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Supplement Statement of Thomas W. Haislip Jr. 

 I would now like to provide addition information about several of these points. 



PROJECT PURPOSE AND NEED 



The purpose and need section of any Environmental Impact Statement sets the 

 standards against which each alternative will be measured. The DElS's for the 

 ICBEMP do a good job of describing needs, but list many purposes that are unre- 

 lated to these needs. For example, applications of adaptive management is a good 

 management tool but hardly a purpose for this project. Similarly, identification of 

 constraints and barriers to implementation of this project is a very important task, 

 but again, not a purpose for the project. The purpose and need sections should be 

 revised to clarify what will be used to judge the alternatives and to avoid potential 

 legal challenges 



FOREST HEALTH 



There is Uttle discussion in the impact analysis of the effects on forest health. The 

 documents need to bring out several important points as described below. We also 

 present some relevant findings of our own. 



O'LaughUn and others define forest health as a condition of fores ecosystems that 

 sustains their complexity while providing for human needs (O'Laughlin, et al., 

 1993). Forest health problems in the Columbia Basin have been extensively docu- 

 mented in such studies and reports as the Eastside Forest Ecosystem Health Assess- 

 ment and Forest Health Conditions in Idaho, so 1 will not take this time to substan- 

 tiate the known problems. As stated, the forest health problem also has human di- 

 mensions. The loss of trees may ultimately reduce long-term timber supplies. Pri- 

 vate lands and resources are being impacted by the spread of insects and wildfires. 

 Municipal watersheds are at risk. Outdoor recreation values are threatened. People 

 living in and around the forests are justifiably worried that their communities will 

 lose economic viability. The preferred situation is a more diverse, heterogeneous 

 landscape that is more consistent with historical range of variability, less suscep- 

 tible to wide-area disturbances, and thus more easily sustainable (Sampson and 

 Adams, 1994). 



According to Sampson and Adams, the forests of the Inland Northwest are not 

 healthy over wide regions (Sampson and Adams, 1994). Remedial, restorative, and 

 preventive treatment and management — particularly on Federal lands — is urgently 

 needed. A brief window of opportunity exists of perhaps 15-30 years in length with- 

 in which anticipatory and remedial treatments can be conducted. Without timely 

 management intervention, the region is threatened by major ecological setbacks — 

 pest epidemics and uncontrollable wildfires — that will damage resource values and 

 convert large areas into new, even-aged forest systems that set the stage for a re- 

 peat of the current problems far into the 21st century. 



Today's conditions in many Inland Northwest forests allow normal processes to 

 become catastrophic events. Unless land conditions can be improved, these cata- 

 strophic changes seem certain to continue. On the Boise National Forest, for exam- 

 ple wildfire consumed an average of 3,000 acres per year from 1955-1985. From 

 1985-1992, the average annual wildfire acreage jumped to 56,000, including large 

 area, intense, stand replacing wildfires in ponderosa pine forests, and indicating a 

 major shift away from the type of fire regime these forests experienced in the pre- 

 settlement era (Sampson and Adams, 1994). 



Restoring forest health is central and fundamental to the concept of ecosystem 

 management. Forest health affects all the values we derive from our National For- 

 ests: it affects wildlife, habitat, fisheries, recreation, grazing, timber outputs, and 

 aesthetics. If we want ecosystem management to succeed in yielding us a sustain- 

 able balance of these values, we must aggressively address forest health problems 

 While the draft EISs do recognize the existence of the forest health problems, they 

 do not give these problems the prominence they deserve, especially in the impact 

 analysis, nor do they propose the aggressive restoration steps that are called for to 

 solve these problems in a timely manner. Before being published, the drafts should 

 be revised to give more weight to the forest health problem, to propose adequate 

 remedied to give more weight for this problem, and to discuss the consequences of 

 inaction. 



One would think that a key feature of a forest ecosystem assessment would be 

 to identify the types and locations of forests needing various types of silvicultural 

 treatments or prescriptions. For example, the stand structures that offer the great- 

 est opportunities for forest health risk reduction appear to be dense, intermediate- 

 aged forests with multiple canopy layers in the high and medium risk categories. 



