Posted on 06/30/2004 6:45:05 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
RENO, Nev. (AP) - Sen. John Kerry's criticism of increasing logging in national forests to ease wildfire threats shows how badly his brand of environmentalism is out of step with most Westerners, the Bush-Cheney campaign said Wednesday. Kerry's campaign countered that the Bush administration's forest policy is aimed more at bolstering timber industry profits than protecting communities from fires.
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said President Bush has failed to provide money necessary to remove small trees and underbrush that has built up near communities in the Sierra and around Lake Tahoe.
"I thought the president would live up to his word and he hasn't done it," Reid told The Associated Press.
Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey, former Nevada state forester Steve Robinson and Tracey Schmitt, a spokeswoman for the Bush-Cheney campaign, said in a teleconference call that significant progress is being made in reducing fire threats in California and Nevada thanks to President Bush's "Healthy Forests Initiative."
The Forest Service was able to reduce fuel buildup primarily through thinning forests across 2.6 million acres last year - double the previous year - and expects to complete nearly 4 million acres this year because the initiative eases some environmental restrictions, Rey said.
"The good news is we are moving much more quickly. So far, we are significantly ahead of last year," he said.
Robinson, a natural resources adviser to Nevada's Republican Gov. Kenny Guinn, said he has been concerned for years about a "lot of indecision" by the federal government about easing fire threats through thinning.
The initiative "gives us the tools to go ahead and clear out some of this understory," he said. "It's a very dangerous situation at Lake Tahoe."
Schmitt said the campaign organized the call with reporters in Nevada because it is "important to point out that Sen. Kerry talks a lot about how important it is to protect and preserve the environment but he missed the vote" last year on the $760 million forest initiative.
"He said the initiative would kill trees. ... It shows how out of touch he is with Westerners," Schmitt said.
She listed a number of Senate Democrats from the West who voted for the measure, including Reid, Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, Max Baucus of Montana, Patty Murray of Washington and Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer of California.
"Clearly, this is something where Sen. Kerry is out of touch with the mainstream," Schmitt said.
A spokesman for Kerry's campaign said the Massachusetts senator would have voted against the Bush initiative if he had been present.
"There were loopholes in it big enough to drive a logging truck through," said Sean Smith, Nevada communications director for John Kerry for President.
"It's George Bush who is out of step with Westerners because he is in touch with the timber executives who crafted the policy and whose interests are protected by this law," Smith said from Las Vegas.
"When it comes to forest health and forest fire prevention activities, John Kerry puts communities first and not the interests of the timber companies," he said.
Reid said he supports the policy intended to speed thinning of overstocked forests posing the biggest threat to communities in the West.
"Unfortunately, like so many promises made by this administration - Leave No Child Behind, Yucca Mountain and the same now with this - they haven't put their money where their mouth is," Reid said.
"Those who were opposed to this were concerned the administration would use this not to protect communities from fire dangers but to help the timber companies harvest healthy forests," Reid said.
"And that is what has happened. They are not protecting communities. They are continuing to help timber companies cut down threes," he said.
If the inititiatives only goal was to provide hideous profit to the eeeevvviiiillll timber companies, then how can it be underfunded? Is it a private enterprise or a government one?
Let any of these envirowhackos or their facilitators in govt. come to where I'm at (Payson, Az.), where we have a 35,000 acre wildfire 5 miles from the city limits, and start spouting their crap. I know they'd get the taste slapped out of their mouths, before being tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail (in the direction of the fire!)
While we haven't seen as many smoke plumes down here in Cochise County as we did last year, it is still awful dry. We need some serious thinning done in our Nat'l Forests. You can't thin a forest without cutting trees. But I guess sKerry doesn't know this. He wouldn't know which end of a chainsaw to use. Can't blister those patrician hands, you know.
IIRC, 'operating chainsaw' falls under his Butler's duties.
:-)
This from a guy who won't cut down a tree to save a hundred, but will get a fire hydrant moved from in front of his, I mean his wife's, Beacon Hill mansion so he will have a nice parking place.
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