The President's motto is "leave no trees behind!"
And the debunkers cheer on as they reach their ultimate
goal of global annihilation. Hey stupid debunkers, you will
destroy yourselves too, or is that concept to clear for you??
In article <bic5b0$2ekp$1@pencil.math.missouri.edu>, STRIDER says...
From: EF! Media Center <hayduke@efmedia.org>
Mailing-List: list earthfirstalert@yahoogroups.com; contact
earthfirstalert-owner@yahoogroups.com
Date: Thu, 21 Aug 2003 20:57:10 -0700
Subject: [EF!] Bush Enviro Policy Directed by Timber Industry
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/136033_bushenviro21.html
Bush to stay out of forest fracas in visit to state
Thursday, August 21, 2003
By ROBERT MCCLURE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
As President Bush arrives today in the Pacific Northwest to burnish
his record as a friend of trees and fish, documents show that an
important part of his environmental policy is being directed by the
timber industry.
Timber industry attorneys shaped changes the Bush administration has
proposed to the Northwest Forest Plan, which put large swaths of
forest off-limits to the chain saw, records show.
Meanwhile, the chief steward of the nation's forests is a former
industry lobbyist, and a longtime industry lawyer is advising the
administration about salmon protections under the Endangered Species
Act.
Bush is going to Oregon today to raise money for his re-election
campaign and advocate more forest thinning to prevent wildfires. He
stops off in Eastern Washington tomorrow to defend his record on
restoring salmon, then heads to the Seattle area for another
fund-raiser.
His Northwest visit follows a Republican pollster's admonition last
year that, "The environment is probably the single issue on which
Republicans in general -- and President Bush in particular -- are
most vulnerable."
One important Pacific Northwest environmental issue that's not on
Bush's agenda for this visit is his administration's performance in
carrying out the Northwest Forest Plan. The plan was worked out in
1993, shortly after President Clinton took office, to end the
standoff over old-growth logging and spotted owls.
Through a recent Freedom of Information Act lawsuit,
environmentalists discovered that timber industry lawyers had
dictated a five-point plan for altering the Northwest Forest Plan and
related policies. The change outlined in April 2002 would allow more
logging as a condition of dropping several industry lawsuits.
"We have documented in this instance what we had heard and assumed
all along-- that the industry is masterminding how to manage public
forests," said Patti Goldman, an attorney in the Seattle office of
the Earthjustice law firm. "It's just an incredible story of the
industry calling the shots."
Some of the changes have been opposed by scientists who helped draft
the plan-- with one warning the changes "could come back to haunt us
big time."
Environmentalists had long suspected timber industry officials were
strongly influencing Bush timber policy.
But administration officials and the timber industry say the changes
are merely designed to increase the timber cut to match levels
envisioned by the Clinton administration when it adopted the plan.
At the time, the timber industry agreed to accept a huge reduction in
the timber cut, compared to historic logging levels -- about a
four-fifths decline across Western Washington and Oregon and Northern
California.
But even that reduced harvest level never materialized. Instead of
the 1.1 billion board-feet of timber envisioned for harvest annually
in the plan, an average of about 200 million board-feet a year
actually has been taken, said Tom Partin, president of the American
Forest Resource Council, a Portland-based timber industry group.
"We're not asking for anything that wasn't promised under the Clinton
administration," Partin said. "The environmentalists are throwing
this all on Bush's shoulders, but that's not the case, because it was
actually implemented by the Clinton administration."
Added a Bush administration official involved in the debate: "What we
have evaluated is whether the plan is working as it was promised to,
and the simple answer is it is not working as it was promised. ...
It's not producing the results that were expected."
As called for in the industry's 38-page "global framework for
settlement of litigation" from April 2002, the Bush administration
has:
Agreed to review Endangered Species Act protections for the spotted
owl and the marbled murrelet, a seabird that nests inland in
old-growth trees. The future of both species is considered
"threatened," and under the law the forests where they live receive
special protections.
