SEPT. 5 - FRIDAY
ANOTHER CALL-IN DAY TO
SENATOR PATTY MURRAY
SENATOR SLADE GORTON
1-888-723-5246 (toll-free number)
The Senate did not vote on the Bryan amendment before it recessed for August. Thank you for the calls you made on July 29. It's now time for reminder calls to the Senate before the next action is taken on the amendment, expected on Sept. 9.
Please call between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET (6 a.m. and 2 p.m. local time) and ask the Senators to support the Bryan amendment, to protect roadless areas and eliminate subsidies for logging road construction. If you miss calling Friday, call Monday.
If you have the time, it's great to ask for the staff person who handles National Forest issues and have a discussion, or at least leave a message on their voice mail.
If the toll-free number stays too busy, you can call their offices directly (before 8 a.m. our time is really cheap). That information again is:
Senator Murray - 202/224-2621 fax 202/224-0238
e-mail: senator_murray@murray.senate.gov
Senator Gorton - 202/224-3441 fax 202/224-9393
e-mail: senator_gorton@gorton.senate.gov
As Mitch Friedman, executive director of Northwest Ecosystem Alliance, wrote in the Summer 1997 edition of Northwest Conservation:
"Roads routinely bleed sediment into streams and cause landslides. One study found that about 70 percent of the 422 landslides that occurred during a 1996 storm in Idaho started at roads. It is no coincidence that our healthiest remaining salmon runs emanate from roadless areas. Even Agriculture Department Under Secretary Jim Lyons admits, 'Our number one water quality problem in the national forest system is roads.'
It is simply impossible to cost-effectively build and maintain massive road systems through remote forest on steep and unstable slopes. If loggers had to pay for the full costs of their roads, including the damage they cause to our wildlife and stream resources, most timber sales would be seen as they really are: too expensive to be worth cutting...
American politics has sunk to the level of people defending their handouts, regardless of the cost to the public and our natural resources..."
Tuesday, August 19, 1997; Page A12
The Washington Post
The 21-year old law governing logging in the national forests is too weak. The current Congress, oblivious to the damage that is being done to a dwindling resource, seeks to weaken it further -- open up even more of the public preserve to the timber industry. The need instead is to tighten the statute -- strengthen it.
The administration should take the lead on this -- play aggressive offense on the issue, not just intermittent defense. It is a mystery why it has not. The step should be taken now; time is not on the forests' side. Some advocates would shift the current policy all the way to zero cut. In our view, it need not go that far. There are instances in which careful continued cutting of land already logged may make good sense. But the burden of proof in the statute ought to be changed so that continued cutting in the federal forests becomes the clear exception, not the rule. We are at a point in the exploitation of this resource where the duty of the government is to preserve what remains.
The government began to create the national forest system 100 years ago. Commercial logging inside the forests began in earnest about 50 years ago, after World War II, when demand for timber was high and private lands had been depleted. Congress made various efforts to control the process. A law was passed in 1960, another -- the current National Forest Management Act -- in 1976. The laws have had less effect than sponsors hoped, in part because of the muddy language that is too often the product of legislative compromise, in part because their enforcement has been in the hands of an agency -- the Agriculture Department and its Forest Service -- widely regarded as the willing captive of the industry whose activities it is meant to regulate.
Much of the effort to tighten administration of the management act has occurred in court, and in part on the basis of other statutes -- the Endangered Species Act, for example. In Congress, meanwhile, there have been the opposite efforts to waive or ease the laws just about any time they pinched. Such efforts multiplied after the Republicans took over Congress in the 1994 elections. A so-called salvage timber rider to an appropriations bill expanded logging throughout the system, and there have been major fights about the logging of particular forests in such states as Alaska and California. Now Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho, chairman of the forests subcommittee, is pushing legislation that would weaken the management act directly. Those on the other side of the issue have tried, thus far without success and with only limited administration support, to use the appropriations process to block further construction of logging roads in unlogged parts of the forest. The roads are a maj!
or part of the subsidy that the government somehow continues to give the industry even in what is otherwise a tight budget era.
