I'm sorry but this article makes me laugh. The administration could at least come out and say they don't care about the enviornment or fires one bit, yet want to allow the logging to start.
From New York Times
August 21, 2002
Bush, Citing Fire Hazards, Wants Logging Rules Eased
By DOUGLAS JEHL
W ASHINGTON, Aug. 21 ? President Bush will ask Congress to relax environmental laws so that the timber industry can accelerate cutting efforts across millions of acres of national forest land increasingly prone to devastating wildfires, senior administration officials said today.
The plan is to be made public on Thursday, when Mr. Bush travels to southern Oregon to view recent fire damage there. But word of its basic thrust has already ignited a new political fight, with environmentalists condemning what they called a White House effort to promote rejuvenated logging under the guise of fire prevention.
After two summers in three in which the West has suffered devastating wildfires, Congress has already thrown its support, backed by hundreds of millions of dollars, behind a national plan to remove more brush and undergrowth from public lands to make them less susceptible to blazes.
But with the support of many Western governors and senators, Mr. Bush now appears to have thrown his support behind a plan to go further. As described today by administration and Congressional officials, it would give loggers greater leeway to cut commercially valuable trees, which environmentalists and many scientists say do not fuel fires the way the dense but commercially worthless underbrush and tinder-dry saplings do.
In particular, the officials said, Mr. Bush is likely to ask Congress to waive provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act, which dates from 1970, in order to streamline approval of what proponents call a necessary forest-thinning. The change would curtail the environmentalists' ability to appeal the logging plans, a legal tool that groups have used to stop such sales to timber companies in the past.
Already this summer, the fires in the West have burned an area larger than Connecticut and Rhode Island combined, and Western lawmakers have become increasingly outspoken in calling for more aggressive measures to reduce the fire danger.
"Without active management, we will be asking ourselves in a few short years where our forests have gone," said 15 Western senators, including Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat, and Larry Craig, the Idaho Republican, in a statement earlier this month.
But the idea that Mr. Bush might try to set aside existing environmental laws in the name of fire protection has prompted an angry outcry from several Democrats and environmental leaders. A spokesman for the Sierra Club, Allen Mattison, said today that his group and others were concerned that Mr. Bush's plan might open the door to "runaway logging" in areas that are now protected.
From New York Times
August 21, 2002
Bush, Citing Fire Hazards, Wants Logging Rules Eased
By DOUGLAS JEHL
W ASHINGTON, Aug. 21 ? President Bush will ask Congress to relax environmental laws so that the timber industry can accelerate cutting efforts across millions of acres of national forest land increasingly prone to devastating wildfires, senior administration officials said today.
The plan is to be made public on Thursday, when Mr. Bush travels to southern Oregon to view recent fire damage there. But word of its basic thrust has already ignited a new political fight, with environmentalists condemning what they called a White House effort to promote rejuvenated logging under the guise of fire prevention.
After two summers in three in which the West has suffered devastating wildfires, Congress has already thrown its support, backed by hundreds of millions of dollars, behind a national plan to remove more brush and undergrowth from public lands to make them less susceptible to blazes.
But with the support of many Western governors and senators, Mr. Bush now appears to have thrown his support behind a plan to go further. As described today by administration and Congressional officials, it would give loggers greater leeway to cut commercially valuable trees, which environmentalists and many scientists say do not fuel fires the way the dense but commercially worthless underbrush and tinder-dry saplings do.
In particular, the officials said, Mr. Bush is likely to ask Congress to waive provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act, which dates from 1970, in order to streamline approval of what proponents call a necessary forest-thinning. The change would curtail the environmentalists' ability to appeal the logging plans, a legal tool that groups have used to stop such sales to timber companies in the past.
Already this summer, the fires in the West have burned an area larger than Connecticut and Rhode Island combined, and Western lawmakers have become increasingly outspoken in calling for more aggressive measures to reduce the fire danger.
"Without active management, we will be asking ourselves in a few short years where our forests have gone," said 15 Western senators, including Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat, and Larry Craig, the Idaho Republican, in a statement earlier this month.
But the idea that Mr. Bush might try to set aside existing environmental laws in the name of fire protection has prompted an angry outcry from several Democrats and environmental leaders. A spokesman for the Sierra Club, Allen Mattison, said today that his group and others were concerned that Mr. Bush's plan might open the door to "runaway logging" in areas that are now protected.
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