Jon Tester’s Forest Bait and Switch
Last week Montana Senator Jon Tester unveiled his new proposed “Forest Jobs And Recreation Act of 2009.” Sounds like a good thing, right? Don’t be fooled — it’s a Burn Baby Burn wilderness bill.
Tester announced his “jobs” bill at a news conference in Townsend, MT. His press release is larded by feel good statements that don’t wash:
Tester introduces forest bill; will discuss in Seeley Lake at noon Saturday
Clark Fork Chronicle, July 17 2009 [here]
Standing with loggers, outfitters, conservationists, hunters and fishermen who spent years working together on a plan for Montana’s forests, Senator Jon Tester today introduced his much-anticipated legislation to reform forest management to “make it work” for Montana.
“Our forests, and the communities and folks who rely on them, face a crisis right now,” Tester said today at a news conference at RY Timber in Townsend. “Our local sawmills are on the brink, families are out of work, while our forests turn red from an unprecedented outbreak of pine beetles, waiting for the next big wildfire. It’s a crisis that demands action now. This bill is a made-in-Montana solution that took years of working together and hearing input to create a common sense forest plan.”
He said his 80-page bill, formally called the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act, will create jobs, protect clean water and keep Montana’s prized hunting and fishing habitat healthy for future generations. …
The legislation is available for public viewing on a new website Tester’s staff set up [here]. Careful reading of the actual language reveals the following:
* Tester’s bill will add 669,060 acres of new designated wilderness, primarily chopped out of the Deerlodge National Forest
* An additional 336,205 acres of “Protection” and “Special Management” areas will be also be put off-limits to forest treatments.
* All told, over a million acres will be set aside for No Touch, Let It Burn, Watch It Rot destruction.
Create jobs? Those new Let It Burn zones won’t even create jobs for firefighters, except when the unmanaged fires jump the boundary lines and rage down into private land.
By the way, Jon Tester is a former winner of the SOSF “Nomexed Ninny Award” [here] for his pandering in front of press cameras during a 2007 wildfire in Montana.
While Jonny “Fire Guy” Tester was preening in Nomex for the cameras at the Incident Command Post, 35 firefighters and 17 backpackers were bushwhacking on foot for 16 miles through thickets of flaming lodgepole pine and spruce with the Ahorn Fire in full blow-up chasing them, raining burning embers on their heads [here].
Tester’s duplicitous bill was presented as “requiring” the Beaverhead-Deerlodge and Kootenai NF’s to harvest 100,000 acres over the next ten years. That’s a trade-off of 10 acres of wilderness for each acre of alleged harvest. However, the language in the bill is so convoluted and filled with poison pills that not one acre will ever be harvested, if Tester’s bill passes.
To make matters more deceptive, the poison bill uses some of the language from Title IV - Forest Landscape Restoration of the Omnibus Public Lands Act of 2009 [here]. Title IV was enacted into law last March. Tester voted for it. But now he wants to butcher it like a fat hog by adding all sorts of traps and snares.
All the restoration forestry Tester calls for (and backstabs) in his proposed bill is ALREADY THE LAW OF THE LAND. There is no need for more obfuscation and sabotage language to make Title IV work. All that is needed is funding, which Congress has been loathe to allocate, and which Tester’s bill assiduously avoids, too.
Title IV is written with authorization of $40 million a year to jump start landscape-scale restoration forestry, but Congress has dragged it’s heels on appropriating the money. They did spend $trillions on giveaways to Wall Street sharks and a phony “stimulus” bill, but they can’t find $40 million to pony up for restoration forestry, which would be a true investment because restoration forestry will pay for itself and then some.
But not if Tester’s bill passes. His bill will sabotage restoration forestry like an Iraqi roadside bomb.
Tester also claims his bill will promote hunting and fishing. That’s a laugh coming from the pro-wolf, pro-holocaust Tester. He wants exotic wolves to decimate elk and deer herds and massive erosion from unfought wildfires to foul streams. Jonny “Outdoorsman” Tester has successfully promulgated that sort of anti-hunting and anti-fishing catastrophes, much to the detriment of all Montanans.
Tester was painted as a “friend of timber” by his fellow Senate scam artist, Max Baucus.
“For more than two years, Senator Tester has been a strong leader on timber issues,” said Senator Max Baucus. “He knows how important it is to put people back to work in the woods, and to create good-paying jobs.”
Max just happens to be the main perpetrator of the Great Montana Land Swindle of 2008 [here, here, here]. Evidently Jon is playing catch up with Max “Ponzi” Baucus and gets a pat on the head for it.
The Wilderness Society is the prime mover of the legislation. No surprises there; TWS sponsored the “Blackened, Dead Forests Are Beautiful” campaign, and got paid to do it by the sleazy Wildland Fire Leadership Council [here]. The WFLC seated TWS at the table, went underground last year, and has been promoting megafires ever since.
The Nature Conservancy is also a backroom drafter of Tester’s bill. They play Tester like a hip pocket sock puppet. TNC is the real estate acquisition arm of Goldman Sachs. The former President and CEO of TNC was Hank Paulson of Goldman Sachs, who went on to become Secretary of the Treasury and architect of the $13 trillion financial sector bailout. Notice that Goldman Sachs came out of the financial crisis smelling like a rose, while every other big investment bank went belly up. The current Prez and CEO of TNC is Mark Tercek, former managing director of Goldman Sachs. Tester knows who grinds the tune while he dances like a monkey on a chain.
TNC is quite pleased to have public forest lands burned to a crisp, and any and all adjacent private lands, too. Devaluing real estate, then buying it for a song and reselling it to the puppet Federal Government for dollars on the pennies is TNC’s style and raison d’etre.
Tester’s bill is one more nail in the coffin of responsible forest management in Montana, or more precisely, a nail gun loaded with explosive cartridges.
Note: muchas gracias to F. Grump for his inspirational goading. This post is all his fault.
by Forrest Grump
It’s called the Jobs and Recreation bill, but does neither. Surprise, surprise, surprise.
You are also correct in that the stewardship language already exists in the Omnibus section 4003. What I THINK this language does is bypass the 50,000 acre limit, as well as the one-per-region cap by stuffing three “stewardship” deals in the queue, moving them up front for funding and spiking any other competition.
Tester did say he wants to use this as a model. In other words, massive wilderness in order to get more “stewardship” deals in the line.
As for recreation, yes, it is a million acres of wilderness, with the exception of mechanized recreation access to areas already accessible under WSA existing-use criteria.
The “recreation” access, however, will be almost surely limited to 1977 levels, and the “Secretary concerned” has the authority to unilaterally revise travel plans… meaning what? I don’t need to guess where THAT will go over time.
I cannot believe the forestry businesses that signed off on this would throw everyone else under the bus for so little. I guess that’s how desperation manifests itself politically.