In its 1994 examination of the State's current Timber Harvest Plan process, the Little Hoover Commission found that the process is complex, inequitable, and costly, producing frustration for administering state departments, the timber industry and environmental advocacy groups. The Commission also found that the process has not proven effective in achieving a sound balance between economic and environmental concerns. In response to these two key findings, the Commission proposed reform in eight recommendations designed to provide better protection for the environment while streamlining the process of timber harvesters, particularly those with logging operations that will have a minimal impact on surrounding ecosystems.
The Little Hoover Commission examined the Timber Harvest Plan process and found the following problems:
The intra-agency process for reviewing Timber Harvest Plans is complex, lengthy and costly, resulting in inconsistency and inequity. How a plan is treated is largely dependant on whether, by chance or design, it falls into the 20 percent of plans reviewed by the Department of Fish and Game -- a department that apparently has different standards, goals and priorities than the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, which is ultimately responsible for approving the plans.
Despite the hoops that timber operators must jump through and the barriers erected by the planning process, the environment is not being effectively protected because of the flawed concept that the Timber Harvest Plan process is based on -- namely that ecology can be addressed on a parcel-by-parcel basis. In addition, the State's focus is almost entirely on procedural steps rather than on the eventual outcome. As a result, what occurs in the real world may have very little relationship to what is prescribed in a harvest plan, and there is no mechanism for linking demonstrated effectiveness of mitigation measures to future policy directives.
Timber Harvest Plans- A Flawed Effort to Balance Economic and Environmental Needs (Report #126, June 1994) Full Report of Little Hoover Commission
(Excerpted from the Little Hoover Commission Webpage: [Little Hoover Commission])
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