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                     FOREST FOR SALE:  IT'S A STEAL

                            by Robert Weir
                            Mill Valley, CA

   The Montana National Forest Management Act, which might be passed by the
   Senate any day now,  would release four to six million acres of pristine
   Montana wilderness for "development" - roadbuilding, mining and clear-
   cutting.  Montana's senators, Max Baucus, a Democrat, and Conrad Burns,
   a Republican, very quietly co-sponsored the bill.  With such bipartisan
   support, the measure might appear uncontroversial.  It is not.

   A broad coalition of local and national environmental groups and wildlife
   scientists oppose this measure, which attacks the largest remaining old-
   growth forest in the lower 48 states.  In this era of shrinking wilderness
   and increasing appreciation of the economic and esthetic benefits of pre-
   serving our last intact public lands, the plan insults not only Montanans
   but the American public.

   The bill was introduced in the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural
   Resources at midnight on Nov. 20, 1991.  With minimal review (the text
   had not even been written), the panel passed it, 20 to 0.  It is now on
   the Senate consent calendar, meaning that a voice vote (with no record
   of how the Senators voted) can be called at any time.  If the measure
   is enacted, taxpayers will once again subsidize at considerable expense
   the ruinous building of roads in old-growth national forests for the sole
   purpose of serving the logging and mining industries.

   For example, the legislation directs the Secretary of the Interior to
   trade and sell to the Plum Creek Timber Company more than 20,000 acres
   of national forest land, to be harvested at will.  According to Senator
   Baucus's office, the measure will open for logging more than 98 percent
   of the timber suitable for harvest in the entire six million-acre region.
   This is a public land giveaway of scandalous magnitude, reminiscent of
   the James Watt era.  Moreover, this measure would deny citizens' rights
   to challenge these "development"  actions in court.

   The bill's co-sponsors will likely claim that they are simply serving
   their constituents, providing jobs and bolstering the economy.  Land
   would be clear-cut, as this is the most efficient way to harvest timber.
   The timber industry maintains that clear-cutting is ecologically sound
   because it stimulates the regenerative cycle of a forest fire.  Sadly,
   one need only fly over Oregon and Washington to see the folly in this
   theory.  Years after clear-cutting, lands remain deforested, covered
   only by scrub and weeds.  By contrast, in neighboring areas actually
   burned by a wildfire, ash and residues have enriched the soil and the
   forest is already coming back after only a few years.

   When clear-cut forests are replanted, and if the replanting takes, the
   result is a tree farm, not a forest.  Biologically impoverished mono-
   cultures replace diverse ecosystems; habitat for fish and wildlife is
   severely damaged or destroyed.  Of many species, few remain.  At the
   elevations covered in the bill, replanting is an iffy prospect, and any
   regrowth would be extremely slow.  The timber industry doesn't want to
   hear any of this.

   Gone with the forests are the logging jobs.  The corporations move on,
   telling the impoverished communities they leave behind to blame environ-
   mentalists ("You know, the spotted owl people").  Meanwhile, they often
   mill the wood in Mexico or elsewhere, using cheap foreign labor, and then
   export it to Japan, which would never consider clear-cutting its own land.

   Exports further decimate the resource and eliminate jobs.  The multinational
   corporations would do well to practice logging on a sustained-yield basis,
   but they don't because clear-cutting is much more profitable for the short
   term.  These same companies can afford to contribute generously to Senate
   campaigns - including those of Senators Baucus and Burns - and they do.

   The National Forest Service plays along with all of this.  Forest Service
   officials who have stood up for environmentally sound practices are fired
   or transferred.  Those who assist timber and mining efforts are rewarded.
   The agency entrusted with protecting our national forests is quietly
   trying to put roads into the last large areas of primary forests before
   arguments can be heard in the forests' defense.  The Baucus-Burns bill
   includes no specific language about road-building, but it is implicit:
   without access roads, the proposed development cannot take place.  The
   bill would also do away with the normally required environmental impact
   statements.  This is shady business.

   Senators Burns and Baucus characterize their bill as a "compromise".
   This seems a misuse of the word when 98 percent of the harvestable timber
   in the national forest would be taken in trade for some proposed
   wilderness preserves.  These preserves would be composed of lands, mostly
   rock and ice, that no one wants for timber, mining, or recreation.
   Where is the compromise?

   At stake is a biomass of a density equal to that of a tropical rain
   forest, and of similar importance to the planet's life-support system.
   Mass clear-cutting destroys lands and watersheds and causes desertification
   for many miles downwind.  Fish and wildlife disappear.  In Montana,
   private land has been heavily logged, and the companies now want the
   public land.  And they want American tax dollars to finance them.

   Why don't our elected leaders support development that is ecologically
   and economically sustainable?  Clear-cutting public lands is neither.
   The timber barons and extractive industries have had their way with our
   national forests for long enough.  Our ancient forests of the Northern
   Rockies don't belong to industrialists.  They belong to the children,
   to the future, to the earth itself.