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WORLDWIDE
FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS
Stop
United States' National Forest Decline
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Forest
Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises
http://forests.org/
8/24/97
OVERVIEW,
SOURCE & COMMENTARY by EE
The
Washington Post comes out editorially in favor of much reduced
cutting
on United States National Forests.
These lands are being
rapaciously
logged and are in systematic ecological decline. This is
being
done often at an economic loss. There
are a number of essential
actions
that must be taken: ecosystem
management must be more
consistently
practiced, no more road construction in wilderness areas,
zero
cut in remaining virgin forests, landscape planning to buffer and
allow
more pristine areas to remain so, and less intensive harvesting
on
secondary regrowth. These lands belong
to the American people and
not to
the timber industry and their bureaucratic friends. Its nice
to see
mainstream media awakened to the widespread dramatic forest
decline
being paid for by U.S. taxpayers.
g.b.
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RELAYED
TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: Cut the Cutting
Source: The Washington Post, pg A12
Status: Copyrighted, contact source for reprint
permission
Date: August 19, 1997
Byline: Editorial
THE
21-YEAR-OLD law governing logging in the national forests is too
weak.
The current Congress, oblivious to the damage that is being done
to a
dwindling resource, seeks to weaken it further -- open up even
more of
the public preserve to the timber industry. The need instead
is to
tighten the statute -- strengthen it.
The
administration should take the lead on this -- play aggressive
offense
on the issue, not just intermittent defense. It is a mystery
why it
has not. The step should be taken now; time is not on the
forests'
side. Some advocates would shift the current policy all the
way to
zero cut. In our view, it need not go that far. There are
instances
in which careful continued cutting of land already logged
may
make good sense. But the burden of proof in the statute ought to
be
changed so that continued cutting in the federal forests becomes
the
clear exception, not the rule. We are at a point in the
exploitation
of this resource where the duty of the government is to
preserve
what remains.
The
government began to create the national forest system 100 years
ago.
Commercial logging inside the forests began in earnest about 50
years
ago, after World War II, when demand for timber was high and
private
lands had been depleted. Congress made various efforts to
control
the process. A law was passed in 1960, another -- the current
National
Forest Management Act -- in 1976. The laws have had less
effect
than sponsors hoped, in part because of the muddy language that
is too
often the product of legislative compromise, in part because
their
enforcement has been in the hands of an agency -- the
Agriculture
Department and its Forest Service -- widely regarded as
the
willing captive of the industry whose activities it is meant
to
regulate.
Much of
the effort to tighten administration of the management act has
occurred
in court, and in part on the basis of other statutes -- the
Endangered
Species Act, for example. In Congress, meanwhile, there
have
been the opposite efforts to waive or ease the laws just about
any
time they pinched. Such efforts multiplied after the Republicans
took
over Congress in the 1994 elections. A so-called salvage timber
rider
to an appropriations bill expanded logging throughout the
system,
and there have been major fights about the logging of
particular
forests in such states as Alaska and California. Now Sen.
Larry
Craig of Idaho, chairman of the forests subcommittee, is pushing
legislation
that would weaken the management act directly. Those on
the
other side of the issue have tried, thus far without success and
with
only limited administration support, to use the appropriations
process
to block further construction of logging roads in unlogged
parts
of the forest. The roads are a major part of the subsidy that
the
government somehow continues to give the industry even in what is
otherwise
a tight budget era.
But the
year-at-a-time appropriations process is the wrong place to
wage a
fundamental fight such as this. Nor are related statutes having
to do
with endangered species or clean water the right vehicles. The
president
ought to make an issue of the forests, force Congress to
confront
the question of preserving them head-on -- while there are
still
some worth preserving. There would be the usual arguments
against
-- need for the timber (lest home prices soar), need for the
jobs,
need for the local revenues the timbering generates. But the
federal
forests make up only a tiny share of the national timber
supply,
and the rest of these are local problems. That doesn't mean
they're
not serious, but the price of solving them ought not be the
loss of
a national treasure.
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TEXT ENDS###
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