U.S. Senate Nixes Timber Sale Subsidy Cuts

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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

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Forest Networking a Project of forests.org

http://forests.org/ -- Forest Conservation Archives

http://forests.org/web/ -- Discuss Forest Conservation

9/16/99

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by EE

American forests took it in the chin, as the U.S. Senate voted to

grant the timber industry increased subsidies at the expense of

wildlife programs and habitat rehabilitation among other things. Try

living without an ecosystem once.

g.b.

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Title: SENATE Nixes Timber Sale Subsidy Cuts

Source: Environment News Service

Date: September 15, 1999

Byline: Catherine Lazaroff

WASHINGTON, DC, September 15, 1999 (ENS) - The U.S. Senate Tuesday

voted down a proposal to reduce taxpayer subsidized logging in

America's National Forests.

The Senate voted 54-43 against an amendment to the Fiscal Year 2000

Interior Department Appropriations bill that would have removed $33.6

million from the National Forest timber sale budget, transferring

$23.6 million to wildlife protection programs, habitat rehabilitation

and road maintenance, and $10 million to debt reduction.

Environmental groups criticized lawmakers for putting the interests

of the forest industry over those of the taxpaying public and the

forests themselves.

"Rather than protecting our National Forests and our children's

future, the Senate voted to waste our taxes and fatten timber company

profits," said Sean Cosgrove, Sierra Club's forest policy

spokesperson. "Our children will pay for the Senate's vote three

times - today when they can't hike and fish in forests that are

logged, and in the future when as taxpayers they will have to repair

the damage done by logging and when they have to pay off a larger

national debt."

According to the most recent General Accounting Office data, from

1995 to 1997 Congress lost $1 billion in revenues from timber sales

on public lands by subsidizing the timber sale program. In contrast,

for every $1 generated by logging in National Forests, recreation on

the same lands generates nearly $40, and creates 30 times as many

jobs, according to the Sierra Club.

The failed amendment, sponsored by Republican Senator Peter

Fitzgerald of Illinois and Democratic Senators Richard Bryan of

Nevada, Richard Durbin of Illinois, Harry Reid of Nevada and Ron

Wyden of Oregon, would have reduced the timber subsidy. It would have

redirected funds toward programs that in Fiscal Year 1996 offered

more than 167,000 jobs to local communities while helping to restore

habitat for endangered, threatened and sensitive species and monitor

their recovery progress.

"The American people were robbed today," said Brian Vincent of the

American Lands Alliance. "Some members of Congress still think our

public forests should be sold for private gain. Our forests are worth

more than corporate pork and plywood."

The Bryan amendment would have returned the budget for National

Forests logging to the level originally proposed by President Bill

Clinton and Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck.

In the Senate Appropriations Committee, committee chairman Senator

Slade Gorton, a Washington Republican, raised logging funding by $33

million, mostly by cutting funds proposed for fish and wildlife

protection and road maintenance and decommissioning, an important

program that helps to keep roads from contributing silt to streams.

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