Posted on 12/23/2003 6:34:58 PM PST by carlo3b
Bush opens 300,000 acres of Alaskan national forest to loggingJohn Heilprin, Associated Press
Published December 24, 2003 TLOG24
WASHINGTON -- Reversing a Clinton-era policy, the Bush administration on Tuesday opened 300,000 more acres of Alaska's Tongass National Forest, the nation's largest, to possible logging or other development.The administration will allow 3 percent of the forest's 9.3 million acres that were put off-limits to road-building by former President Clinton, to have roads built on them and perhaps opened to use by the timber industry. The Tongass comprises 16.8 million acres.
``The people of Alaska benefit,'' said spokesman Bill Bradshaw of the U.S. Forest Service, part of the Agriculture Department. ``What's behind this is the legal challenge by the state. The main point is that it brought a resolution to the Alaska challenge.''
The ruling builds on the Bush administration's decision in June to settle a lawsuit filed by Alaska that challenged the road-building ban. As part of the settlement, the administration agreed to exempt the Tongass and Chugach national forests from its planned revisions to the roadless rule.
Mark Rey, the Agriculture Department's undersecretary in charge of forest policy, said that as a practical matter, 95 percent of the roadless areas in the two national forests would remain off-limits to development.
That's because the administration, while reversing the ban on road-building in Alaska's forests that Clinton adopted just before he left office in 2001, is reverting to an earlier Clinton plan in 1997 that set special management rules for Alaskan forests.
``The bottom line is we've affirmed the 1997 Clinton Tongass plan, which affirms protection for 95 percent of the roadless (area) on the Tongass ... based on the best science available,'' Rey said.
John Passacantando, executive director of Greenpeace USA, accused the Bush administration of ``gutting the last pristine temperate rain forest'' in the United States. Tiernan Sittenfeld of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, an advocacy organization, called it ``yet another holiday gift to the timber industry.''
But Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said the decision ``paves the way for a resumption of some wood harvest for the Tongass, enough to support the surviving timber industry in southeast Alaska.''
Agriculture Department officials, with approval from the White House Office of Management and Budget, decided to exempt the acreage from the so-called roadless rule, an often-challenged Clinton-era policy.
Imposed in January 2001, the rule had sought to block development of 58.5 million acres, or nearly one-third of the national forests.
The rule was struck down in July by a federal district judge in Wyoming and currently is before the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Forest Service officials said their decision ``maintains the balance for roadless area protection'' while providing opportunities for sustainable economic development.
``People in 32 communities within the Tongass National Forest depend on the forest for subsistence and social and economic health,'' officials said in a statement. ``Most communities lack road and utility connections to other communities.''
In August, Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski said the roadless rule, which effectively has locked away portions of the Tongass and the 5.3 million-acre Chugach national forests from major timber development, was ``unlawful and unwise.''
The Republican governor, a former senator, demanded that the Forest Service exempt Alaska from the roadless rule on grounds it violates the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, the Wilderness Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Forest Management Act.
Former Democrat Gov. Tony Knowles also had filed a federal lawsuit in 2001 challenging the rule. A federal judge in Idaho blocked the roadless ban in May 2001, saying it needed to be amended, but that ruling was overturned last year by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Environmentalists said they were alarmed by the decision, and that it would mean the loss of protection for all 9.3 million acres of inventoried roadless areas.
``Our public lands are under attack,'' said Cindy Shogan of the Alaska Wilderness League. ``The Bush administration won't be happy until the timber industry has reduced the heart of America's rain forest to stumps.''
(Excerpt) Read more at startribune.com ...
Gutting...yeah right. 3% of 9.8 million acres, the rest of which is still off limits. I guess it's too much to ask the media to ever call these Chicken Littles on their hyperbole.
Marianne (1000+ posts) Tue Dec-23-03 06:32 PM
Response to Original message
5. So sad, so very sad
Edited on Tue Dec-23-03 06:41 PM by Marianne
this man, if he can be called a man, is a total, slimy, greedy bastard.He and his fat assed, lazy, dullard of a wife, have taken over this country and forced it's demise.
He has attacked all that is beauty in favor of his own greed and for his own ego, and desired to lord it over all of us as his power over us all, as he laughs about it nightly with his "
lump" and she is indeed quite impressed with all of it.He is indeed, the worst president ever to destroy this country--and will go down as the worst and the dumbest man ever to destroy beauty and truth that we have ever known.
He is the evil and he is slimy and he is without any sense, nor deserving of any respect. Who can respect a man who cannot even speak the language, yet has his finger on the button?
We are chained to corporations who have been enabled by him and who run our lives , even though we have not elected a single one of them, and we are chained to those who are making profits out of our beautiful natual resources. These resources belong to US, not them! They do NOT belong to Bush or to the frump, Laura, or to her two dumassed progeny.
This is a crime. I may not live to see it, but if he and his greedy conservative outlook gets elected in 2004, that will signify our demise.
We will, indeed, be "paved over" in favor of profit instead of in favor of health and welfare and well being and the peace of the beauty that our natural resources afford us. The wilderness is indeed, our spiritual strength.
This puny little , ignorant, pretence of a man is truly an ogre. I hate him. May he be voted out of office, the one he stole in the first place, and may he take his drugged up , chain smoking wife with him back to his pig farm where she and he may forever stay holed up in fear that someone they have indeed done wrong, may come looking for revenge.
May the both of them never ever take a trip anywhere again on the money of the people of America, especially the poor people or the seniors who are killing themselves at the age of seventy in a puny job just to pay for health insurance.
May they both go down in infamy. As well as all the wealthy bastards in this country who want something back from him--as if they do not have enough to begin with.
Happy Festivus Environ-MENTALS!
Who cares? There's plenty to go around. In fact, high density, low quality wood blocks reside atop a good many liberal DUMocrat shoulders.
If you want to sell off american assets, like our trees, or whatever, then the logging companies should be paying market value for the trees, in addition to replanting the trees in the same variety and species and patterns that existed before they came in.
American citizens have a great wealth in our resources, in land owned by fellow citizens, and giving it away to special interests is not in our interest.
Every Alaskan citizen gets a check for the oil that is taken out of the ground, I dont see why every american citizen should not get a check each christmas, for all the trees, oil, gold, etc taken out of the land that we own(not just Alaskans).
A $10,000 or $20,000 royalty check each christmas for each citizen would be a lot better than lining the pockets of logging company executives, or executives of Canadian mining companies that take out our gold.
Reasonable harvesting of our resources, without endangering our wildernesses, is ok as long as our citizens directly benefit from it, and not only the corporate executives and politicians who enable the corporate executives to get so much money.
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