🚀 go-pugleaf

Here is an article that appeared in the S.D. Union-Tribune today.  Letters
are needed in response.

WASHINGTON DROPS PLAN FOR MORE SIERRA LOGGING

Associated press

WASHINGTON- The Clinton Administration has quietly discarded a
 Forest Service draft proposal to permit significantly more logging in
California's Sierra Nevada.

White House Cheif of Staff Leon Panetta and Agriculture Secretary Dan
Glickman made the decision this week after concluding the proposal ran
counter to efforts to protect the spotted owl, which nests in the
old�growth forests of the Sierra Navada.

"They came to the conclusion that the draft plan was insistent with
the best scientific evidence," White House deputy press secretary Barry
Toiv said Saturday.

Toiv said Panetta and Glickman also concluded that the plan was
inconsistent with with Clinton administration policies.

"This administration has tried to look at the impact of the plan on the
entire ecosystem," Toiv said.  "The feeling was that draft didn't do that."


At stake are thousands of jobs in the timber industry and  fate of
thousands of acres of forests and the wild nature they contain.

The draft plan, covering timber production in 10 national forests in
Ca;lifornia, would have permitted more trees to be cut over a broader area
than currently allowed.

It would have relaxed protections that cutting of trees with diameters
larger than 20 inches.

And it would have allowed annual logging of 620 million board feet of
timber from the Sierra Forests, an increase from the 416 million board feet
proposed by an earlier plan.  The proposal would have increased logging
jobs by 50% in the region.

Don Zea, executive director of the California Forestry Association, said
the decision was more about politics than the ecology of the Sierra Nevada.


"It's about voters (Clinton) thinks he has to state...the environmental
voters," Zea said.


POINTS FOR ARGUMENTS �

1) As of 1990, 95-98% of all old-growth forests have been lost to logging
in the lower 48 states.

2) As to jobs lost� 25,000 timber jobs disappeared during the 1980's when
Reagan upped the cut to maximum allowable.  These losses were due to
automation and log exports.

3) In 1995, about 1.6 billion board feet of unprocessed logs harvested on
private lands were exported outside the U.S. for processing, costing
thousands of jobs.

4) Between 1980�1991, the logging program on National Forests operated at a
net loss to taxpayers of 7.3 billion.  In 1995, our road�building and
replanting subsidies to private companies cost us $28,687,000.

5) While timber harvest increased nationwide by 64% from  1951-1994, jobs in
the paper and pulp industries increased by only 2%.

Thanks-and please write a response into the Union-Tribune.

E-mail is letters@uniontrib.com.

Mailing address is:

San Diego Union-Tribune
P.O. Box 191
San Diego, Ca. 92112-4106