US Congress Defeats Measures to Slow Logging

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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises

6/26/96

OVERVIEW & SOURCE by EE

Five days ago, by a razor-thin margin, the U.S. House of Representatives

defeated an attempt to decrease logging in U.S. national forests. Further,

spending for national parks continues to be slashed. Republicans in the

House are accused of a "continuing war on the environment." And thus U.S.

environmental leadership wanes further; making U.S. pleas to developing

countries to reduce logging that much more hypocritical. Following is the

Reuters report on the matter.

g.b.

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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:

House narrowly defeats measures to slow logging

June 21, 1996

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- On razor-thin margins, the House Thursday defeated

two measures sought by environmentalists to decrease logging in the

national forests, one of which failed only after Republican leaders

demanded a second vote.

The lawmakers then went on to pass, by 242-174, a bill providing $12.1

billion for the Interior Department, the national parks and federal arts

agencies for the coming 1997 financial year.

Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt criticized the spending bill, saying it

"badly underfunds parks, refuges and recreation areas, and lays waste to

Indian programs, and also assaults the legal rights of Indian tribes."

He reiterated his threat to recommend a presidential veto unless funding

was increased and restrictions on environmental enforcement were lifted.

The bill runs about $500 million below the current 1996 level and is $800

million below the president's request for the 1997 fiscal year starting

October 1.

Interior Appropriations subcommittee chairman Ralph Regula, R-Ohio, told

the House the bill paid for necessary expenses. "This bill recognizes the

fact that we have a limited amount of money," he said.

But Babbitt said the bill was part of the House Republican's "continuing

war on the environment."

In the most dramatic of the two votes, the House reversed itself and killed

211-211 an amendment offered by Democratic Rep. Joe Kennedy of

Massachusetts that sought to bar spending on new logging roads. It had

passed late Wednesday 211-210. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Georgia, who

usually does not vote, cast his ballot both times against Kennedy's

amendment.

The House also rejected 211-209 an amendment by Rep. Elizabeth Furse, D-

Oregon, to repeal the sale of salvage timber from federal lands. The sale

of downed and diseased timber was approved in 1995 but has come under

attack from environmentalists, who argue it permits logging companies to

take healthy trees.

The votes were a disappointment for environmental groups who had won

victories Wednesday with the passage of an amendment to protect an

endangered seabird, the marbled murrelet, in California.

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