Free Republic

GRANTS PASS, Ore. - Citing federal budget cuts, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has decided it can't afford to pay an outside contractor to develop the long-overdue recovery plan for the northern spotted owl, so it will develop the blueprint for saving the threatened species from extinction on its own. "We had hoped to get a special funding allocation to handle a contractor who could help us with what will be a very labor intensive recovery planning process," said Fish and Wildlife spokesman David Patte. "It just didn't come to bear." The owl's dependence on old growth forests forced...

Pombo and Walden question ONCR's Tim Lillebo in field hearing, as fire bombers fly by. by Kehn Gibson and Pat Ratliff, staff writers, The Tri-County Courier, 9/4/03 Like a defense attorney who found a crack in the witness’ testimony, Oregon Congressman Greg Walden bored in with the next question. "If you were to choose, Mr. Lillebo, just what definition of ‘old growth’ would you have us put in this bill?" Walden was questioning the Oregon Natural Resources Council’s eastern Oregon representative, Tim Lillebo, at a field hearing of the House Committee on Resources Monday in Redmond. The committee’s topic was...

One of the great unknowns following the collapse of Northwest timber cutting through the 1990s was what happened to thousands of loggers, sawmill workers and others who lost their jobs. Researchers mining a decade's worth of obscure state employment records have unearthed an answer, and it's not pretty: From Our Advertiser More than half the 60,000 workers who held jobs in the wood products industry at the start of the 1990s had left it by 1998. And almost half of those who left disappeared from work rolls altogether -- probably moving to another state, retiring or going unemployed. Roughly 18,000...

AUSTIN, Texas -- The best way to rid the world of the AIDS epidemic is to quarantine and kill those infected by it. Most people would agree that this statement is not only false, but extremely misanthropic and merciless. In the same way, the idea that cutting down old growth trees in national parks in the name of fire prevention should be seen as absurd as the previous statement. This gross misjudgment is exactly what President Bush is currently trying to feed the American public. Most of the nation, as well as the world, is presently coming to terms with...

Staples cares about the environment and about the sustainability of our forests. We believe in recycling and offer more than 1,000 different recycled products through Staples.com, our catalogs and our stores. Staples is responding to the concerns of the environmental groups by examining how we do business and investigating ways we can be even more responsive to recycling and the environment. We have communicated with virtually all of our paper suppliers and found absolutely no evidence of old-growth fiber in any of the products we sell. Both Staples staff and I will take your comments and concerns into consideration....