For Release: May 21, 2003
Restoration Vision for Nation’s Forests Unveiled by Conservation Groups and Restoration Practitioners
Restoration Principles, two years in the making, stand in marked contrast to Bush administration’s “healthy forest” proposal
Contact:
Todd Schulke, Center for Biological Diversity: (505) 574.5962
More Information: Restoration
Principles, Executive
Summary, the Center's
Restoration Program
Today, 120 local and national organizations,
unveiled the “Citizen’s
Call for Ecological Restoration: Forest Restoration Principles and
Criteria.” The Restoration Principles are the result of a 2-year
bridge building effort between conservation groups, community forestry
advocates and restoration practitioners to develop agreement on a common
sense, scientifically-based framework for restoring our nation’s
forests.
The Restoration Principles serve as a national policy
statement to guide sound ecological restoration. They clearly define
principles
and criteria in order to evaluate proposed forest restoration policies
and projects. By including social and economic criteria, the Restoration
Principles also help bridge the gap between what’s good for the
land and what’s good for communities and workers.
“The Restoration Principles were created in an incredibly cooperative
and inclusive process,” said Todd Schulke, forest policy director
with the Center for Biological Diversity. “Over the past two
years we have brought together conservation groups, community forestry
advocates, restoration practitioners and advocates for organized labor
and the mobile workforce to develop a collective vision for restoring
our nation’s forests. We hope it may become the basis for broad
agreement among many interest groups.”
The Restoration Principles stands in stark contrast
to the so-called “Healthy
Forests Restoration Act of 2003” passed yesterday by the U.S.
House and the Bush administration’s “Healthy Forest Initiative.” Instead
of restoring our National Forests, these bills limit citizen participation
and undermine key environmental laws in order to increase logging and
roadbuilding on National Forests, thereby creating an even greater
need for ecological restoration in the future.
Dr. Dominick DellaSala of the World Wildlife Fund
stated, “I
see far too many projects cloaked in restoration terminology that may
actually do more harm than good since the projects lack the appropriate
ecological and social safeguards to evaluate their legitimacy and acceptability.
I believe that the Restoration Principles offer a solution to the so-called ‘restoration’ and ‘forest
health’ proposals coming from the Bush administration and some
members of Congress.”
Mary Chapman, executive director of the Forest Stewards
Guild, a national organization that works to support restoration
forestry, explained
why they endorsed the Principles, “We endorsed the Restoration
Principles because not only do they call for an ecological approach
to forest restoration, but they stress the importance of economic viability
and community sustainability, and the need for a high-skill, high-wage
restoration workforce.”
Mark Vander Meer, a western Montana restoration
practitioner, said “Defining
honest forest restoration is perhaps the most useful outcome of the
Restoration Principles. If followed, these Principles can guide foresters
and forest workers towards a brand of management that provides us with
the credibility we so desperately need and desire. With public support,
ecologically based restoration projects can provide thousands of jobs.”
The Restoration Principles make a clear distinction between fuels
treatments needed to protect homes and potential fuels treatments as
a step towards restoring ecological integrity. While reducing fuels
within 200 feet of a home is essential to help protect a home from
wildfire, it should not be consider forest restoration by itself. Fuels
treatments alone do not address the wide range of ecological issues
included in a comprehensive restoration plan and may result in degraded
soils, native vegetation and wildlife habitat.
Randi Spivak, executive director of the American
Lands Alliance, said “While
the debate in Congress has focused on wildand fires and ‘healthy
forests,’ the Restoration Principles are designed to address
the much broader and encompassing subject of ecological restoration
and underscores that restoring ‘healthy forests’ is about
a lot more than reducing hazardous fuels.”
Executive Summary
Citizen's Call for Ecological Forest Restoration:
Forest Restoration Principles and Criteria
Forests are among the most precious and beloved places on our continent,
providing pure air, clean water, climate control and other ecosystem
services that are vital to our quality of life and the survival of
fish and wildlife. Regrettably, centuries of resource extraction and
development have fundamentally altered most of America's forests, resulting
in loss of habitat, water quality and old-growth forests, as well as
economic and social harm to communities and workers.
Ecological forest restoration can help reverse these declines, but
only if it is based on science and recognizes that ecosystems are complex
and our understanding is limited. Preserving wild forests and investing
in degraded landscapes through thoughtful, science-based restoration
will foster a just, conservation-based economy that can create and
sustain family wage jobs within the capacity of healthy forest ecosystems.