Administration officials say the law calls for a review of every
protected plant and animal every five years. The requirement has been
routinely ignored because of lack of money to do the reviews.
Environmentalists say the administration's decision represents
special treatment for the timber industry that could lead to ending
protection for the birds.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is seeking private contractors to
gather information needed for the reviews, which are due next April.
Launched a rewrite of key provisions of the Northwest Forest Plan
that protect salmon-bearing streams, the so-called "aquatic
conservation strategy." Although Bush has
often lauded "sound science" in environmental decisions, his
administration is proceeding with changes that some scientists who
wrote the plan now say are "not consistent with our original intent."
Administration officials maintain the changes will end arcane
semantic debates and will benefit wildlife. The changes are expected
to be announced in mid-September and made final in October.
Eliminate a special program that required forest managers to conduct
elaborate searches for hard-to-find animals and plants before
allowing timber cutting. The Forest Service doesn't have enough
workers to do the job quickly, and environmentalists have used the
provision to stop a series of timber sales by the Forest Service.
Administration officials say individual Forest Service managers know
best which of these species are likely to be found on the forests
they supervise, and they can save about $20 million of the annual $28
million cost of the surveys without harm. "This mind-numbing survey
work on every species is not necessary," an administration official
said.
Agreed to re-examine policies on logging some 2.2 million acres of
disputed federal timber in Eastern Oregon with an eye toward cutting
more.
Goldman, the environmentalists' attorney, points out that the
agreement was drafted in part by Mark Rutzick, a longtime
timber-industry lawyer who in April was named senior adviser in the
office of the general counsel of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration.
There, Rutzick advises the government on complying with Endangered
Species Act protections of salmon.
Rutzick fought Endangered Species Act protection of spotted owls.
After the adoption of the forest plan, Rutzick challenged it and
said, "We believe the Clinton forest plan represents government at
its worst" because administration officials operated in secret.
Attempts to reach Rutzick this week for comment were unsuccessful.
Environmentalists also chafe at the appointment of former timber
industry lobbyist Mark Rey as the undersecretary at the U.S.
Agriculture Department who oversees the Forest Service, which
administers national forests.
On the other side, Bush administration officials blame
environmentalists for continuing to file a barrage of lawsuits to tie
up timber sales even though the Northwest Forest Plan was hailed as a
compromise to end the "war in the woods."
Those suits have prevented the logging of old-growth forests that the
Clinton plan would have allowed. They also have infuriated the timber
industry, which contributed about $1 million to Bush's 2000 election
campaign.
One of the major reasons the forest plan's timber-cut goals have not
been realized has to do with the subsequent protection of salmon runs
under the Endangered Species Act. While the original Clinton plan
called for no-cut buffers along salmon-bearing streams, no one knew
at the time how large those buffers would have to be.
In later years, it became apparent that those no-cut zones would be
larger than first imagined. Now the Bush administration is trying to
find ways to change the underlying plan to produce more timber.
Partin, of the American Forest Resource Council, acknowledged that
his group has gotten pretty much everything it asked from the Bush
administration. But he says that's only right.
"The only things we've asked for are pretty commonsense things that
the government already should have been doing," Partin said.
BUSH IN WASHINGTON STATE
President's schedule
Tomorrow
9:45 a.m. -- President Bush tours Ice Harbor Dam in Burbank,
makes remarks about salmon restoration
Afternoon -- Bush will make remarks at a $2,000-a-head
fund-raiser at Craig McCaw's Eastside home. The reception is closed
to the public.
Protests/Rallies
Tomorrow
Republican activists will gather in Bellevue at Northeast Eighth
Street and Bellevue Way Northeast from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. to
support Bush. The president will not make an appearance. For more
information, go to www.wsrp.org/
Peace activists will meet at the same intersection from 11 a.m. to
2 p.m. For more information, visit www.stopbushseattle.com
Labor issues and workers' rights will be the topics at a protest
sponsored by the Bremerton Metal Trade Council. Participants will
meet at Bellevue's Crossroads Community Park, 164th Avenue Northeast
and Northeast Eighth Street,
at 10 a.m. They will take buses to Hunts Point for an 11 a.m. rally.
