What's up with Brian Baird?

By Ryan Hunter of Portland, Oregon. Ryan works with the Gifford Pinchot Task Force, a local environmental nonprofit.

Representative Brian Baird of Southwest Washington has many progressives in Oregon and Washington both confused and upset. He considers himself an environmentally friendly Democrat, yet is the recent co-sponsor of H.R. 4200, the "Forest Emergency Recovery and Research Act" with Representative Greg Walden (R-OR).

This bill, if passed, would make it easier for federal agencies to swoop in and quickly log forests after natural disturbances such as fire, disease, and wind blow down. The bill provides no protections for large dead trees which provide important habitat in recovering forests. Nor are there protections for roadless areas, riparian areas, or areas set aside for old growth forest habitat. The bill also does not address salvage logging's contribution to soil erosion which can harm salmon spawning streams.

In fact, the best approach toward forests that have experienced natural disturbances is to leave them to recover naturally. This is what has occured both in Yellowstone National Park, following the 1988 fires, and in the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument. Both areas are experiencing a recovery rich in biodiversity.

So why, many are asking, is our true blue Representative to the north even supporting, let alone co-sponsoring, this destructive legislation?

Unfortunately I do not have an answer to this question. But I encourage all who care about the ecological health of our forests to call Representative Baird (360-695-6292) to demand a scientifically justifiable answer.

  • BlueNote (unverified)
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    Unfortunately, Brian has begun voting like a man who is worried about keeping his job instead of keeping his principles. He voted for the Iraq war and he voted with the Republicans on Terri Schaivo. Unfortunately, Clark County is becoming much more conservative with the loss of hundreds of union jobs and the rapidly increasing number of wealthy Republican "tax refugees" from Oregon and California that are moving in to the area. I think Brian should appologize, but he won't.

  • Gordie (unverified)
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    What parts of the forest are we going to manage as nature preserves, recreation areas, etc. and what parts are we going to manage essentially as tree farms? What lands are we going to manage as preserves that we used to regularly harvest, and thus need some restoration to return the forest to a more natural state? Et cetera. The optimum reforestion answers aren't the same for all types of land use. Obviously, there are large swaths of forested land for which this nation has not come to a settled, long-term decision as to how we're going to manage them.

  • Mike Austin (unverified)
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    There is one major reason to oppose this type of legislation that I have yet to hear from the "environmental crowd." That is that logging these areas is bad fire management practice.

    When trees are cut down, the limbs and tops are left on the site. On clearcuts, non-merchantable trees are cut down and left on the site. This "slash" then dries out and greatly increases the fire danger. A major reason why fires have become so devastating in recent years is that there has been so much slash left on the ground from prior logging. It takes an awful lot of fuel to create a ground fire that is hot enough to reach the crowns of old-growth trees.

    An additional reason to oppose the logging of these old trees is that doing so will open up the canopy and allow more sunlight to reach the forest floor. This results in the drying out of both living and dead vegetation on the forest floor, increasing the fire danger.

    FWIW, I have a Forestry degree and worked for the Forest Service for a few years (in Fire Management) many years ago.

  • Peter Bray (unverified)
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    Sadly, this is but one in a series of legislative attacks this year. Of more dire concern is the Pombo amendment to the Budget bill (which passed the house). Given that Reid is a big pro-mining Nevada senator, well, it is unlikely to be stripped from the Bill in reconciliation. How strange that Sierra Club, etc, rallied so hard against the relatively benign ANWR provisions, given that this amendment will PERMANANTLY PRIVATIZE possibly millions of acres of public land across the country.

    We should also pay attention to HR 3855 which would require the DoI to sell 15% of all public lands. I can only assume that this one is DOA, but given that it is tied to Katrina repairs, and given the sorry state of environmental awareness in both parties, well, it might very well pass.

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