Restoration, Regeneration, and Resiliency: A Look at the Key Three National Forest Management Programs and Their Effects on the Ground
Since the 1990's, and especially after the passage of the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003, timber cuts on National Forests have been transformed by the benign-sounding concepts of forest Regeneration, Restoration, and Resiliency. Where a taxpayer-subsidized timber program simply had the goal of "getting the cut out", timber sales and other timber management were recast with ecological-terminology. Yet how have these noble-sounding goals played out on the ground. We have gathered examples of timber projects that were cast with one (or more) of these "Three R's" as their purpose to see the results. In many cases, the results have not been encouraging. Our report is an early attempt to look at how these "ecological logging" ideas are playing out on the ground. We also look at how this "greenwashing" is severely affect public transparency in how the people's federal lands are being managed, as well as continued loss of the public's right to have a meaningful say on both individual forest projects and landscape level forest plans. Click here for the full version. Our shorter version can be found here.
The report covers:
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a look at the current state of forests in the East.
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some of the laws that justify "restoration" logging.
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the ecological rationales for these projects.
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examples of project failures from several forests across the East.
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the role of fire in Eastern forest ecology and how it has gotten tangled in current logging policy.
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how the "Three R's" are being used to curtail public accountability and participation in National Forest policy.
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a few possible alternatives and reforms.