{"id":111753,"date":"2015-06-15T18:58:11","date_gmt":"2015-06-16T00:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/forest-bill-clears-hurdle-2\/"},"modified":"2015-06-15T18:58:11","modified_gmt":"2015-06-16T00:58:11","slug":"forest-bill-clears-hurdle-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/forest-bill-clears-hurdle-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Forest bill clears hurdle"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Tipton\"
Tipton<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

WASHINGTON \u2013 Lawmakers on Thursday advanced a measure aimed at offering local jurisdictions more control over managing wildfires on federal lands.<\/p>\n

The Resilient Federal Forests Act passed a packed House Natural Resources Committee with bipartisan support.<\/p>\n

The measure would allow the federal government to defer to local working groups some management of areas of national forests that would be designated high-risk for wildfires. The Department of Agriculture appoints members to state-based Resource Advisory Councils, including representation from industry, environmental and local governments. The measure would reduce the minimum number of required members to six.<\/p>\n

The bill also would make it more difficult for the public to challenge forest-management plans in court by requiring litigants to post bond if they want to advance a lawsuit.<\/p>\n

Some of the provisions of the measure incorporate ideas from a proposal by U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Cortez.<\/p>\n

\u201cAddressing the critical condition of forests on public federal lands remains a top priority for all of us in the Western U.S.,\u201d Tipton said in a statement after the vote. \u201cThe wildfire hazards in these areas have been compounded by decades of drastically insufficient federal management and present an environmental crisis that threatens communities, habitats, water supplies and infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Rep. Jared Polis, D-Boulder, had concerns with limiting the public\u2019s ability to challenge management plans. He offered an amendment that would have removed the bonding requirement. That proposal died.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always think that in managing our federal lands it\u2019s really important to consult all of our residents and local stakeholders, and this bill provides too many ways around that,\u201d Polis said.<\/p>\n

The bill\u2019s supporters argue that lawsuits delay forest-management projects that involve removing trees to mitigate fire danger.<\/p>\n

Forestry industry groups were eager to see the bill through committee.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur position is that once the Forest Service determines that land is suited for timber production, it shouldn\u2019t have to go back to NEPA (the National Environmental Policy Act),\u201d said Bill Imbergamo, executive director of the Federal Forest Resource Coalition, whose clients include sawmills.<\/p>\n

But environmental interests are concerned about limiting public input to the advisory councils and are worried the bill would lead to widespread forest clearing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a very nefarious thing to do,\u201d said Alan Rowsome, senior director of government relations for The Wilderness Society. \u201cBy limiting the number of people on these committees, it\u2019s removing the number of people who would stand in the way of moving ahead with logging projects.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mariam Baksh is a student at American University in Washington, D.C., and an intern with The Cortez Journal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

proposal gives offers local jurisdiction<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":111754,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[2487,918,13,549,945],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-111753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-forestry-and-timber","tag-forests","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-united-states-forest-service","tag-united-states-government"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111753"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=111753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}