James Hill: “Mr. Chairman, when it was first proposed, the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project actually held great…”

“Mr. Chairman, when it was first proposed, the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project actually held great promise. The goal was to produce a document that would provide a broad framework through which individual forest management plans would be updated. These updates would provide the framework through which local communities and local citizens would see an end to the management of our public lands and our public forests through conflict. The promise was that local governments and local citizens and local business owners and local labor unions and local conservationists would work together to restore predictability in the management of these public lands. This was very important, Mr. Chairman, because these local communities of the Northwest have seen their economies devastated and they have seen their small town culture wiped away by the breakdown in the process by which we made public land management decisions. As we have heard from others, when the project started, the promise was that it would be completed in 9 months. When the project started, local governments were promised a place at the table. When the project started, local forest supervisors were to be given authority to manage their individual forests according to their individual needs. When the project started, the Congress was told that the cost would be $5 million. So where are we today?…”