Controversial logging bill headed to Senate floor
6/19/96
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Controversial logging bill headed to Senate floor
June 19, 1996
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Resuming an emotional fight over logging in
national forests, a Senate panel voted Wednesday to waive some
environmental safeguards and citizen appeal channels to speed
timbering in areas facing fire threats.
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee sent Idaho
Republican Sen. Larry Craig's Forest Health Protection and
Restoration Act to the full Senate on a voice vote.
The bill seeks to put in place a permanent salvage logging program
after a similar, controversial measure -- the emergency salvage
timber rider -- is set to expire this fall.
Critics said the legislation is intended to circumvent laws
protecting fish and wildlife to the benefit of the timber industry
rather than to the benefit of forest health.
Sen. Bill Bradley, D-New Jersey, said he would prepare an amendment
before the full Senate considered the proposal.
Craig, chairman of the committee's subcommittee on forestry, said his
bill would provide the Forest Service with a reasonable, permanent
policy with which to manage overstocked forests suffering from
increased fuel buildup due to disease and bug infestations.
'A sensible balance'
Timber industry and labor union leaders cheered approval of the bill.
"This legislation strikes a sensible balance between environmental
concerns and the social and economic realities for forest products
workers, including tens of thousands of our members across the
nation," said Doug McCarron, president of the United Brotherhood of
Carpenters and Joiners.
Conservationists said the bill shortens time periods for some
environmental reviews and eliminates others, including some
documentation currently required under the National Environmental
Policy Act before logging can take place.
It also eliminates citizens' right to challenge emergency salvage
logging by filing administrative appeals with the Forest Service.
Those hearings can delay logging for months or even block it
altogether.
"Under the guise of improving `forest health,' this legislation would
create a cancer in our national forests. It is a forest abuse bill,"
said Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife.
Craig said a "substantial majority" of the scientific community
agrees thinning, salvage logging and other management techniques
must be implemented quickly to address a growing forest health crisis
in the West.
However, a group of more than 100 scientists and university
professors signed a letter to President Clinton Wednesday urging
him to veto the bill.