But the year-at-a-time appropriations process is the wrong place to wage a fundamental fight such as this. Nor are related statutes having to do with endangered species or clean water the right vehicles. The president ought to make an issue of the forests, force Congress to confront the question of preserving them head-on -- while there are still some worth preserving. There would be the usual arguments against -- need for the timber (lest home prices soar), need for the jobs, need for the local revenues the timbering generates. But the federal forests make up only a tiny share of the national timber supply, and the rest of these are local problems. That doesn't mean they're not serious, but the price of solving them ought not be the loss of a national treasure.
The Western Ancient Forest Campaign reports that at a June 19 hearing before the House Agriculture Committee concerning Rep. Charles Taylor's "Report on Forest Health," Chief of the Forest Service Michael Dombeck testified that "the report does not adequately analyze fire, water, wildlife, and recreation issues. Before we could evaluate the usefulness of the [report], these resource values would need to be better incorporated," Dombeck said. The Chief also rejected the report's implicit call for Congress to amend the ESA, NEPA, and NFMA. "This Administration firmly believes that the current legal framework under which the Forest Service operates has worked well in serving the needs of the American people, while protecting the environment," Dombeck testified.
The Forest Service provided a more detailed written critique that offered these conclusions: the title of the report is misleading because it does not define forest health or assess forest health conditions across the country; the report does not differentiate among various forest types and their related fire disturbance size, intensity, periodicity and effect; the report's implication that forest reserves are likely to be overrun with insects, disease and fire is inaccurate for those forest ecosystems adapted to infrequent disturbance; the report suggests that the economic value of recreation is minimal, while Forest Service data show that its value is rapidly increasing; and the report incorrectly states that endangered species problems are primarily single species problems.
The Forest Service also offered their own assessment of forest health which concluded "the nation's forests are generally in a healthy condition. While each region does have a variety of health concerns in need of attention, a listing of these concerns should not be interpreted as a description of a forest health crisis."
Forest health concerns that were noted include: fire risk in the rural-urban-wildlands interface; invasion by exotic forest insects, disease organisms, and weeds; loss of biological diversity; and weather and air pollution damage. The section on the Pacific Northwest noted excessive fire suppression, logging and grazing in the last century; the increased incidence of white pine blister and Pt. Orford cedar root disease due to past forest management practices; anadramous fish runs have been lost or drastically reduced in many watersheds; and that habitat for species associated with old growth ecosystems has been degraded and biological diversity has been diminished.
By Al Kamen, Washington Post Staff Writer, Monday, May 19, 1997; The Washington Post
Beleaguered voters seem confused and often outraged at the way Washington conducts business. That's because people on the outside don't understand how the game is played.
But floating around the Hill, apparently for use as a training tool for new staff members, is a one-page guide entitled "Washington Rules" giving the basic rules that are key to effective play in Congress and throughout government:
If it's worth fighting for, it's worth fighting dirty for.
Don't lie, cheat or steal unnecessarily.
There is always one more son of a bitch than you counted on.
An honest answer can get you into a lot of trouble.
The facts, although interesting, are irrelevant.
Firestone's Law of Forecasting: Chicken Little only has to be right once.
"No" is only an interim response.
You can't kill a bad idea.
If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you ever tried.
The truth is a variable.
A porcupine with his quills down is just another fat rodent.
You can agree with any concept or notional future option, in principle, but fight implementation every step of the way.
A promise is not a guarantee.
If you can't counter the argument, leave the meeting.
Call 360/385-6271 for information about these issues.
QUAFCO News September 1997 Copyright © 1997, Quilcene
Ancient Forest Coalition
All rights reserved. Page developed by Berry Hill
SoftwareSENATE VOTE DELAYED
CUT THE CUTTING
CHIEF DOMBECK DISMISSES REP.
TAYLOR'S FOREST HEALTH REPORT
A CHEAT SHEET
FOR CAPITOL NEWCOMERS