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The recent announcement that the Bush Administration is lifting some hurdles to commercial logging on national forests may have looked promising in newspaper headlines, but little will likely come of it.
With another lawsuit sure to follow, this latest salvo is only the sound of yet another skirmish in the war over logging on public lands. President Bush is enjoying virtually no support from Congress in the waning moments of his presidency, and the court system has so far not allowed substantive changes in regulations outlined in current law.
Logging companies, their shrinking number of employees and the communities who depend on them have seen no respite since the Northwest Forest Plan was instituted in 1993. Although sold as a plan that would protect endangered species while guaranteeing a reduced level of logging, it never delivered.
Because restrictions were too rigid, the level of logging that was promised off national forests was never delivered.
It’s time to start over with a new plan.
The latest news is the U.S. Forest Service is attempting to drop the “survey and manage” provision in the Forest Plan. This has required that before any logging was approved, the Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management needed to look for hundreds of species of snails, lichens, mosses, mushrooms, truffles and small invertebrates.
Their presence, particularly in older stands considered old growth, effectively prohibited logging.
In a long, drawn-out process, the timber industry has sued, and the Bush administration responded by dropping the search-and-manage provision, only to have it rejected by the courts last year. The Forest Service then worked up an environmental impact statement which led to the recent declaration by the Department of Agriculture that the survey and manage provisions could be eliminated.
Environmental organizations, who have so far been extremely successful seeing that The Northwest Forest Plan is upheld chapter and verse, will send the matter back to court.
The Northwest Forest Plan turned out to be far more limiting than most people understood. The details, such as the survey and manage provision that was added late in the process, restricted logging more than the public was led to believe at the time.
The prohibitions stuck while the allowances failed.
It’s time the plan be reworked to where it protects the most sensitive parts of the forests in Oregon, Washington and Northern California, while still allowing a reasonable amount of sustainable commercial logging.
With another lawsuit sure to follow, this latest salvo is only the sound of yet another skirmish in the war over logging on public lands. President Bush is enjoying virtually no support from Congress in the waning moments of his presidency, and the court system has so far not allowed substantive changes in regulations outlined in current law.
Logging companies, their shrinking number of employees and the communities who depend on them have seen no respite since the Northwest Forest Plan was instituted in 1993. Although sold as a plan that would protect endangered species while guaranteeing a reduced level of logging, it never delivered.
Because restrictions were too rigid, the level of logging that was promised off national forests was never delivered.
It’s time to start over with a new plan.
The latest news is the U.S. Forest Service is attempting to drop the “survey and manage” provision in the Forest Plan. This has required that before any logging was approved, the Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management needed to look for hundreds of species of snails, lichens, mosses, mushrooms, truffles and small invertebrates.
Their presence, particularly in older stands considered old growth, effectively prohibited logging.
In a long, drawn-out process, the timber industry has sued, and the Bush administration responded by dropping the search-and-manage provision, only to have it rejected by the courts last year. The Forest Service then worked up an environmental impact statement which led to the recent declaration by the Department of Agriculture that the survey and manage provisions could be eliminated.
Environmental organizations, who have so far been extremely successful seeing that The Northwest Forest Plan is upheld chapter and verse, will send the matter back to court.
The Northwest Forest Plan turned out to be far more limiting than most people understood. The details, such as the survey and manage provision that was added late in the process, restricted logging more than the public was led to believe at the time.
The prohibitions stuck while the allowances failed.
It’s time the plan be reworked to where it protects the most sensitive parts of the forests in Oregon, Washington and Northern California, while still allowing a reasonable amount of sustainable commercial logging.
