"He who is welling to gave up “Freedoms” for Safety desires nether freedom nor safety" - Ben Franklin
&
"One useless man is called a disgrace; two useless men are called a law
firm; and three or more useless men are a congress" - John Adams
Under
the guise of preventing forest fires, the Bush administration is
planning the biggest timber sale on public lands in modern history. The
Biscuit Project would allow logging of 372 million board feet of timber
across 30 square miles of southwest Oregon's Siskiyou National
Forest—enough timber to fill 70,000 logging trucks. The logging would
be done on wildlands of uncommon beauty and ecological diversity, far
from any community that could be damaged in a fire.
"It's
the biggest logging sale since World War II," says Steve Holmer,
communications director with the Unified Forest Defense Campaign, a
coalition of national and regional conservation organizations. "Timber
companies have made huge contributions to the Bush campaign. This
project is political payback."
Holmer tells BushGreenwatch
that the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) initially proposed a much smaller
project. "When the Forest Service first started looking at the area,
they planned maybe a 100 million board feet sale." That changed once
Mark Rey, formerly a top lobbyist for the timber industry who is now
the administration's undersecretary for natural resources and
environment in the Department of Agriculture, began to work on the
sale.
Conservationists will "fight tooth and nail" against
sales in roadless areas and old-growth reserves, but may support some
careful logging in the areas in between, called "matrix lands," says
Holmer.
The Biscuit Logging Project may violate federal
forest protection rules. Some areas are protected under the Clinton-era
Roadless Area Conservation Rule, while the huge size of the project may
violate the Northwest Forest Plan, also adopted during the Clinton
administration. [1] Moreover, logging will disqualify 48,000 acres of
the Siskiyou from consideration as federal wilderness area.
In
an unusual step, the USFS has granted "emergency exemptions" to 11
sales included in the project. These exemptions enable the USFS to
allow logging to begin immediately after issuing its final plan for
each sale, even though there is usually a waiting period required for
public appeal.
Holmer sees politics in this rush to cut.
"This is an election year. Oregon was a close state in the last
election. The Bush administration is using the Biscuit Project to show
they've come up with a solution to the fire issue." There is also an
economic factor. "If the trees aren't cut soon, they'll rot to the
point of losing economic value. If they're not logged this summer, [the
timber companies] will pretty much lose their chance."
The
areas encompassed by the Biscuit Project were burned in the 2002
"Biscuit Fire," the largest forest fire in Oregon's history. Fire is an
intrinsic part of the ecology of western forests, and the Siskiyou has
already begun to regenerate. [2] The burned trees are ecologically
essential to the area's recovery, and sit on some of the Siskiyou's
wildest and most fragile acres--including old-growth reserves, steep
streambanks and riverbanks, and salmon spawning grounds.
In
addition to being one of the largest public lands logging sales in
history, the Biscuit Logging Project may be one of the most expensive
to taxpayers, ultimately costing the public over $34 million.
"There
are costs to preparing a sale," says Holmer. "The Forest Service has to
build roads. Or if it's logging with helicopters, you've got to create
landing pads, 2-acre clearcuts. Also, salvage timber sells at
25-percent of green timber. It's the same wood, same volume, at fire
sale prices. The timber industry gets a huge windfall because it's a
salvage project."
Holmer emphasizes the survival of the forest—a shelter for wildlife and wild rivers—is at stake.
"Under
the Clinton administration, the Siskiyou was almost made a national
monument. It's an area of unparalleled biological diversity, home to
rare species that exist only in this region, clean water for salmon,
and very important to the local tourism and recreation industry. If
there was going to be a new national park on the west coast, the
Siskiyou would be a prime candidate."
###
TAKE ACTION
You
can call your US Senators at 202-224-3121 and let them know what you
think of this timber sale. To find out who your Senators' are you can
go to:
www.senate.gov.
###
SOURCES:
[1] "Biscuit Salvage: Biggest Timber Sale in History," The Wilderness Society.
[2] Ibid.
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OH! Yeah, he becomes the PRES. OH! WELL! What does John K. care, he'll be OUT of it.
This morning at 5:10 A.M. Pacific time Kerry named John Edwards as his VP. [(Edit-Add)And at about 6 he did.]
