House approves forest bill

The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday passed a bill that would, in some cases, require groups and individuals to pay bonds before filing lawsuits against timber projects.

The Resilient Federal Forests Act of 2015, sponsored by Rep. Bruce Westerman, R-Ark., passed the House 262-167.

Under the proposed law, an environmental group suing the U.S. Forest Service over a proposed forest project would have to pay a bond if the project was developed through a collaborative stakeholder process and the litigant was not involved in the collaboration.

If the plaintiffs lose, the bond would be forfeited to the Forest Service to cover the costs of defending against the litigation.

The bill also includes measures intended to reform the way the Forest Service manages forest fires. It would provide more flexibility for the agency to thin fuels from tracts of federal forest lands, while also increasing eligibility for wildfires to qualify for emergency funding from the federal government once the Forest Service exhausts its budget.

The bonding requirement generated the most debate on the House floor. Bill proponents framed it as curbing the ability of special interest groups to lodge “frivolous” lawsuits intended to delay timber projects that they say would otherwise boost forest health, reduce the risk of wildfires and help ailing timber industries in small communities.

“We have a problem with litigation which basically stops the Forest Service doing their jobs in their tracks,” said Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, who is chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee and helped lead the debate in favor of the bill.

However, opponents said the measure would roll back some guarantees afforded to individuals and interest groups under the Equal Access to Justice Act, which requires the government to pay attorney fees to the prevailing party in a lawsuit.

Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo., said that in his district the Forest Service land owns a majority of the land. He argued that the Equal Access to Justice Act was a critical protection for those who could not afford to take on the federal government on their own. He also questioned whether inholder property owners on Forest Service land would have any realistic recourse should a project negatively affect their access to their property.

Other opponents to the bill argued that exempting some forest lands from environmental review and fast-tracking forest projects would lead to environmental degradation.

Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont., sponsored the original legislation behind the bonding requirement, which was later rolled into the larger bill, of which he is an original co-sponsor.

He responded that the bill’s language left the definition of “collaborative” intentionally vague.

“What this bill does not do is skirt [the National Environmental Policy Act], what it does do is bring people together to work together,” Zinke said during the floor debate. “It does not prevent anyone from filing a lawsuit … We want more scientists and less lawyers in the woods, and healthy forests once again to be a part of our country.”

Arlene Montgomery, program director for Friends of the Wild Swan, countered that local interest groups represented in those collaborative projects are not a fair representation of the federal land stakeholders.

“These are federal lands, and they belong to everybody in the U.S., not just people who have time or are being paid to sit around and plan these projects,” Montgomery said in an interview after the vote. “We’re fortunate to be able to live where we have all these public lands, but they don’t belong to just us to manage because we live close to them. They belong to everybody.”

Nineteen Democratic lawmakers, mostly from rural areas, supported the bill.

In a statement released after the vote, Zinke, who is from Whitefish, praised the passage of the bill and said he expects Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., to take a lead role in advocating for its passage in the Senate.

The White House expressed opposition to the bill, saying it does not go far enough to tap federal disaster funds for wildfires.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

Reporter Samuel Wilson can be reached at 758-4407 or by email at swilson@dailyinterlake.com.