By Tom Kenworthy, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress.

Whenever there is a big outbreak of wildfires in the West, out come the ignorant to blame “radical environmentalists” and promote a return to excessive levels of industrial logging.

So it was earlier this week when a House panel held a hearing in Phoenix on forest health. Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) was quick to blame “extreme environmental groups” and “the loss of Arizona’s timber industry” for a vicious fire season that has included the largest fire in the state’s history.

Gosar was joined by the incoming president of the Arizona Cattle Growers Association, who likewise blamed “radical environmentalists” for creating a “paralysis” in federal land management agencies that has kept employees from properly managing federal forests.

The reasons that the desert Southwest is having another extreme fire season are complex. They include decades of poor forestry and livestock grazing practices, misguided federal firefighting efforts that have prevented low-intensity fires in Ponderosa pine forests from clearing out underbrush and small trees, and prolonged, exceptional drought caused by climate change.

In April, Gosar voted to overturn the scientific finding that climate pollution threatens public welfare, which cites the “clear risk from the observed increases in wildfires.”

“What we’re seeing today in Arizona and other parts of the south are what our scientists say are the effects of climate change,” U.S. Forest Service chief Tom Tidwell testified before the U.S. Senate last month.

As the Los Angeles Times reported recently, the timber industry and cattle growers deserve much of the blame:

Experts say the logging of big trees and heavy grazing in the last century helped lay the foundation for the Wallow and the [2002] Rodeo-Chediski conflagrations. Cutting the old ponderosa pines opened the forest floor to dense young growth. Grazing eliminated the grasses that fed the frequent, low-intensity fires to which the pineland vegetation had adapted. Federal policies to quench forest fires as quickly as possible compounded the problem by promoting the buildup of brush and unnaturally thick stands of trees.

Wally Covington, a leading expert on the increasingly dry forests of the Southwest, told the paper, “We need to turn forestry on its head. Leave the old growth alone….focus on harvesting the small-diameter trees. Open the forest to restore more natural conditions and then reintroduce fire.”

That is precisely the approach of a 10-year restoration project on the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest in Arizona, exactly where the Wallow and Rodeo-Chediski fires took place. So far the project has thinned some 35,000 acres near communities, reinvigorated wood products companies that use small diameter trees and helped save some of those communities from the Wallow fire.

Environmental groups have been supportive of that White Mountain Stewardship Project. Not even the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity – arguably one of the most litigious of environmental groups – has sued or appealed any of the individual thinning projects on the Apache-Sitgreaves in a decade.

Unfortunately, no amount of advanced forestry practices can prevent future epic wildfires in a world with unconstrained greenhouse pollution.

Today, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar demonstrated his conservation leadership by halting the race to mine uranium at the edge of the Grand Canyon National Park for six months, and setting the stage for a full 20-year withdrawal. As John Podesta and other conservation leaders stated in their request several weeks ago, this move by the administration is necessary to protect one of America’s greatest assets and one of the world’s natural treasures.

For those of you that do not follow the politics of our public lands, this might seem like an obvious choice, made simply to capture headlines about protecting Grand Canyon National Park. However, when it comes to public lands these days, it requires a fight to protect even the greatest of places.

Back in 2008, the New York Times broke the story that a British company had begun exploratory drilling just miles from one of the main entrances to Grand Canyon National Park. This shined a national spot light on a mining boom that was growing across the West.

Many of the foreign-owned mining companies responsible for the boom were staking claims right outside national parks. The Pew Environment Group’s Ten Treasures at Stake report depicts in great detail the growing threat. Data from the Bureau of Land Management cited in the report shows that in 1995 there were less than 100 mining claims in uranium-rich areas near the Grand Canyon. By 2007, that number grew to more than 6,000 mining claims, and today there are more than 8,000.

