Somewhere near the top of the list of what environmentalists don't need from the Bush administration is this: another reason to distrust the president.

That appears to be what they're getting in the ongoing debate over the president's "healthy forests initiative." Sources in the Bush administration acknowledged this week that they are working with the timber industry in waging a public-relations campaign pushing the presidential forest thinning initiative across fire-prone areas of the West.

Organizers met with industry executives in Portland recently and began raising money for the effort, which participants said could cost many millions of dollars. All to convince the public to accept what Bush in his visit to Medford in August described as a "common sense" approach to forest management. Many, many people are ready to accept an approach based in common sense. Especially after last summer's fire devastation, they are ready to thin trees so that hazards are reduced and the forests can become healthier.

They have moved, in many cases, from one extreme to ground near the middle of the debate. They have, we think, created the potential for progress.

And the administration's response is to join the timber industry in a PR campaign?

Environmentalists, already iffy on parts of the initiative that look as though they might be more about logging than trees, have no basis for trusting this administration. It has moved more aggressively than any in recent memory to strip environmental protections.

For local examples of wounds newly reopened, look no further than its decisions over particulars of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument and mining rules on public lands south of Grants Pass.

Now the administration has an opportunity to bring people together and provide leadership on an issue of critical importance to the West. Orchestrating a PR campaign isn't consensus building and it isn't leadership. Instead it looks like politics as usual, the last thing anyone needs on the way to bringing resolution to this issue.

The Medford Mail Tribune