For more information, visit www.stopbushseattle.com
From 12:30 to 3 p.m., Democrats will hold a "Beat Back Bush!"
protest at Victor Steinbrueck Park at 2001 Western Ave. in Seattle.
The park is north of Pike Place Market. For information, visit
www.wa-democrats.org
South Sound residents will rally for a clean environment, starting
at 8:45 a.m., at Jack Hyde Park on Ruston Way in Tacoma. For
information, visit www.stopbushseattle.com.
P-I reporter Robert McClure can be reached at 206-448-8092 or
robertmcclure@seattlepi.com
1998-2003 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
_______________________________________________
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-3055159,00.html
Bush in Ore. to Push Plan to Thin Forests
Thursday August 21, 2003 9:29 PM
By DEB RIECHMANN
Associated Press Writer
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - Fast-growing blazes in central Oregon serve as
a backdrop for President Bush's plan to thin forests of trees and
underbrush - and as fuel for environmentalists who oppose the plan.
Bush left his Texas ranch on Thursday and headed to Deschutes
National Forest, launching a two-day trip to the Pacific Northwest to
polish his environmental record. The White House moved a planned
speech by the president from Camp Sherman to Redmond, which is
farther from the area where hundreds of firefighters are battling the
flames.
Before heading to the forest, Bush stopped at the University of
Portland to raise more than $1 million for his re-election campaign
at a $2,000-a-ticket luncheon of grilled salmon salad. The event was
awash in money - pushing the Bush-Cheney '04 fund-raising total to
more than $44 million - but the president's words included talk of
the limp U.S. economy.
``To get the economy going again, I have twice led the United States
Congress to pass historic tax relief for the American people,'' Bush
said. ``Here's what I believe, and here's what I know: that when
Americans have more take-home to spend, to save, to invest, the whole
economy will grow and people are more likely to find a job.''
Oregonians have been hard hit by the sluggish economy; the state's
jobless rate was 8.1 percent in July. State lawmakers, wrangling with
revenue shortages that closed schools early last year, passed a
budget on Wednesday only after agreeing on an income tax surcharge.
A few thousand anti-Bush demonstrators gathered near the university
where the police presence was heavy. One man wore a Bush mask and
carried a sign that said ``Stop me before I lie again.'' Along the
motorcade route, one group, ringed by police in riot gear, made rude
gestures at the entourage with their middle fingers. Several signs,
carried by people against the war in Iraq, said: ``Killer. Impeach
Bush.''
Still, the protesting crowd was more peaceful than it was it was in
August 2002, when the president attended a Portland fund-raiser.
Then, more than 1,000 protesters screamed anti-Bush messages, and
police used pepper spray and rubber bullets to control the crowd.
A handful of Bush supporters showed up to greet the president as
well. A man on a pickup covered with flags shouted, ``We love Bush.
We support our troops.''
Bush has been pushing his forest-thinning initiative for months - in
southeastern Arizona last week, on the radio Saturday and in the Rose
Garden in May. The House has passed the administration's proposal. A
Senate version could be addressed by the full chamber as early as
next month.
Environmental groups, including some expected to protest his visit,
say the president's forest policy allows timber companies to log
large trees in the interest of thinning. They also are wary of
streamlined environmental studies and limited appeals on proposed
work to cut trees and brush on as many as 20 million acres of forest
land.
The Wilderness Society says the administration's proposal falls far
short of protecting communities near forests. The society argues that
the Bush proposal focuses on federal lands while studies show that 85
percent of the land that surrounds communities most at risk from
wildfires is private, state or tribal land - not federal.