In 2009, Salazar temporarily stopped new claims by issuing a two-year moratorium so the Department of the Interior could study the impacts of uranium mining on Grand Canyon National Park. Without today’s announcement, the clock would have run out at the end of this month. Salazar issued today an emergency withdrawal order that extends the moratorium another six months, until a final environmental impact statement can be issued. Salazar also announced that he has directed the preferred alternative in the final rule to be a full 20-year withdrawal of the threatened lands around the Grand Canyon.

Politicians had lined up on both sides of the debate. More than 60 Democrats, led by Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), sent a letter asking Secretary Salazar to fully withdraw 1 million acres for 20 years in order to stop new mining claims. At the same time, Republicans Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and Trent Franks (R-AZ) requested that Chairman Doc Hastings (R-WA) hold a hearing questioning “the Administration’s perceived environmental concerns” about uranium mining creating a “serious national security threat.”

This political divide should come as no surprise, especially when one considers that the National Mining Association donates three times more to Republicans than it does to Democrats.

However, Gosar was quick to capitalize on the Grand Canyon’s popularity to promote the oil industry agenda. “Arizona’s First Congressional District is home to countless popular vacation destinations such as the Grand Canyon National Park,” he wrote in a press release. “If gas prices continue to soar, our local communities could be hit hard by decreased tourism and fewer visitors.”

Where is that concern for the tourism impact that would be caused by countless mines popping up next to Grand Canyon National Park? What about the impact on the Colorado River that sustains the National Park and provides drinking water to 25 million Americans? The list of reasons for protecting Grand Canyon National Park is long and wide ranging.

Still, some conservative leaders feel it’s better to play up fears of government overreach than recognize that some places should be protected.

By Jessica Goad, Manager of Research and Outreach, Public Lands Project, Center for American Progress.

The Resolution Copper Company, owned by the large multi-national mineral conglomerates Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, is pushing a bill in Congress that would give them federal land in southeastern Arizona and allow mining of one of the largest known copper deposits in the world. In return, the company would give back a plot of land to the federal government. The Resolution Copper land-exchange bill has a blatant loophole, delaying any environmental impact statement for mining these lands until after the land exchange is completed.

That would mean that after the deal is done and the tailings pond leaks, like it did at the Clayton Silver Mine in Idaho, or after major fish kills, like the ones in the Alamosa River due to cyanide leaching from the Summitville gold mine in Colorado, we could say that the too-late environmental analysis revealed a threat. That’s not the point of our environmental laws, which recognize that the value of clean air and water needs to be considered before the government sells off public resources to private interests.

However, during a hearing on Tuesday, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), the sponsor of the bill, pulled a bait and switch by focusing on the land that would be conserved, rather than the parcel that would be given to the mining company. Gosar told Mary Wagner, Associate Chief, U.S. Forest Service, that allowing a mining company to plunder public land is “restoring the ecological balance”:

GOSAR: Now I’m a big steward of my environment so I just heard something also from my friend on the other side, that value for the San Pedro River. Ms. Wegner, could you put a value on that as an ecosystem, could you put a price for me? Give me a price in dollars.

WAGNER: I think both the Department of the Interior and the Forest Service/Department of Agriculture have testified to the importance of the non-federal parcels, the ecological values and the important of these properties. No, I couldn’t put a price on it.

GOSAR: They are almost infinite, because it’s a giving process, we’re restoring the ecological balance within the whole ecosystem. That is unbelievably much more valuable.

Watch it:

 

On the one hand, his bill would set aside 5,300 acres of land currently owned by Resolution Copper for conservation purposes.

On the other hand, as written, Gosar’s bill says the extent of impacts would not be known until too late because the company would not be required to undergo environmental review or even submit a plan of operations until after the land exchange takes place. Questions like where the mine tailings would go, where large amounts of water would come from, and how erosion and subsidence from a gigantic underground mine would be dealt with won’t be investigated until the deal is signed, sealed, and delivered.

Mineral development is an appropriate use of public lands, but not when it comes in the form of a hasty land exchange that circumvents environmental laws. Unlike what Gosar seems to think, environmental stewardship in this country is based upon making sure that the public is involved in decisions that may affect its health and environment. As Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) said today, “this bill short-circuits fundamental good government policies.”