Statement of James R. "Jim" Crouch

On Behalf of Ouachita Timber Purchasers Group, Ozark-St. Francis Renewable Resource Council, Mark Twain Timber Purchasers Group, and the

American Forest and Paper Association

Before the United States Senate

Agriculture Subcommittee on Forestry, Conservation, and Rural Revitalization

September 5, 2002

On behalf of the above named groups, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to present testimony on the ongoing forest health crisis that is severely damaging our national forests not just in Arkansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma, but across the country. While I will focus on the situation we are facing in my area, it is important to note that 72 million acres of the National Forest System (more than one third of the entire system) is at risk to catastrophic fire, insects, or disease. We firmly believe that active management, based on sound science and implemented through local decision making, is necessary to restore the health of our public lands.

The situation on the Ouachita, Ozark, and Mark Twain National Forests is just one example of a problem that can be addressed through active forest management. It is critical to note, however, that existing procedural requirements seem designed to prevent timely action to stem the forest health crisis and restore our public lands.

Background: The Ouachita, Ozark and Mark Twain National Forests are located in the highlands of northern Arkansas, southeastern Oklahoma, and southern Missouri. They are an important part of the Central Hardwood Forests of the United States. These forests are known for their scenic beauty, outstanding wildlife habitat, and the production of high quality oak lumber for furniture, flooring, and cabinets, railroad crossties, wooden pallets and charcoal, and outdoor recreation of all sorts including canoeing, hiking, camping, and ORV use. Hundreds of small entrepreneurs and family businesses depend on oak from these national forests for their livelihoods.

Congress established the Ouachita and Ozark National Forests at the beginning of the twentieth century and the Mark Twain in the mid-1930s. These forests were made up from "the lands that nobody wanted." These lands were cut over, farmed out, grazed into the ground, and in many cases abandoned. Some parts were so poor and rough that they were never homesteaded. Congress made these public domain lands a part of the new national forests. Fires were a regular occurrence. Many of the owners were happy to get rid of these lands by selling them to the federal government for back taxes.

Once established, the United States Forest Service provided fire protection and started the process of restoration. The Forest Service has done such a good job of restoring these forests that, in recent years, environmental groups have frequently called for their designation as wilderness because of their "pristine values and untrammeled characteristics." Yet we know that less than 100 years ago they were some of the most abused and misused lands in this country. Professional managers can, given time, manage forests to achieve the wide range of conditions required to meet the needs of stakeholders with different interests. Land uses such as wilderness, wildlife, timber, water, scenic beauty, camping, hiking, etc. can all be achieved through active management as the agency implements its multiple use mandate.

The collapse of the oak ecosystem on the Ouachita, Ozark, & Mark Twain National Forests.

1. Scope of the Problem. The Forest Service predicts that oak decline will impact over a million acres of red oaks in Ouachita and Ozark Highlands. Currently, 650,000 acres are dead or dying on the Ozark National Forest. An additional 500,000 acres are dead or dying in the Mark Twain National Forest. Additional acres are affected on the Ouachita National Forest. To put this in perspective, 84% of the oak type on the Ozark is dead/dying. This is more than 60% of the entire national forest. It is no small problem!

2. Cause: Although there is no single cause for oak decline, trees are predisposed to decline and insect infestations by (1) old age; (2) low site index; (3) severe droughts and (4) overstocked timber stands. Historically scientists have recognized that during periods of severe drought small patches of old oak found on ridges and shallow soils often died or had portions of their crowns die. As the vigor of these trees declined various insects and fungi including the oak borer often attacked them. Unfortunately, what is happening on the Ouachita, Ozark and Mark Twain National Forests is much more serious than anything previously reported or anticipated. Instead of a few oak borers attacking a tree, hundreds are attacking. These unprecedented numbers are causing widespread mortality on a landscape scale never seen before.

3. Existing Forest Plans: In 1986, the Forest Service completed and approved new forest management plans for these national forests. The plans were prepared over a 10-year period at a cost of about $10,000,000 each. They included stakeholder input from thousands of people. The approved plans pleased no one interest group completely, but were of necessity compromises designed to achieve overall forest health through active management.

As a part of keeping the ecosystems vigorous and healthy, the plans provided for thinning overly dense stands of immature trees and the harvest and replacement of mature trees with new forests. Annually, the plans called for the analysis and, if needed the treatment of one-tenth of the forest. Said another way, the professionals would examine each stand on the forest at least once every ten years and prescribe the needed treatment. By the time the forest plans were adopted, there was already a severe backlog of acres needing treatment. Overly dense stands of immature trees and overmature trees abounded. They were rapidly declining in vigor and therefore highly susceptible to drought and attack by insects and pathogens.

The Ouachita, Ozark, and Mark Twain National Forests for various reasons fell far behind in implementing the forest plans. They have accomplished less than ½ of the essential work. The Forest Service's failure to carry out the plans coupled with several years of drought contributed greatly to the current forest health crisis. Even if these national forests could meet all the goals set out in the existing forest plans, they would not even address 1% of the oak borer problem on the ground

Management options: As a result of the oak borer, there is a major shift occurring in the makeup of our forests. If the decline is allowed to continue without any type of emergency restoration work, we will see a dramatic change in our forests, from predominantly oak forests to predominantly maple forests. The dominant and codominant trees in the oak forest stands are mostly shade intolerant members of the red and white oak family. The mid and understory is typically maple, hickory, blackgum, and other shade tolerant species. Because of their shade intolerance, there are very few established oak seedlings and saplings in the understory. If nature is allowed to regenerate the area, the future forests will be quite different from the current forest. The tree species composition of the new forest will be heavy to shade tolerant species such as maple, blackgum, etc. There will be a major reduction in the number of oaks in the future because of the lack of active management.