``We're worried that they're using the fear of wildfires to promote
logging in the backcountry - far away from homes and communities,''
said society spokesman Chris Mehl.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan said the president's
event in Oregon will ``highlight the importance of conservation and
the importance of personal stewardship, while making sure that we
protect jobs at the same time.''
``I think that the environment is too important to be made into a
divisive partisan issue,'' he said Wednesday.
A briefing by forest officials and an aerial tour of the burning
fires was planned for the president so he could see the damage.
There also are political reasons for visiting the two states that
Bush failed to win in 2000.
The Bush campaign is eyeing Oregon's seven electoral votes, which the
president lost to Al Gore by only about 6,700 votes. Poll numbers
show Democrats with a 2-1 advantage over Bush when people were asked
whom they trust to do the best job on the environment.
Gore won Washington with 50.2 percent of the vote, compared with
Bush's 44.6 percent. Bush's schedule on Friday includes another
fund-raiser and a speech on saving salmon in Washington.
Guardian Unlimited ) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003
________________________________________________
Sunday, August 17, 2003, 12:00 a.m. Pacific
Selective logging is touted as helping nature do its job
By Hal Bernton
Seattle Times staff reporter
FULTON CREEK, Olympic National Forest High on a hillside overlooking
Hood Canal, Dave Werntz of the Northwest Ecosystem Alliance watches a
chain saw bite through a young Douglas fir. In minutes, a fresh log
>from the Olympic National Forest crashes to the ground.
Werntz, a veteran activist of the spotted-owl timber wars, suffers no
remorse. Indeed, he wants more trees from the federal forests of
Western Washington and Oregon to fall.
Putting aside past ideological battles, Werntz has joined with timber
companies and the Forest Service to support thinning thousands of
acres of choked, second-growth fir stands.
These forests, which sprang up after the land was clear-cut, often
are virtual thickets. Sunlight barely penetrates their dense canopies
as the trees compete for light and nutrients. The forest floor is
almost always in shade, so there's not much life.
Selective logging or thinning can set off a cascade of new growth in
the forest understory. In thinned stands, researchers have found more
berries, truffles and insects that are cornerstones of a food chain
that reaches all the way to deer, bear and spotted owl.
President Bush is scheduled to visit the Seattle-Bellevue area
Friday, with a fund-raising luncheon and an official presidential
event. The visit here will follow a stopover in Oregon, during which
Bush is expected to inspect forest-thinning efforts.
So the loggers are weeding, creating raggedly spaced stands and
patchy openings that mimic old-growth forest.
"There's good science out there that says this can work," Werntz
said. "And we've stepped up to the plate and said we ought to do
this."
Within the Forest Service, thinning has emerged as an accepted
harvest tactic, replacing clear-cutting that in recent decades shaved
off thousands of acres of centuries-old Northwest trees.
President Bush is pushing to resume limited logging in old-growth or
so-called first-growth forests. But in a swing through the Northwest
this week, he is expected to put the spotlight on thinning to stave
off wildfires.
Within the environmental movement, the question of how and where to
thin is intensely debated. This is a movement that came of age as
environmentalists rallied time and again against the Forest Service's
management practices, and many remain wary of the agency's ability to
turn logging into a tool for improving the young stands of fir.
They say that nature, over time, will bring new life into the crowded
young fir stands, as some trees die and others thrive. And they are
wary of building new logging roads for thinning, citing the risks of
increased erosion, forest fragmentation and other problems that can
result from even a temporary route that is later replanted with trees.
Kevin Geraghty is with the North Cascades Conservation Council, a
group working to preserve the North Cascades' scenic, scientific and
recreational values. Geraghty said he could support some thinning on
the arid forests east of the mountains, but not on the west side.
"Our position is that in balance, it doesn't make much sense,"
Geraghty said. "And we're very nervous about the noise that thinning
is good and should be ramped up."
Geraghty earlier this year successfully lobbied to scale down the
size of a timber sale for thinning in the Olympic National Forest. He
says he's prepared to launch a broader battle against other such
sales in Western Washington.
