SB 2535 would continue to weaken prudent and proper forest management practices,
crucial to maintaining healthy forests and meadows
    Timber harvesting
    Grazing

"Our forests and wilderness areas need medical attention through proper
care and hands-on attention..."

Rebuttal

Forest management practices have some elements in common among wilderness forests and forests actively managed for purposes such as lumber production.  The two types of forest use also have points of difference in their objectives.   Wilderness forests, like non-wilderness national forests, are required to have a formally adopted forest management plan. Quotes below are from U.S. Forest Service documentation at http://www.fs.fed.us/land/fm/salefact/salefact.htm, which discussess national forest use for timber harvesting.  Use of boldface font is mine, to emphasize particular points.

"In most cases, our forest ecosystems are in a healthy, functioning condition due to both past active management and environmental protection measures. These forests provide highly diverse and often unique resources, opportunities, and experiences for the American public. In some cases, ecosystems are not functioning in a way that can be sustained without unacceptable risk of losses to wildfire, insects, or diseases. In particular, the long-term exclusion of fire from ecosystems dependent on frequent low-intensity fires, such as Western ponderosa pine ecosystems, has left those sites vulnerable to high-intensity crown fires. The Forest Service is actively managing many of these forests to help restore more acceptable ecological conditions by thinning out the overcrowded fire intolerant tree species and working to restore the low-intensity fire patterns. Sometimes, the thinned trees can be sold to help offset the cost of the restoration project. The Forest Service is closely monitoring these programs to determine the extent of their contribution to the restoration of healthy forests."

The main differences in management practices is that wilderness forest management is less likely to use thinning as a management practice:  Wilderness areas are intended to be as natural and as free from human influence as is reasonably possible.  Wilderness forests already tend to be free of human influence due to their remote locations, except for changes due to a history of unnaturally intensive fire suppression.

In non-wilderness forest (again quoting from http://www.fs.fed.us/land/fm/salefact/salefact.htm):

"The overriding objective of the Forest Service timber program is to ensure that national forests are managed in an ecologically sustainable manner."

"Approximately 73 percent of the 191 million acres of national forests are considered forested. Of that forested land, 35 percent is available for regularly scheduled timber harvest and about ½ of 1 percent of those trees are harvested in any 1 year. The remaining 65 percent of the forested land is designated for non-timber uses, such as wilderness and other areas set aside for recreation, or cannot be harvested due to environmental conditions, such as steep slopes and fragile soils."

Also see related notes on these web pages about fire control and fire management in the rebuttal to the Joint Chambers' assertions on emergency response and firefighting.
 

References, Law and policy on wilderness:

Wilderness Act of 1964.
Bureau of Land Management Wilderness Management Policy
Forest Service Policy for Wilderness Management
US Federal Wildland Fire Policy
National Park Service Wilderness Policy
National Park Service Director's Order #41:  Wilderness Preservation and Management
Federal Aviation Regulations, FAA site
Federal Aviation Regulations, searchable index with better results than FAA's search

Wildland fire management practices and wildfire ecology:

Wildfire Central
USGS Wildland Fire Research
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service  Fire Management
Wildland Fire Research Group at the University of California Berkeley
Rocky Mountain Research Station  Wildland Fire Research
National Fire Plan
Yellowstone Wildland Fire Management Plan
Florida Division of Forestry prescribed-fire site  ("Fight Fire With Fire")
Science Daily article:  USGS Studies Wildfire Ecology In The Western United States
Wildfire History and Ecology on the Colorado Plateau
The Ecology of Fire (U.S. Forest Service)
 

Footnote:

It's hard to find a general rule that doesn't have exceptions.  Here's one that can be taken as an example in which some degree of forest management through thinning might be appropriate in a wilderness area.

The eastern edge of the Desolation Wilderness is close enough to Lake Tahoe that parts of the forest just west of that boundary had the problems produced by century-old clearcutting of timber and reforestation with fir instead of pine.  The seven-year drought that ended in the early 1990's caused substantial fir mortality in this area.  National forest up to the edge of the wilderness area was thinned to reduce the overburden of dead wood and unhealthy fir trees that could fuel a fire.  Due to wilderness management, this thinning stopped at the boundary of the Desolation Wilderness.

Over time, on the order of centuries, droughts will gradually return Tahoe's forests from being predominantly fir to being predominantly more dought-tolerant pine, even within the Desolation Wilderness.  Active management through thinning fir trees can accelerate this recovery; whether that active management is appropriate in particular parts of this particular wilderness area should be open to debate, but the debate should be based on scientific knowledge in the areas of ecology and forestry as applied to this particular area, not to a broad policy that's intended as a guideline for all forestry.

A part of the lesson of Lake Tahoe's forests is that before we humans arrived nature did a better job than we did in managing the local forests.  This example is one of making up for human lack of foresight.

It's also worth noting that most of the Desolation Wilderness is alpine area, where the landscape is predominantly granite rock instead of forest.  Forestry policies are a moot point in many of California's wilderness areas.