Bush Pacific NW timber plan draws fire from greens
Date: 28-Nov-02
Country: USA
Author: Christopher Doering
The decision to revise logging rules for Northwest forests escalates a long-running battle between environmentalists and Republican lawmakers over how to manage forests.
Administration officials argue thinning is vital to remove overgrowth of brush and dead trees, which can serve as fuel to spread wildfires.
But environmental groups contend efforts to thin the forests are merely an attempt to remove older trees, coveted by large timber businesses.
The latest proposal by the Bush administration would overhaul a Clinton-era plan that protected nearly 24 million acres of forest land in Washington, Oregon and California. The area is home to salmon-bearing streams and endangered species.
The change means loggers would no longer be required to consider what impact removing trees would have on endangered fish habitat or area species when a timber sale is proposed.
"They are going to continue (gutting forest plans) as long as they can get away with it," said Sean Cosgrove, a forest specialist with the Sierra Club. "This administration has made no bones about removing forest protections to benefit the timber industry."
The Bush administration said the rule change simply clarifies conflicting language in the 1994 plan that has spawned a series of lawsuits.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Forest Service, a division of the U.S. Agriculture Department, said it aimed to remove an estimated 800 million board feet of lumber from the Pacific Northwest forests. But with lawsuits that have delayed many thinning projects, about 300 million board feet will be removed this year, the agency said.
Rex Holloway, spokesman for the Forest Service in the Pacific Northwest, said the revised rule does not eliminate protection for fish and endangered habitat.
"Absolutely not," Holloway said. "To say we are going to destroy fish habitat is ludicrous."
The proposed rule for the Pacific Northwest forests will not be finalized for several months.
Green groups blasted the administration's actions and feared a similar rollback will occur when revised regulations for managing some 155 national forests are announced in the next few days.
The new approach will limit public comment and skirt environmental rules, thereby opening forests to more logging in order to please big businesses, they said.
"These regulations are clearly an early gift for the timber industry, but they give the American people who want to protect our national forests nothing to be thankful for," said Tiernan Sittenfeld, spokeswoman for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.
The green groups worry such a plan would be the latest in a series of rollbacks in forest protection. Earlier this year, the president proposed easing environmental reviews to allow the removal of trees and underbrush as a way to prevent wildfires.
Among the earliest decisions made by the Bush administration was a decision to halt a Clinton-era rule that would prohibit road building and lumber removal on 60 million acres of U.S. forest land.
