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> From: Laurie Starfire <starfire@cygnus.com>
> Newsgroups: alt.gathering.rainbow
> Subject: Washington Post editorial 10.27.97 Hacking Down the Forest (fwd)
> Date: Wednesday, October 29, 1997 11:26 AM
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Tue, 28 Oct 1997 00:44:45 -0800
> From: Tim Hermach <ZeroCut1@forestcouncil.org>
> To: wall-list@igc.org
> Subject: Washington Post editorial 10.27.97 Hacking Down the Forest
>
> >Hacking Down the Forest
> >
> >Sunday, October 26, 1997; Page C06
> >The Washington Post
> >
> >THE NATIONAL forests once may have seemed a limitless resource, but now
> >they are a dwindling one, and policy should be changed accordingly.
> >Commercial logging in the forests needs to become the exception, not the
> >rule. That should be especially true with regard to pristine areas not
> >logged already.
> >
> >Unfortunately, Congress and to a lesser extent the administration
> >continue to follow policies pointing in the opposite direction. Under
> >the false flags of balance, sustainability and the like, they are
> >allowing destruction of the forests to go on. Only the pace has slowed,
> >but not enough. There are several current examples.
> >
> >(1) The Forest Service has approved -- but Agriculture Secretary Dan
> >Glickman has not yet signed off on -- a new management plan for the
> >great Tongass National Forest in southeast Alaska. The plan would allow
> >more logging than required by either the current state of demand for
> >timber products or the long-term economic health of the southeastern
> >Alaska region. It is almost as if the service, in setting the maximum
> >logging levels, had been seeking to entice back into the region a timber
> >industry only recently departed and of which the forest is well rid.
> >
> >Administration officials defend the plan on grounds that it's better --
> >is based on better science and is more protective of the forest, the
> >species within it, etc. -- than its predecessor. No doubt that's true,
> >but it's also the wrong standard. The plan still would do unnecessary
> >and irreparable environmental harm. The politics are hard, but the
> >secretary should order it cut back.
> >
> >(2) Congress seems well on the way to passing legislation the president
> >will almost surely sign, though he shouldn't, short-circuiting the
> >normal procedures and ordering adoption of a particular management plan
> >for three forests in northern California. The plan would permit a fair
> >amount of cutting. Its virtue from the politicians' standpoint is that
> >it was put forward as a consensus proposal by a group representing
> >industry and, supposedly, environmentalists in the affected region.
> >Supporters tout it as a possible model for a new approach to forest
> >management; local consensus becomes the key. But these are national, not
> >local forests, and while local views need to be taken into account in
> >their management, they need to be managed as other than adjuncts to loca
> >l economies. The model appeals to those who would shift political power
> >generally from the federal to the local level, but in this case it is
> >wrong.
> >
> >(3) Congress this year came within a whisker -- a vote or two in either
> >house -- of cutting funds for further road-building in the forests. The
> >road-building program is doubly objectionable -- a subsidy to the
> >industry that simultaneously opens up and allows it to enter parts of
> >the forests not previously cut. Now, instead of a cut in these funds,
> >the Interior Department appropriations bill is said to contain a
> >provision whose effect could be to expand the road-building program, in
> >that it removes a previous cap. Particularly in the House, the
> >administration failed to fight as it should have to limit these funds; a
> >greater effort on its part and the vote would likely have come out the
> >other way. The president still has leverage over the issue; there are
> >other objectionable features to the bill, and there continued to be
> >debate within the administration last week about whether he should sign
> >or veto it. In a year of so much supposed support for economy in
> >government, what better object lesson to cut back than this?
> >
> >There's an effort now in the Senate to rewrite forest-management law in
> >a way that likely would lead to a larger cut each year. The chances the
> >bill, by Sen. Larry Craig, will make it all the way into law are pretty
> >slim. What ought to occur instead is a tightening of the law in the
> >opposite direction. Why, in the name of the conservation in which it
> >professes to believe, does the administration not propose that?
> >
> Tim Hermach
> Native Forest Council
> PO Box 2190
> Eugene, OR 97402
> (541) 688-2600; fax 689-9835 or 461-2156
>
> web page: http://www.forestcouncil.org
>
>
>