A Newsletter by and about the Quilcene Ancient Forest Coalition, September 1996

Please keep up the pressure. Action on the rider is still expected soon now that Congress is back in session. Senator Murray needs to know definitively that we want her to halt the logging rider. But we don't want her to be involved in any bargaining that would include questionable concepts of "forest health" management.

As the Western Ancient Forest Campaign (WAFC) reports: There appears to be renewed momentum for a Senate compromise to pass "forest health" legislation in return for Logging Rider repeal. Senators Patty Murray (D-WA) and Tom Daschle (D-SD) are leading this effort with several other key Senators watching and perhaps preparing to cut a deal. A meeting was expected last Wednesday afternoon between all of the interested Senate offices. Activists should take the opportunity to express your concerns. Please call Senator Murray and urge her to oppose any forest health compromise. Rider Repeal; No "Forest Health" Deal!

Remember you can use the 1-800-962-3524 number and have your call transferred to her office.

In addition all activists are encouraged to contact the White House. Remind the Administration that the damage from rider sales continues to mount and that immediate action is needed to withdraw or cancel the sales (WAFC recently submitted a list of 286 sales.) Express your disappointment with the Glickman directive which will stop only a small portion of lawless logging and which is now being undercut by reported exceptions.

Let the Administration know that you expect stronger action to stop the rider. Urge the President to insist that the rider be halted as part of the Interior Appropriations bill or Continuing Resolution (CR). Please call the White House Comment Line at 202/456-1111 (9-5 ET), and write to President Clinton, The White House, Washington, DC 20500; email is president@whitehouse.gov.

WAFC executive director Jim Jontz remarked, "House Speaker Newt Gingrich says, 'You have to tell your friends and your neighbors, you have to call talk radio, you have to write letters to the editor, you have to be engaged in communicating things.' He wasn't talking about stopping the Rider, but the same advice applies."

Over 228,000 signatures were gathered for this measure to ban baiting and hounding of Washington's black bears, cougars and bobcats. Now voters can decide on the November 5 ballot whether to eliminate two unsporting hunting practices currently used to kill these predators.

Send donations needed for the ad campaign to counter opposing interests to: Washington Wildlife Alliance, 2319 N. 45th St. #203, Seattle, WA 98103.

Luna, Estella, Aldo Carl and Nina Leopold--surviving children of the celebrated forester and naturalist Aldo Leopold--are challenging a logging industry supporter who used their father's name in defense of a so-called "forest health" bill now before Congress.

In recent weeks, the logging industry has ramped up its lobbying for an innocent-sounding bill--the "Federal Lands Forest Health Protection and Restoration Act," sponsored by Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho. In an article sent to newspapers around the country, it was argued that Aldo Leopold would have supported the Craig bill.

But in a letter last week, Leopold's four surviving children--each of whom holds a doctorate in natural sciences--expressed outrage that their father's name would be used in support of a measure that would, in reality, cause tremendous harm to the nation's public forests. The Leopolds' letter was sent to editorial writers across the country.

Sen. Craig's proposed legislation "runs exactly counter to Aldo Leopold's published ideas about stewardship of the national forests," the Leopold children wrote, "for the bill would promote dubious `salvage' logging practices in the name of forest health."

In their letter, the Leopolds noted that President Clinton's "Northwest Forest Plan" was an attempt at compromise between conservationist demands for protection of public forests and timber corporations which desire to expand logging. The Craig bill, they wrote, now "threatens to undermine even the weak protection measures in the President's plan.

"We cannot imagine how Aldo Leopold's name could possibly be employed in defense of this bill!

"Written by logging industry lobbyists and rammed through committee without adequate input from scientists or the public, Sen. Larry Craig's bill, S. 391, would permanently undermine important environmental laws and restrict the public's ability to challenge destructive logging practices," the Leopolds wrote.

