Merry Christmas, Trees!

Since Christmas is the time of year that we cut down trees, the Bush administration has decided to celebrate by pushing through an "administrative rewrite" of Forest Service regulations regarding habitat protection and environmental impact statements.

The first [change] drops the 25-year-old requirement that managers prepare environmental impact statements — a cornerstone of public involvement in environmental decisions — when they develop or revise management plans for individual national forests.

The new rule directs forest managers to involve the public in the planning process but leaves the "methods and timing of public involvement opportunities" up to forest officials.

The argument for such a change is based on the assertion that environmental impact statements (EISs) are so much red tape, and that they "don't get used or don't get read and are rapidly obsolete" (to quote Fred Norbury, associate deputy chief of the national forest system). This is patently false -- while EISs are almost never read by the general public due to their density and length, they are regularly pored over by private environmental interest groups seeking to delay or halt federal actions that might violate environmental statutes (such as the Endangered Species Act).

The second change drops a mandate, adopted during the Reagan administration in 1982, that fish and wildlife habitat in national forests be managed to maintain "viable populations of existing native and desired nonnative vertebrate species." Instead, managers will be directed to provide "ecological conditions to support diversity of native plant and animal species."

The viability clause is widely considered the Forest Service's most important wildlife protection — and has been a key point of contention with logging interests.

This second alteration changes the language dealing with wildlife protection (and thus habitat protection) from somewhat specific to very general. Sally Collins, the associate chief of the Forest Service, goes on to explain that this change reflects the "best, newest scientific thinking." I think it's more likely that it reflects a desire to cease enforcement of wildlife and habitat protection, and what better way than to make these protections so vague that it's impossible to know what actually constitutes a violation?

Double post.