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 * Xposted: msg originally in Sierra Club


   Yep, Stan Gloeckner wrote to All on 10 Jun 95  15:46:00 
    about:   U.S. Public Lands     2/3:

  (Continued from previous message)


  Whenever Murkowski's bill eventually turns up, a more immediate threat
  to America's largest national forest -- and to all national forests --
  is legislation to allow logging companies to clearcut U.S. Forest 
  Service and Bureau of Land Management lands under the guise of 
  salvaging dead and dying trees. 

  A House-approved measure -- tacked onto a Contract-inspired bill to 
  rescind $17 billion in previously authorized spending -- would not 
  only mandate a 6.2 billion board-foot salvage logging program on 
  federal lands over the next two years, but would exempt it from 
  compliance with U.S. environmental laws. A Senate version, while 
  deleting the target harvest levels, similarly suspends "all applicable
  federal laws" with respect to logging on Forest Service or BLM lands. 

  "This is logging without laws," said Melanie Griffin, director of the 
  Club's Land Protection Program. "It's completely outrageous." 

  Again, environmentalists describe the "salvage logging" label as 
  camouflage. Under the broad terms of the legislation moving through 
  Congress, Brodie said, "You probably couldn't find a tree on the 
  planet Earth that didn't fit the definition." 

  It's in Utah, however, that subterfuge is being given new meaning. In 
  January, Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt and the state's entire congressional 
  delegation announced their intention to introduce a "wilderness" bill 
  by June. But activists familiar with previous proposals by the Utah 
  delegation -- which includes Sen. Orrin Hatch and Rep. James Hansen, a
  member of Young's Resources Committee -- warn that the bill will 
  actually open more than 4 million acres of wildlands to mining, 
  logging and other development. 

  "It's a phony wilderness bill," said Rudy Lukez, chair of the Sierra 
  Club's Utah Chapter. He urged activists to tell their own 
  congressional representatives to oppose all efforts to undo protection
  for Utah wilderness, and to support instead the Utah Wilderness 
  Coalition's 5.7 million-acre proposal, sponsored in the House by Rep. 
  Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.). 

  "Utah wilderness is a national treasure," Lukez said, adding that 
  Utah's elected officials view wilderness as "strictly a states' rights
  issue." 

  Many Utahns share Lukez' perspective. A recent meeting called to 
  oppose new anti-wilderness measures drew more than 500 people, and 
  raised enough funds to enable the Wilderness Coalition, to which the 
  Sierra Club belongs, to hire a full-time organizer. 



  Under the Gun: Endangered Species and National Parks 

  Reps. Hansen and Young, meanwhile, are heeding well Grant's advice to
  "strike as  often as you can." 

  Hansen has made clear his desire to shut down some national parks. At 
  a March hearing of the House Resources Committee, he and Young spoke 
  of the perils of having land "locked up" by the federal government, 
  and promised a re-evaluation of the "negative economic impacts" of 
  public ownership. 

  Such re-evaluation has largely been deferred while the House plowed 
  through its Contract With America. But Minnesota's Rep. Jim Oberstar -
  - a Democratic champion of tough clean-water standards -- has already 
  offered a bill "to reverse the increasingly restrictive rules and 
  regulations that have been put into effect" at his state's Voyageurs 
  National Park, and permit continued development "in all park areas." 

  And Rep. Joel Hefley (R-Colo.) is pushing legislation that would, in 
  the words of Sierra Club Chairman Mike McCloskey, "cap, shrink and 
  shred our national park system." 

  The Hefley bill sets up a process that would make it tougher to add 
  new parks and easier to "get rid of units that allegedly don't deserve
  to be national parks," said Carl Zichella, the Club's Midwest staff 
  director. "Voyageurs, for example, is one of the really magnificent 
  parks in the system -- it's just not famous. Hefley would allow gems 
  like this to be stripped of their national park status." 

  Another prime target of the House and Senate is the Endangered Species
  Act, which is likely to be brought up for reauthorization by opponents
  in this session of Congress. 

  In the Senate, Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) fired off an early round
  by pushing through a moratorium on final listings of species by the 
  Fish and Wildlife Service -- including more than 100 already proposed 
  for listing by the agency -- and designation of critical habitat. The 
  measure, approved as a rider to a Defense appropriations bill, would 
  cut $1.5 million from the agency's budget for listing species, the 
  pivotal step in extending protection to flora and fauna threatened 
  with extinction. 

  In the House, Young has set up a task force to conduct what Melinda 
  Pierce, the Club's chief lobbyist on the Endangered Species Act, 

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... "Scotty, beam us down more whiskey and proceed to Rigel VII"