Given the scale and severity of the oak mortality taking place, we are facing a change that will result in numerous adverse impacts such as:

· Loss of wildlife habitat - acorns from oaks provide critical food during the cold winter months for many species of wildlife.

· Loss of recreational opportunities - declines and shifts in wildlife species will change the quality of hunting and wildlife viewing.

· Loss of product values - These oaks are dying and falling to the ground where they become fuels for catastrophic fires. Unless they are removed before they start to decay, they are worthless as raw material for the many wood products demanded by American consumers. If these products aren't manufactured from U.S. wood, they will come from other countries as imports.

· Loss of aesthetics - healthy green forests with beautiful fall colors are replaced for many years by a landscape characterized by dead gray and brown stumps and tangles of limbs and briars.

The Forest Service is at a fork in the road and must choose which way to proceed. There are two basic management options available for these lands.

1. The Forest Service can respond to this crisis and immediately begin restoration. This will mean the harvesting of dead/dying trees and follow up silvicultural treatments necessary to restore the oak forest type; or

2. The Forest Service can continue to let these overstocked and overmature stands decline and accept the loss of an entire forest type with very real ecosystem impacts. These impacts include wildlife habitat loss, loss of recreational opportunities, product value losses along with increased risk of catastrophic fires and the loss of our majestic oak forests.

Issues that need addressed prior to choosing the future management direction.

2. Management Approach: There are two distinct approaches to forest management that the agency must decide between:

Ø Active management: Using scientifically based active management to restore and maintain the predominantly oak forests which provide high quality wildlife habitat, water quality, and forest products.

Ø Passive management: Allowing the current forest health crisis to continue without intervention by simply letting "nature" take its course. Many trees will die over time, fall down and rot, and species now in the understory will likely become the future forests. In some areas, catastrophic wildfires raging in the heavy fuels will "sterilize" the soils causing colonization by entirely new plant and animal communities.

1. Time frames. There is a limited window of opportunity to treat and restore our oak forests. Dead and dying oaks lose their commercial value quickly, and the risk of catastrophic fire increases as the dead trees dry out and falling branches accumulate on the forest floor. Moreover, unless the Forest Service is granted at least some relief from existing bureaucratic requirements, it is extremely likely that the dead and dying timber on these forests will lose all commercial value before it can be used. It is important to note that it is not just the forest products industry and local communities that loses out if this happens; commercial timber sales help offset the costs of necessary land management treatments. If the timber loses value, the taxpayers will have to shoulder the entire burden of necessary restoration work.

2. Potential for Delay Because of Appeals and Litigation: The Forest Service could attempt to move these project forward through the existing maze of regulations, including extensive appeals and litigation. We believe, however, that the agency should adopt alternative arrangements for complying with key environment laws, and perhaps consider non-traditional structures such as the incident command system used to fight wildfires in order to expedite treatment.

3. Setting Priorities for work. If the decision is to harvest the dead/dying timber and maintain a major oak component in the future forest, the Forest Service must set priorities for treatment. Consideration must include the need to protect improvements, ensure user and employee safety, and be cost effective by treating the more productive sites first.

4. Funding: Given the acute nature of the Forest Health crisis, Congress should consider whether enough funds will be available through regular appropriations for the critical restoration work. If not Congress should act quickly to appropriate emergency funds.

Forest industry's recommendations.

1. Forest industry strongly believes that the Forest Service must immediately launch a major emergency restoration effort with national funding and staff support. The restoration of the affected lands should be completed within 5 years of initial treatment. Lands identified in the forest plans as suitable for timber management should be managed to create forests with a major oak component.

2. This committee and Congress should immediately grant emergency exceptions, or at the minimum, streamlined NEPA, appeals, and litigation for such restoration needs.

3. The Agency should make available immediately the funds, manpower, equipment, and leadership needed by the forests to make this emergency restoration a success.

4. The Agency should immediately establish an action committee of representatives from forest industry, state forester's office, state game and fish commission, Nature Conservancy, Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, and EPA. This committee would be charged with taking action on the spot to ensure the restoration work moves forward in a timely and responsible manner. The committee would meet biweekly or more frequently if needed. The committee will report to this Senate Subcommittee quarterly until the work is complete and the land is restored.

Conclusion:

The forest health crisis afflicting the Ouachita and Ozark Highlands is acute, but unfortunately it is not unique. Due to decades of fire suppression and more recent trends towards passive management, our national forests are rapidly approaching an ecological disaster. It is my understanding that the Senate is considering providing broader relief from laws that have tied the Forest Service up in legal and bureaucratic knots while preventing necessary forest health treatments from going forward. We encourage you to find as many ways as possible to expedite the efforts of the Forest Service to use active management with local decision making to protect and restore our national forests. I'll be glad to answer any questions at this time.