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LOGGING WITHOUT LAWS BULLETIN #16, from the Western
Ancient Forest Campaign, (202)789-2844x291 or e-mail
WAFCDC@igc.apc.org
 
Wednesday, December 28, 1995, the 155th Day of Lawless Logging
 
MITCH BUYS TREES:  In the first time in the history of the
National Forest system that a party has apparently won rights to a
timber sale with no intent to cut the trees, the Northwest Ecosystem
Alliance has purchased the Thunder Salvage timber sale.  At $8.25
per thousand board feet, the Alliance outbid three timber companies
for the Okanogan NF sale.  "It was like a post-Christmas sale at
Walmart, with public forests at bargain prices," said Mitch
Friedman, NWEA director.  "The Forest Service is playing Santa to
the timber industry, but Grinch to the taxpayers.  You can't blame
us for shopping a bargain -- we at least will pay our money, but
leave the trees and wildlife habitat intact."
 
"BAD FAITH": "Besides ridding the woods of environmentally
sensitive old growth, all that has been accomplished by the industry
and its congressional handmaidens with this bald-faced act of bad
faith is to reopen the bitter battles for the Northwest woods," says
the Seattle Post Intelligencer on the timber rider.  The PI calls the
rider a "scandalous ploy" to clearcut healthy old-forests: the
"purported 'emergency'" claimed to pass the rider "seems to have
disappeared." 
 
CD TRAINING:  A "Training in Non-Violence" will be held in
Roseburg OR today for area activists who may decide to protest
lawless logging.  A release from Umpqua Watersheds Inc. says that
"the public across the Pacific Northwest, and beyond, is becoming
more and more frustrated by the exemption of environmental laws
and [the rider's] elimination of the rights of the public to court
review."  In response to discussion of non-violent civil disobedience,
the training will assist in preparing for a "safe and orderly event,
which will allow a broad spectrum of society to express its
conscience constructively," says Jim Ince.
 
BOTANICAL AREA TO BE LOGGED:  The Siskiyou Project says
that plans of the Forest Service to log 200-400 year old Port Orford
cedars in a designated Botanical Area is a "strangely Orwellian
interpretation of protection."  The Project calls the decision to log
the cedars instead of closing area roads to guard against root fungus
"just the most glaring example in an ever increasing number of
decisions by the Siskiyou NF to eliminate the cedar from sight as a
solution toward dealing with the pathogen."  The Project says that
the sale was sold in August to take advantage of the Rescissions
Act timber rider.  The primary agent in spreading root disease is
Forest Service logging roads, the group says.
 
BURNS WRONG?:  The Montana Wilderness Association has
challenged Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT) to oppose the logging of
healthy green trees under the timber rider after Burns told a Billings
MT radio audience that salvage sales are "nothing more than trying
to salvage the timber that's on the ground due to fire or disease or
blowdown."  MWA say that Burns' statement is "absolutely untrue"
and urged Montana media to hold the Senator accountable.  "Sen.
Burns either lacks a fundamental understanding of what the Forest
Service is doing under the logging without laws rider that he
supported, or the agency is grossly violating congressional intent,"
said MWA President Mike Grayson.
 
Your tax deductible contribution to WAFC in 1995 is needed so we
can continue our work in 1996. We're at 1101 14th St. #1400,
Washington D.C. 20005. Thanks!