Bush opens 300,000 acres of Alaskan national forest to logging

StarTribune.com ^ | Dec. 24 2003 | John Heilprin, Associated Press

[carlo3b]

Bush opens 300,000 acres of Alaskan national forest to logging

John 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.''

 

[Steve_Seattle]

97% of this area is left intact, most of the remaining 3% will probably remain unlogged, yet the environmentalists talk as if the entire forest has just been nuked.

[Steve_Seattle]

"Who wants to bet Marianne has never even been to Alaska?"

Marianne appears mentally unstable and irredeemably ignorant. She thinks the environment should be disrupted only to make room for her own ass, and to hell with everyone else.

[junta]

bump

[ChadGore]

[CWOJackson]

I'm sure that druids will find that photo sick, twisted and disgusting you insensitive person.

Thanks for posting it.

[New Horizon]

Would someone please help me get rid of these dead and aging trees...

[New Horizon]

GWB's just pissing off more societies by the minute...

[Grit]

He and his fat assed, lazy, dullard of a wife

or to the frump, Laura, or to her two dumassed progeny.

take his drugged up , chain smoking wife

I had no idea that the DUmmies hated the First Lady as well. They are completely apoplectic. I love it. I didn't know Laura smoked?!

[Nea Wood]

Reversing a Clinton-era policy...

I love stories that start this way!

[GSWarrior]

'Road building' is kind of misleading. To the uninformed it brings to mind freeways, offramps, and gas stations.

[junta]

I've cut more trees down and split more wood and spent more time in the woods than these crazed Limbot ideologues who spout the party line, meaning that I want to hear more than cant when it comes to resource extraction. If I wanted to raise timber I would have to buy property, pay taxes on it for years out of my pocket, but the big boys buy off congress person so and so for peanuts and get timber for little or nothing. Sounds more like Soviet industrial policy to me rather than capitalism. All the while I'm raising my trees for production big timber companies are lobbying the politicians to put restrictions on me and what I do on my own land.

[Paulus Invictus]

The local envirowackos are going berserk with rage. The Sierra Club is waging an full-bore, anti-Bush push and I can hardly wait for Bush to open ANWR to oil drillers. That would push the enviros over the edge and maybe they'll go crazy enough to require a long stay at a mental facility!

[cyncooper]

Sheesh, someone was sipping some curdled eggnog.

LOL

[Paulus Invictus]

Not to mention that trees are living creatures. Some can actually walk and talk. I learned this from a viewing of the last Lord of the Rings movie. Must be so, they always tell the truth in the movies.

Seriesly (sic), I learned to love trees when I was a boy living in and near huge forests in Montana. The loggers kept those forests free of dead trees and did their best to keep them heathy. Then the enviros came in with law suits and activism and wrecked thousands of acres through enormous fires, bark beetle infestations and lack of roads to fight the fires. Why do I hate these wackos so much? Hey, they are even worse here in UT. We have years of drought and water rationing, but the wackos want to drain Lake Powell. They are insane!

[strongbow]

"Reversing a Clinton-era policy" When Frank Murkowski ran for Gov. against Tony Knowles last year he promised to develop our resources in Alaska and build roads. Seems to me he is fulfilling his promise. The knowles administation drove our state into the ground and the road back is slow but improving with the help of Frank. This State is virtually untapped and all the dems want to do is start a State sales and income tax and do away with the annual dividend. There is much more to this article than what meets the eye. This is the Alaskan version of divide and destroy the populace from the dem playbook.

[crz]

I got news for you bub..ALL!.. roads here in the Great Lakes States were originally built by loggers.
As for your other whine..plantations are planted as a means to regenerate a piece of land where the exsisting species is not doing well. In other words..its crap and needs to ne changed back to what was there in the first place...PINE or softwood. To leave the land grow back to "Hardwoods" would mean that those "Hardwoods" would take in excess of at LEAST 100 to 200 years to amount to nothing..which it would do. All you would have is a class "D" hardwood forest which WAS NOT there in the first place.
As to royalties...so in other words you figure (I as a logger) should pay an excessive amount for chip wood to satisfy your selfishness. Lemme give it to you straight bub. I bid/paid 22 dollars a cord for a job this last year which ran under the cruise..in other words there was not as much there as the State advertised in its bids. I lost money on that sale and it nearly broke me. You see I get 56 dollars a cord at the mill where that wood goes. I paid 22 so that leaves me with 34 to cut and truck it. So cutting costs are at 15 to 17 per cord depending on the size and quality of the timber..so lets split it and say cutting costs are 15. That leaves me with 20 bucks a cord to truck it, which ran me 18 dollars a cord. So I made a whole whopping 1 dollar a cord on a job that was supposed to have 6400 cords on..which it didnt. It ran 10% under. Now you do the math and see how friggan RICH I am getting on this.
Its bad enough to get shorted by the state by a miscruise, but then to have to listen to whiners like you who claim we are being subsidized or whatever makes me wanna grab the next SOB eco-fruit and bury them in the deepest peat bog I can find.
BTW..that wood went to make OS Board which is used to sheet the houses you and those like you keep yourselves nice and warm and all. Some of my other wood goes to make paper..you know the stuff thats used in the toilet each day? Then some of my other wood goes to make fine flooring and furnishings so you got something to sit you bum on to type the trash I have seen in your posts.
Get an education on the subject, it'll do you well.
BTW I lost $7,680.00 on that job. I paid $140,800 for it. The wood did not cut out good and it ran short like I said. I paid more for that friggan job than most people make in two years. I also supported a couple truckers and their families and those folks buy tires, oil, fuel, parts, big ticket items like the 240,000 dollar truck they run. I (and those jobbers like me) support that mill who employs over 300 people..not to mention the paper mill who employs over 1500 people. I also buy fuel, oil, parts, chains, etc..about 3000 dollars worth or more each month. Thats money supports the fuel man, the equipment dealer and on and on. Now you'd shut all this down becuse you didnt like a type of tree that is being planted someplace would'nt you! You'd put hundreds of thousands out of work (over 480,000 in the state of Michigan alone) that rely on those like me for their livelyhood to satisfy your whim.

[nightdriver]

``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.''

And I suppose that the forest fires that cannot be effectively fought because of lack of roads do NO damage to the forests? Sheeeeeesh!!

This Cindy Shogan needs to buy a vowel!

[Poohbah]

Bush opens 300,000 acres of Alaskan national forest to logging

EARTH FIRST

We'll strip-mine the other planets later.

[farmfriend]

SURELY the Sierra Club didn't use PAPER made from TREES to appeal for money!?!

If you've never seen one of their appeals you should. They come in a standard business envelope that is so stuffed with junk they are now about 1/2" thick. What a waste.

[crz]

OH you would force a logger to cut anything he didnt want would you? Ever hear about cutting specs? In other words if I buy a state sale and I put up the 10% bid bond as well as the cash bond and I do not cut it I lose both and am BANNED from bidding on any public land for three years AND could be fined to boot! Then I may have to pay the state to have the sale sent out for rebid. Then lets talk about if the timber offered isnt really good as you stated in the first. What happens if thats all thats offered? HUH? Should I do like the eco-wackys do and go on welfare and wash themselves once a year if they get caught in a rainstorm? Oh yes I could by my own land et al. Except most loggers are in debt up to their ears and there aint a G'Dammed bank in the USA thats gonna borrow them the money and wait 40 years for the return to start comming back.