New forest policy?

[Jim]

I like this idea. Stop road-building and harvesting on the public dole and put resources into managing forests around communities. I've always thought that if we stop throwing money away to the timber industry we could hire local folks who know the nuts and bolts of land clearing for managing the urban-wildland interface. Better than creating more fire problems thru the subsidized forest industry.

 

http://www.spokesmanreview.com/idaho/story.asp?ID=15492

[slothrop]

Sounds like a good plan.

 

Did you notice this part of the article, though?

Representatives of the Forest Service and its parent Agriculture Department in Washington, D.C., referred calls to the Bush-Cheney campaign, which dismissed the proposal as campaign politics aimed at building support among environmentalists while ignoring concerns of mainstream Westerners.

 

WTF are public servants referring reporters' questions to the Bush/Cheney campaign?!? Can't they make a comment without permission from the political machine?

 

And how is Kerry's plan ignoring "mainstream Westerners"? Fscking doublespeak. Of course it's politically motivated! But that doesn't mean it's bad!

[Jim]

What is typical about this, and almost any news article, is the lack of any critical analysis by the author. It's always a report of this guy says this and the other guy says this.

[Ducknut]

I like this idea. http://www.spokesmanreview.com/idaho/story.asp?ID=15492

 

You scared me Jim. I thought you were supporting this new policy What NATIONAL Forest SYSTEM? Which wouldn't be like the Jim I know.

[slothrop]

What is typical about this, and almost any news article, is the lack of any critical analysis by the author. It's always a report of this guy says this and the other guy says this.

 

Better than having the reporter leave out the facts and replace them with assumptions, half-baked analysis, and unverified "sources".

[sailBOI]

What is typical about this, and almost any news article, is the lack of any critical analysis by the author. It's always a report of this guy says this and the other guy says this.

 

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2001979583_collin15.html

=============================================================

 

Few things say summer in the Northwest like the image of downy youngsters

with laptops chaining themselves to old-growth trees. So on Monday,

Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman officially inaugurated the protest season,

announcing in Idaho a plan to reopen parts of the federal forestlands for

road building.

 

 

The Associated Press called the move "a Bush administration proposal to

boost logging." New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, primping for the Democratic

National Convention, stormed that the plan was "another abdication of the

federal government's responsibilities in stewardship."

 

 

In fact, the plot would just overturn a giveaway penned by Bill Clinton in

one of his last days in office - proclaiming some 59 million acres of

federal forestland off-limits to any road building. Under the new plan,

states and governors would be given the power to reconsider: Those who

wished to maintain the status quo would petition the federal government to

maintain the roadless rule within their borders.

 

 

So what are the Democratic governors so upset about? Richardson and Oregon's

Gov. Ted Kulongoski will be empowered to keep their pristine tinderboxes

under a signature of their own. But judging by their responses, it's not as

appealing to support radical environmental policies when your office is on

the line - such things are more conven-iently accomplished through

presidential fiat than persuading voters.

 

 

"The idea that governors would want to jump headfirst into the political

snake pit of managing national forests is laughable," Phillip Clapp,

president of the National Environmental Trust said recently. Or here's

Washington's own Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Bainbridge Island. "Shifting the

responsibility of federal forests to the states is a risky and absurd

policy," he fumed, "that will cede the management of federal lands to the

whims of individual governors."

 

 

Governors in states that have seen communities devastated by forest fires

and the closing of local logging operations and sawmills since the 1994

Northwest Forest Plan may not consider the issue quite so whimsical. Over

its own brief lifetime, the roadless designation has been the font of

numerous lawsuits and regulatory murkiness in the Western states that are

home to some 97 percent of the areas included.

 

 

Green-group rhetoric maintains that the new plan is just more business

nose-rubbing with the Bush administration - that the proposal represents a

bald-faced subsidy to Big Timber companies. But economically speaking, the

opposite may be true: If logging results from giving states a say in the

management of federal forests, it's more likely to benefit the smaller

players. "Timber companies are basically the loser," points out Bruce Lippke

of the University of Washington. "More timber on the market will just mean a

lower price."

