentalist clients.
No wonder both the Obama and Trump administrations looked for ways to administratively circumvent Cottonwood.
Conservation groups arguing for a "Cottonwood fix," including the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, assert that the Ninth's decision created an endless process loop for serial litigators and the anti-forestry mobs they represent.
I agree.
Environmental litigators, including Earthjustice - a Sierra Club spinoff - have corrupted the Equal Access to Justice Act, a 1980 law that requires the federal government to reimburse the legal fees for people who cannot afford to hire lawyers to sue the government for alleged wrongdoing.
A quick review of the 990 forms filed annually with the Internal Revenue Service reveals that the Sierra Club and its Montana cohorts, including the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and the Wild West Institute, can easily afford to pay their lawyers without taxpayer assistance.
Haber's lawyerly assessment misses a much larger question. Are the Forest Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service capable of working together on solutions to fish and wildlife habitat challenges if Congress takes the Sword of Damocles - the Equal Access to Justice Act - off the table?
I think they are, but first Congress needs to reconcile their conflicting missions so that the thousands of fish and wildlife biologists the two agencies employ can sit at the same table and work from a playbook that honors the direct connection between active forest management and wildlife habitat conservation.
When the USFWS listed the Canada lynx as threatened in 2000 it should have triggered a process focused on increasing its habitat.
Instead, it severed the lynx food chain by first severing the food chain of its preferred diet: snowshoe rabbits.
If we want more lynx - and I assume we do - we need more snowshoe rabbits and that means we need to grow more of the succulents that rabbits eat. But these only grow in sunlit openings created by thinning or wildfire. I prefer thinning because we can safely control the outcomes.
This isn't rocket science, but like seagulls at a garbage dump, serial litigators will swoop down on any attempt to thin forests in ways that will benefit every species that depends on food sources that grow in forest openings: lynx, elk, deer, moose, grizzly bears and on and on.
Jon Tester got it right when he was asked why he was joining the House-Senate coalition working on a Cottonwood fix.
"After taking feedback from Montanans, it's clear to me that we need a permanent fix to the Cottonwood decision that will reduce time-consuming bureaucratic paperwork, work for wildlife and protect Montana's robust resource economy."
Jim Petersen
Founder and President
The non-profit Evergreen Foundation