Werntz' experience in the movement has led him to a different
conclusion. He spent his early years mapping and surveying the forest
to aid in lawsuits that helped block dozens of Forest Service sales
in old-growth forests lawsuits that helped drag the overall Northwest
harvest down from a late '80s peak of 3 billion board feet to last
year's level of about 400 million board feet.
Now, serving as science director for the Bellingham-based Ecosystem
Alliance, Werntz has helped knit together a Northwest coalition of
environmental groups that support the thinning of the second-growth
forests.
Werntz says some of the most innovative work has been done on the
Olympic Peninsula. He's been tracking these sales for eight years,
often walking the harvest sites with Frank Davis, a Forest Service
official who decides which trees to cut and which to leave alone.
And that time together has produced a mutual respect.
"We left the esoteric stuff behind and talk about real things like
where roads should be built or shouldn't be built," Werntz said.
"When we disagree, we go out and discuss things and are still human
beings to each other," Davis said. "He asks a lot of questions that
help me think outside the box."
Earlier this summer, Werntz and Davis checked out the North Fulton
sale overlooking Hood Canal. There, loggers have hauled Douglas fir
>from a 60-year-old forest that was clear-cut during the era of
railroad logging, then burned and replanted. The tightly packed trees
are tall and spindly.
"In the plantation forest, trees are competing against each other for
sunlight and water, and that makes them grow very tall and very fast,
and they compete so severely that there is very little energy left
over for other life forms," said Andrew Carey, a Forest Service
research biologist who has set up test plots in the North Fulton sale.
How thinning works
In thinning, loggers remove lots of the smaller fir that have lost
out in the world of forest competition. They leave behind the bigger
fir, as well as cedar, vine maple, alder and other species that have
languished in the shaded understory.
It's slow going. Loggers face the extra risk of trying to fell one
tree without knocking down branches from trees left standing.
"With a clear-cut, everything out front is already down, but here you
keep your eyes open all the time," said Sam Bickle, a logging
contractor. "This is dangerous work."
On one 38-acre patch, the work is nearly done. And from a distance
the Forest Service acreage still looks like a wall of deep green that
rises in stark relief to the clear-cut landscape of nearby private
lands.
But up close, holes appear in the forest canopy, the result of three
months of logging that have removed about a third of the timber
volume.
Carey, the researcher, hopes the logging will yield the kind of
changes he's seen in other thinned stands he has monitored on the
Olympic National Forest and Fort Lewis.
As new light pours in, the smaller hardwoods and softwoods speed up
their growth. Some of these species have root systems that pump
nutrients into the soil. The richer soils increase the numbers and
kinds of fungi, some of which produce truffles, a favorite food of
flying squirrels. The squirrels, in turn, are a favorite food of
spotted owls.
The richer soil also supports more insects, which provide food for
birds and five species of voles.
Then there are shrubs such as salal, huckleberry and Oregon grape,
which once removed from the shade can burst forth with berries that
are devoured by chipmunks, mice and other small mammals that provide
protein for predators further up the food chain.
"We predicted many of the responses but were relatively surprised
that they happened as quickly as they did," Carey said.
Carey recommends that the second-growth forests undergo a series of
thinnings every 20 to 30 years. The biological response to the
logging is greatest in the early years and levels off as the trees
reach 80 to 100 years of age. By 130 years, he predicts, a thinned
stand could support most of the species of the old-growth forests,
which may harbor trees ranging from a couple of hundred to more than
a 1,000 years old.
Davis, the Forest Service timber-sale planner, has tapped into
Carey's knowledge to help determine what trees should be cut. But
even the most carefully-crafted timber harvests, under a requirement
added to the Northwest Forest plan, may require extensive surveys to
track the presence of rare forest species.
Difficult to prepare
The surveys take time and money and have made it much harder to
prepare a thinning sale. Once a sale finally gets a green light, the
Forest Service may have a hard time drawing bids in a market swamped
with logs clear-cut from private Northwest lands and Canadian public
lands.