The Citizen's Call for Ecological Forest Restoration is a national
policy statement to guide sound ecological restoration. It clearly
defines principles and criteria to serve as a yardstick for evaluating
proposed forest restoration policies and projects. By including social
and economic criteria, it also helps bridge the gap between what's
good for the land and what's good for communities and workers. The
Restoration Principles were developed by a diverse group of forest
activists and ecologists, with input from forest practitioners and
community forestry groups since 2001.
Successful ecosystem restoration must address ecological,
economic and social needs including community development and the
well-being
of the restoration workforce. While emphasizing that the primary goal
of restoration is to enhance ecological integrity, the document encompasses
two additional core principles that address the value of "natural
capital" and socio-economic issues that set the context and criteria
for restoration.
Core Restoration Principles:
1. Ecological Forest Restoration. The primary goal of
forest restoration is to enhance ecological integrity by restoring
natural processes
and resiliency. Effective forest restoration should reestablish fully
functioning ecosystems. Ecological integrity can be thought of as
the "ability of an ecosystem to support and maintain a balanced,
adaptive community of organisms having a species composition, diversity
and functional organization comparable to that of natural habitats
within a region (Karr and Dudley 1981)." A restoration approach
based on ecological integrity incorporates the advantages of historical
models while recognizing that ecosystems are dynamic and change over
time.
Ecological sub-principles and criteria indicate that restoration planning
should be based on restoration assessments at multiple scales, and
that projects need clear goals and benchmarks for use in monitoring
and evaluation, leading to a process of adaptive management. Restoration
budgets should include adequate funding for planning, monitoring and
adaptive management. Restoration must uphold all local, state and federal
laws and regulations.
In the interest of cost-efficiency and effectiveness,
restoration programs should place priority on the least intrusive
and intensive
methods needed to enhance ecological integrity, including protection
of high integrity areas ("core refugia") and passive restoration
(i.e. ceasing harmful activities). Active restoration - such as road
removal and prescribed burning - may be necessary in cases of clear
need, and where there is broad stakeholder and scientific support.
The Principles also distinguish between protecting the Community Protection
Zone (a small area immediately surrounding homes in the forest), and
the broader goal of landscape restoration. The principles define the
CPZ to help shape fire policy now being considered in Congress.
2. Ecological Economics. Intact forest ecosystems provide essential
ecological services, including clean air and water, upon which all
life and all human economies depend. Restoration of these natural systems
is an investment in natural capital diminished by decades of logging,
road building, mining, grazing, fire suppression, and invasion by exotic
species. An economic and institutional framework that fully accounts
for non-market ecological services should be established to recognize
the value of intact ecological systems and to guide restoration efforts.
Ecological Economics sub-principles and criteria
stress the need to develop positive incentives to encourage ecological
restoration, and
to eliminate commercial and other incentives that drive activities,
that harm ecosystems, communities and workers. For example, the current
timber sale program is not appropriate for restoring forests. Rather,
government should appropriate multi-year funding for all aspects of
restoration, and reform contracting mechanisms to award contracts on
the basis of "best value" criteria rather than lowest-bid.
This includes preference for contracting with local crews, small rural
businesses, underserved communities and multicultural mobile workers.
Market values should be seen as a secondary by-product of restoration
for ecological integrity.
3. Communities and Workforce. Restoration must foster a sustainable
human relationship to the land that promotes ecological integrity,
social and economic justice for workers and communities, and a culture
of preservation and restoration. In turn, effective restoration depends
upon strong, healthy and diverse communities and a skilled committed
workforce.
Communities and Workforce sub-principles and criteria
emphasize the need for collaborative efforts to build community and
worker capacity
to perform ecological restoration and create quality jobs. This should
emphasize a "high-road" approach that provides family wages
and benefits, professional training and career development, equal access
to work and training, and the right to organize and bargain collectively.
Furthermore, restoration and sustainable community development should
involve an open, inclusive and transparent democratic process that
eliminates undue influence by any group on public-land management decision-making.
Sound forest restoration requires an integrated multi-disciplinary
approach rooted in conservation biology and principles that include
preserving and protecting intact landscapes, allowing the land to heal
itself, and where necessary, helping it to do so through active restoration.
Through thoughtful strategies employed over time, we can reestablish
sustainable human connections to the land creating quality restoration
jobs and encouraging conservation-based economies.
During a period of significant change in forest
policies at the federal, state and local level, the Forest Restoration
Principles and Criteria
establish a vision for restoring natural ecosystems and a sustainable
human relationship with the land. They reject the false claims of "regulatory
streamlining" and "healthy forests" initiatives that
use pseudo-science and failed economic theories, and purport to serve
the public interest. The Principles and Criteria provide an essential
tool for stakeholders and decision-makers at all levels to evaluate,
critique, improve, support or reject a proposed project or policy.
