They failed.
On Tuesday, lawmakers rolled out the final text of the 2018 farm bill, a compromise between House and Senate negotiators. It does not include any of the controversial “categorical exclusions” to environmental review laws for logging projects that the administration and House Republicans had sought.
But the legislation does include new proposals that conservationists and forestry experts hope will help the federal government and states pursue projects across the West to reduce the risk of out-of-control blazes.
There is “productive policy in there,” said Peter Nelson, Director of Federal Lands Program at Defenders of Wildlife. Nelson pointed in particular to collaborative forest management programs between the federal government, states and private landowners that the bill reauthorizes and, in some cases, expands.
That’s critical because of the patchwork of ownership in forests across the West. In California, for example, the federal government controls over half of forest land, through a mix of agencies that includes the Forest Service, Bureau of Reclamation and National Park Service. Private landowners, Native American tribes and companies own another 40 percent of forest land, while state and local
That's great. They reauthorize a program that's done virtually nothing to solve the problem. "productive policy" is a complete misnomer. These piddly little projects accomplish nothing.
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Note that Mr. Nelson as director of environmentalists on federal lands praises the use of collaboration. I have been told to collaborate so often by agency officials that I took time to look up the word.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary gives us these two definitions of “collaborate”. I believe the second one applies to most agency run meetings that include us common folk. Definition of collaborate (intransitive verb)
1 : to work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual
endeavor An international team of scientists collaborated on the study.
2 : to cooperate with or willingly assist an enemy of one's country and
especially an occupying force suspected of collaborating with the enemy
(collaboration and collaborator are the noun forms)
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