The North Fork Fulton is a good example of the challenges involved in
pulling off a thinning sale.
The sale was first proposed in 1998 and drew no bids. Then it was put
on hold for several years as surveys indicated the presence of the
jumping slug a forest creature on the protected list. Additional
surveys indicated the slug was present in the Olympic forest in
relative abundance.
The sale was put back up for bid. This time the timber drew one
bidder Bickle, who paid $93,000 for the wood, a modest price that is
unlikely to cover all the costs of preparing the sale and carrying
out environmental surveys.
But the Forest Service's Davis says the sale should not be judged by
profits alone. Instead, the public should view the logging as a
restoration project that also happens to put some people to work.
"If I were going for the biggest buck, we would do like private
industry, we would be clear-cutting ... " Davis said.
That comment drew a quick comeback from Carey.
"If you try to clear-cut this, someone is going to shut you down."
Hal Bernton: 206-464-2581 or
<mailto:hbernton@seattletimes.com>hbernton@seattletimes.com
Copyright ) 2003 The Seattle Times Company
====================================================================================
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/
Sunday, August 17, 2003, 12:00 a.m. Pacific
Bush to push forest-thinning plan during Northwest visit this week
By Hal Bernton
Seattle Times staff reporter
President Bush is scheduled to return to the Pacific Northwest this
week to advocate thinning some of the regions most fire-prone forests.
In a swing through Arizona earlier this month, he touted his "Healthy
Forests Initiative" as a way to combat conditions that have created
some of the most severe wildfires in years.
In Oregon, he is expected to visit a sickly swath of national forest
and check out efforts to clear out undergrowth that can act as ladder
fuels and carry fire to the tree-top canopy.
The thinning in the Olympic National Forest is part of the federal
government's campaign to weed out crowded forests on federal lands
across the West.
Most of the work is aimed at the drier pine forests, where decades of
fire suppression have built up dense thickets of trees that can
trigger raging forest fires.
The president's Northwest visit comes as Congress considers
legislation that would ease environmental reviews and appeals in an
effort to increase thinning on up to 20 million acres of fire-prone
federal forests.
Environmentalists have been wary of the Bush administration's
fire-prevention campaign, fearing it will stray from clearing out
brush around communities to plucking out big valuable trees in the
backcountry. They have also opposed administration efforts to ease
environmental reviews and appeals of sales identified as
fire-prevention efforts.
Meanwhile, environmentalists are girding for new battles in the
old-growth forests in the western Cascades and Oregon Coast range.
In a recent out-of-court settlement with the timber industry, the
Bush administration pledged to try to increase the pace of logging in
24.5 million acres of forests where endangered spotted owls live.
The harvest level last year was 400 million board feet, far below the
1.1 billion board feet set as an initial target under the 1994
Northwest Forest Plan.
In order to reach that goal, federal land managers will have to do
more than pick up the pace of thinning the second growth. They will
also have to log in the old-growth stands that yield far higher
volumes of timber.
That won't be easy.
Environmentalists already are back sitting in trees and filing briefs
in the courts to try to stop some of the old-growth sales.
Reviving old-growth logging also is unlikely to have a big political
payoff as Bush faces re-election in 2004. Within the Northwest,
public-opinion polls in recent years have indicated waning support
for big-tree harvests.
Even the timber industry is no longer gung-ho for big-tree logging.
Many of the large companies in the forest industry have shifted their
mills to handle small logs cut from private lands, and many mills
can't handle big logs.
"It's hard to get rid of the big trees because everybody has cut
back," said Sam Bickle, who logs in the Olympic National Forest.
"Everybody has cut back."
Hal Bernton: 206-464-2581 or
<mailto:hbernton@seattletimes.com>hbernton@seattletimes.com
Copyright ) 2003 The Seattle Times Company
-----------------------
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