[Larry Lucido]

Can you virtual log? They you can log in to do your logging.

[rstrahan]

So, the answer is not outlawing logging but to slash useless and bloated bureaucracy

[crz]

1, 20% of the proceeds from timber sales was to go directly to the local school system.
2. Just go and check out how many now work within each USFS district. There are biologists, hydrologists, trail engineers-one or each type of trail, sales administrator, lawyers who act as contract officers, Road maintenance crews, and on and on. Then you got all the people who have to do the environmental assessment studies BEFORE any timber sale gets let for bids.

They now require that most, if not all, existing roads are now closed, ripped and slashed-obliterated. Then, when a fire does happen, they have to hire bulldozers and excavators to reopen those roads for the fire crews to get to the fire at 35 to 4500 dollars an hour.

Close down the USFS and BLM and give the management of that trust back to the local areas.

[Terry L Smith]

I am not sure that Weyerhauser ever regained all that timber burned in place from Mt. St. Helens.
Sell the disputed area to Weyerhauser, with the caveat to allow the usual camping, or seasonal hunting parcels.

[Montana_Sam]

The monetary loss is in bureaucratic cost.
The author argues that government bureaucracy is inefficient.
Who knew?
One good thing that derives from the building of roads in these areas is that such roads provide ground-level access to the area(s) if fire hits.
Years ago, while logging on the Olympic Peninsula in western Washington state, I saw firsthand the incomprehensibly daft layers of red tape attached to every sale. Environmental regulations, many of which did not even apply to a given federal timber sale, added years of delay and massive cost to each and every sale. More than once I saw timber go up in flames as the bureaucrats dithered over some arcane regulation.

[bray]

Wish they allowed it in Oregon. Some of the most marketable trees in the world are being burned.

[Blue Collar Christian]

The industries; lumber, fishing, tourism, that use the roads should build or pay contractors to build the roads. Paying the federal USFS to build roads is foolish pouring of funds into an inefficient government bureaucracy staffed with leftist, anti-capitalist greenies.

[Tarasaramozart]

We live in the Tongass. The real cost in devastation by the logging industry is irreparable. The article mentions the additional economic sources in theTongass of tourism, hunting, fishing yet these have been negatively impacted by the logging industry as old growth habitats crucial for the life cycle of both wildlife and fish.

The loss of these forests coupled with the introduction of potent chemicals used by the logging industry and abuses by logging companies while the USFS looks the other way is devastating. Abuses like bulldozing wolf and bear dens even when in use to circumvent protective regs that prevent logging near them.

that coupled with the Appalachian lifestyle and mindsetthat is fostered by city officials in small towns like ours has heavily damaged anadromous streams and lakes.