In his bill, "Sen. Craig, one of the largest recipients of timber PAC money in Congress, narrowly focuses the `forest health' debate on the health of commercially valuable timber--at the expense of the entire forest ecosystem.

"Decades of unrestricted logging and fire control have created unnatural, unhealthy conditions and increased fire risks in a number of National Forests in the West. One recent scientific study, the Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project, prepared for Congress by more than 100 independent scientists, concluded that 'timber harvest, through its effects on forest structure, local microclimate and fuel accumulation, has increased fire severity more than any other recent human activity,'" they wrote.

Additionally, the Leopolds noted, a letter to President Clinton signed by 111 scientists and researchers in June concluded that salvage logging "increases susceptibility to catastrophic fires and insect outbreaks."

"Congress," they wrote, "should reject Sen. Craig's poorly conceived bill that pretends to aid `forest health' but in fact serves the interests of short-term timber industry profiteering."

Instead of more salvage logging and new logging road construction, they wrote, "what is needed now is ecological restoration. We need a different approach which looks at specific regions and problems including ecological use of fire, and that advocates methods to restore the health of the entire ecosystem, not just trees with commercial value. This idea would fit well with Aldo Leopold's vision and philosophy--maintaining our remaining national forests as the international treasures that they are."

Considered by many to be America's greatest naturalist, Aldo Leopold was an early leader in the wilderness conservation movement. Among his many achievements he is noted for his classic textbook, Game Management, and for his numerous essays on conservation, published in A Sand County Almanac. He died in 1948.

Aldo Leopold's surviving children include: Dr. Luna B. Leopold, an emeritus professor of geology at U.C. Berkeley; Dr. Nina L. Bradley, a restoration ecologist with the Leopold Foundation of Baraboo, Wis.; Dr. Aldo Carl Leopold, an emeritus professor of plant sciences at Cornell University; and Dr. Estella Leopold, a professor of botany at the University of Washington.

**QUAFCO members visited the Rocky Timber Sale area on Aug. 9. It was a hot day, and the contrast between the baking, steep clearcuts and the coolness of the small riparian area was dramatic. A good job of obliteration was done on the upper road; slash piles will be burned after fall rains begin; current roads will remain open for access; and replanting may be delayed up to two years, since it normally takes that long to acquire trees for replanting, and the rider's enforced timeline shortcircuited anything "normal." It was a painful visit.

**Rep. Norm Dicks was in Port Townsend recently and we took the opportunity to give him "before" and "after" pictures of Rocky. There really wasn't time for discussion at that point, but we wanted him to recognize that his original promotion of and voting for the rider resulted in a very concrete result. We'll deliver Caraco pictures when we meet with him, tentatively next month.

**Rep. Dicks has a 74% approval rating from WashPIRG, in voting on public interest issues. He's taken $3,800 from the tobacco lobby from 1986-95; $123,395 from developers fighting the Endangered Species Act, 1989-95; and $134,250 from polluters benefiting from taxpayer handouts, 1989-95. Sen. Patty Murray's rating is 94%; Sen. Slade Gorton's is 0%.

**Mayr Bros. and the Forest Service are close to settlement on the four 318 sales they purchased. It looks like there will be a mutual cancellation and enough cash settlement to pay off the mill loan. We hope the mill can function soon. The buyout will relieve the problem of finding substitute volume for those sales. The Forest Service is beginning negotiations with the two purchasers of the remaining three 318 sales on the Soleduck. More funds for their buyouts need to be found.

**Diane Hoffman is acquiring academic credit from Skagit Valley College for gaining experience with QUAFCO's work. For her first quarter this summer, she received an "A." Congratulations, Diane!

**Christine Pacheco, from Western Washington in Bellingham, interned with us during August. You may have talked with her as she organized our phone tree. She has quite a family history toward the West End: Her great-great-grandparents' names are the source of Rixon Pass and Mt. Carrie. We enjoyed working with her.

QUAFCO News September 1996