FIRST OF 2 PARTS
We should find out fairly soon if there's a chance the legislature will enact some major-impact environmental bills in the new year.
Feb. 2, 2022, is Joint Rule 10 day, the deadline for most of the legislature's joint committees to issue reports on all bills assigned to them.
Watch the Joint Committee on Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture (JENRA). If it issues favorable reports that day on House Bill 912, An Act Relative to Forest Protection, and House Bill 1002, An Act Relative to Increased Forest Protection, it could be a sign something significant is happening on this front.
H.912 would, among other things, prohibit the harvesting of timber in any of the state's public forests and prevent businesses and industries from siting needed infrastructure there. You would not be able to put up a cell phone tower, for example, in a publicly owned forest if H.912 became law.
H.1002 would require the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife to set aside as nature reserves 30% of the land within already established Wildlife Management Areas and would impose new restrictions on the use of such land, such as permanently banning timber removal.
The idea behind both bills is to preserve and improve the condition of our forests because trees absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide, the cause of global warming and climate disruption. Healthy forests also mitigate the effects of heavy rains, which have become more frequent in many parts of the world because of warming.
When JENRA held a virtual public hearing on these and a number of other bills on Dec. 7, more than 20 witnesses offered testimony on each bill, most (but not all) in favor.
Rep. Michael J. Finn, D-West Springfield, the main sponsor of H.912, told the committee that the bill was needed to update public land policies "written decades ago, before global warming and climate change were recognized as real and imminent threats."
"This bill will protect over 400,000 acres of forests and watershed lands controlled by the Department of Conservation and Recreation by designating them as parks and reserves," Finn pointed out. (H.912 has 19 co-sponsors in the House and 2 co-sponsors in the Senate.)
Michael Kellett, of RESTORE: The North Woods, testified that H.912 and H.1002 "were conceived to bring the management of Massachusetts public lands in line with the most urgent environmental issues of the 21st Century: climate change and loss of biodiversity."
The bills, Kellett said, "would increase carbon storage to fight climate change and sea level rise...They would protect maturing forests that can become future old growth."
One of those who spoke in opposition to the bills was Chris Eagan, Executive Director of the Massachusetts Forest Alliance, a trade association for forest landowners, foresters, timber harvesters and forest products companies.
"H.912 was first filed last session (2019-20) and it was opposed by many of the major environmental organizations and land trusts in Massachusetts," Eagan said. "...It's being pushed on environmental and climate grounds, but the major environmental groups, the ones you've heard of, oppose it. They oppose it because it's bad policy."
Also testifying in opposition was Evan Dell'Olio, General Manager and Director of Roberts Energy Renewables. "A concerning point in regards to H.1002 is that Mass. Fish and Wildlife depends on an ability to use multiple types of wildlife management techniques, including commercial timber harvesting, to retain and create new habitats for declining endangered species," he said. "Often, these are the types of projects that private landowners may not have the resources to pursue, especially when large volumes of low-grade wood have to be removed to create this (desired) wildlife habitat."
On Feb. 2, joint legislative committees subject to Joint Rule 10, will have four options on each bill in their charge. They can report it out favorably, report it out unfavorably, send it to study, or ask for a continuance, i.e., a new, future deadline for reporting it out.
If JENRA reports H.912 and H.1002 out favorably, the bills would get legs and be sent to another committee for possible, further favorable action. Both would still have a long way to go to enactment.
If JENRA gives them unfavorable reports, the bills would pretty much be dead for this session. And if it sends them to study, the same would be the case. In the Massachusetts legislature, "study" is a synonym for wastebasket.
[During the 2019-20 legislative session, JENRA gave a favorable report to a bill very similar to H.912 and having the same title. It was then sent to the House Rules Committee, which also gave it a favorable report. It wound up in House Ways and Means, but no further action was taken on it.]
NEXT: A look at a recently deceased Harvard professor, a world-renowned biologist and champion of biodiversity, who favored the forest management approach set forth in An Act Relative to Forest Protection.
NOTE: For the witness testimony quoted in this post, credit is due to MASSTRAC/InstaTrac, an independent, long-established, subscriber-only legislative monitoring service.
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