WASHINGTON, March 14, 2013 – Though yesterday’s hearing at
the House Agriculture Subcommittee on Conservation, Energy and Forestry was
meant to focus on the local economies surrounding the National Forest Service
(NFS), “sequester” became the word of the day as lawmakers drilled U.S. Forest
Service Chief Tom Tidwell on the cuts’ dramatic effects on his agency.
Tidwell’s submitted testimony did not mention the sequester
once, and yet his hour -long question and answer session with the subcommittee
was dominated by the budget cutting strategy, implemented March 1 when the
Congress failed to complete a deal that would have averted it.
Tidwell said the sequester meant a five percent
across-the-board cut in the Forest Service’s budget, but assured lawmakers that
the service will “do everything we can to minimize (them).”
But there will be
cuts, Tidwell warned lawmakers. He confirmed Secretary Vilsack’s estimate that
the service would be forced to close 670 of its 19,000 sites, despite fears
from Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala, that the Obama Administration had told its
cabinet members “to maximize the pain from sequestration” in public to score
political points.
Tidwell emphasized, however, that his agency would “work
with local communities” to determine which facilities are mostly “lightly used”
and whether local volunteers would be willing to handle maintenance to keep
more sites open.
But Tidwell’s testimony did emphasize the precarious situation
of the Forest Service even before the March 1 sequester hit. “It is estimated
that there are between 62 and 85 million (high and very high fire risk) acres
of National Forest System lands in need of restoration,” he wrote. And he warned,
“More and bigger fires will become the norm as climate continues to change.”
Other hearing participants spoke to the “symbiotic”
relationship between rural communities the surrounding Federal Forest lands.
It is a relationship, testimony emphasized, that is deeply in danger. Jim
Schuessler, executive director at the Forest County Economic Development
Partnership in Crandon, Wis., wrote that insufficient management of his
county’s Federal Forests had lead to an appreciable downturn in its local
economy.
An ill-kept National Forest, he noted, lead to the loss of
4,000 local jobs, which in turn lead to insufficient funding for local schools.
“Lose your school, lose your town,” he prophesized. “The
grocery store and other small family owned business close. Health care options
diminish.”
The result, Schuessler said, was a “crisis in our National
Forests.” He recommended Congress authorize a “crisis manager” to deal with a
poorly-managed Forest Service that has left regional economies “needlessly
fractured.”
But both Tidwell and the following panel of rural economy
testified that there was hope for the National Forest Service, even amidst this
month’s congressional budget battles.
Tidwell spoke of NFS’s current harvesting efforts, which
have the double benefit of assisting management strategies while tapping into a
rebounding timber market.
And more investment in NFS, Schuessler advised, could only have
positive effects. “Every dollar invested in (local economic development) will
return three dollars to the United States Treasury,” he said.
#30
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