All interested parties are invited to endorse and utilize this document.
The following 120 organizations have endorsed the Restoration Principles:
20/20 Vision, DC
Appalachian Voices, NC
Alabama Environmental Council, AL
Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment, OR
Allegheny Defense Project, PA
Alliance for the Wild Rockies, MT
Ambience Project, MT
American Lands Alliance, DC
American Wildlands, MT
Aspen Wilderness Workshop, CO
Audubon Minnesota, MN
Beausoleil Mediation Service, OR
Bradford Environmental Research Institute
Buckeye Forest Council, OH
California Wilderness Coalition, CA
Cascadia Fire Ecology Education Project, OR
Cascadia Wildlands Project, OR
Center for Biological Diversity, AZ
Center for Environmental Economic Development, CA
Center for Native Ecosystems, CO
Cherokee Forest Voices, TN
Chiricahua-Dragoon Conservation Alliance, AZ
CLEAN (Citizens of Lee Environmental Action Network), VA
Coalition for Jobs and the Environment, VA
Colorado Wild, CO
Committee for the High Desert, ID
Defenders of Wildlife, DC
Devil's Fork Trail Club, VA
Dogwood Alliance, NC
Environmental Protection Information Center, CA
Environment Council of Rhode Island, RI
The Empty Bell, MA
Forest Conservation Council, NM
Forest Ecology Network, ME
Forest Guardians, NM
Forest Stewards Guild, NM
Forest Trust, NM
Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness, MN
Friends of the Clearwater, ID
Friends of Wild River, NM
Georgia Forest Watch, GA
Gifford Pinchot Task Force, WA
Gila Regional Information Project, NM
GilaWoodNet, NM
Grass Lakes West Consulting, WA
Greater Wyoming Valley Audubon Society, PA
Great Basin Mine Watch, NV
Habitat Education Center, WI
Headwaters, OR
Healing Harvest Forest Foundation, VA
Heartwood, IN
Hells Canyon Preservation Council, OR
High Country Citizens' Alliance, CO
High Uintas Preservation Council, UT
Idaho Conservation League, ID
Indiana Forest Alliance, IN
John Muir Project, CA
Kentucky Heartwood, KY
Kettle Range Conservation Group, WA
Klamath Forest Alliance, OR
Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center, OR
Kalmiopsis Audubon Society, OR
League Of Wilderness Defenders-Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project,
OR
Massachusetts Audubon Society, MA
Missouri Forest Alliance, MO
National Catholic Rural Life Conference, IA
National Forest Protection Alliance, MT
Native Forest Network, MT
New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, NM
North Coast Restoration Jobs Initiative, CA
Northwest Ecosystem Alliance, WA
Olympic Forest Coalition, WA
Oregon Natural Resources Council, OR
Pacific Rivers Council, OR
Patrick Environmental Awareness Group
Pennsylvania Wildlands Recovery Project, PA
Prescott National Forest Friends, AZ
Quiet Use Coalition, CO
Rainforest Action Network, CA
Resource Stewardship Council, IN
RESTORE: The North Woods, ME
San Luis Valley Ecosystem Council, CO
Santa Fe Forest Watch, NM
Selkirk Conservation Alliance, ID
Serpentine Art and Nature Commons, Inc., NY
Sinapu, CO
Sisters Forest Planning Committee, OR
Sky Island Alliance, AZ
Soda Mountain Wilderness Council, OR
South Carolina Forest Watch, SC
Southern Appalachian Biodiversity Project, NC
Southern Appalachian Forest Coalition, NC
Superior Wilderness Action Network, MN
Swan View Coalition, MT
Taking Responsibility for the Earth and Environment, VA
Tennessee Citizens for Wilderness Planning, TN
The Clinch Coalition, VA
The Ecology Center, MT
The Four Corners Institute, NM
The Lands Council, WA
The Larch Company, OR
The Northern Appalachian Restoration Project/The Northern Forest Forum,
NH
Tradelocal
Umpqua Watersheds, OR
Dr. Peter Stacey, Department of Biology, University of New Mexico,
NM
Upper Gila Watershed Alliance, NM
Vermont Natural Resources Council, VT
Vermont Forest Watch, VT
Virginia Forest Watch, VA
Western Colorado Congress, CO
Western North Carolina Alliance, NC
West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, WV
Wild Alabama, AL
Wildlands Project, AZ
WildLaw, AL
Wildlands CPR, MT
Wild Watershed, NM
White Mountains Conservation League, NM
The Wilderness Society, DC
World Wildlife Fund, DC
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