 

 

Environmentalists' emotional pleas are usually on behalf of the skyscraper

trees. But "the money these days is in medium-growth trees," says Eric

Montague, director of environmental policy at the Washington Policy

Institute. "All the mills to handle old-growth trees have gone out of

business and uncertainty in the marketplace makes it unlikely companies

would invest in restoring those facilities."

 

 

Although it's the Weyerhaeusers of the world that present the biggest

bull's-eye for tall-tree activists, the worst devastation in the national

forests in recent years has come from the environmentalists' own policies.

"Forests are burning billions of board feet in smoke and ash because we're

not taking care of it," Chris West of the American Forest Resource Council

explains.

 

 

Since the '80s, when a hands-off policy on forest management became the

trend, many national parks have been torched by devastating wildfires, like

those that burned a hole the size of Rhode Island in Southern Oregon two

years ago. In the refracted heat of the moment, the fauna on the left side

of the aisle, including Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle, California

Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, were racing to approve

expedited thinning and to curtail environmental regulations gone awry. Now,

objections have returned even to the cutting of dead trees.

 

 

John Kerry has been leaving his own trail of breadcrumbs through this issue.

In recent days, he has been sidling up to hunting and sportsmen groups to

put a middle-of-the-road cast on his wilderness positions. It's easy enough

for Eastern urban elites to wax indignant at the despoiling of their

vacation landscape. But there aren't enough rabbit holes in the forest to

hide Westerners from the economic realities that must inform the balance

between protection and sensible use.

 

 

With the help of the media, groups like Greenpeace and the Sierra Club have

been crowned as the only legitimate voices of the forest. Tree-sits these

days resemble a summer camp, with young activists e-mailing dispatches on

the number of days since they last had a shower.

 

 

No doubt that will effectively deter the evil loggers, but as the underlying

environmental policies go awry, voters will look for more-sensible solutions

and more-localized accountability for the management of public lands.

Hysterical missives notwithstanding, there isn't much of a contingent out

there for paving Yellowstone. Let's just be sure the kids are unchained by

the time fire season starts.

 

 

Collin Levey writes Thursdays for editorial pages of The Times. E-mail her

at clevey@seattletimes.com

 

 

 

Copyright C 2004 The Seattle Times Company

 

"Better than having the reporter leave out the facts and replace them with assumptions, half-baked analysis, and unverified "sources"."

[graupel]

This thing may be an editorial, but for me it sure fails to make a point. If your opinion is not well translated in an editorial, what is the point of writing and publishing it?

[iain]

Don't you understand? Logging saves forests from those pyromaniac environmentalists. It's all about forest health you numbskull.

[graupel]

Since the '80s, when a hands-off policy on forest management became the trend, many national parks have been torched by devastating wildfires, like those that burned a hole the size of Rhode Island in Southern Oregon two years ago.

 

I guess suppressing fires over the years had nothing to do with it.

 

I guess the writer is saying, "Them dang trees are out there growing unchecked like weeds, so ya needs to mow it all down so there is no fuel for the fires".

[sailBOI]

Since the '80s, when a hands-off policy on forest management became the trend, many national parks have been torched by devastating wildfires, like those that burned a hole the size of Rhode Island in Southern Oregon two years ago.

 

I guess suppressing fires over the years had nothing to do with it.

 

I guess the writer is saying, "Them dang trees are out there growing unchecked like weeds, so ya needs to mow it all down so there is no fuel for the fires".

 

Environmental policy is not out the window, the latest cutting in the Olympic National Forest is thinning. Last year I had to build my house with Canadian lumber, what is the sense in that, when the trade dificit is $45 Billion/month ?

[cj001f]

Environmental policy is not out the window, the latest cutting in the Olympic National Forest is thinning. Last year I had to build my house with Canadian lumber, what is the sense in that, when the trade dificit is $45 Billion/month ?

It's cheaper, it will be cheaper even if the econuts disapear. I believe it's called "the Free Market"

[barkernews]

Better than having the reporter leave out the facts and replace them with assumptions, half-baked analysis, and unverified "sources".

 

Yeah. That's what FOX News is for...