U.S. to propose new plan for more loggin
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| Mon, 07-12-2004 - 10:42am |
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apwashington_story.asp?category=1151&slug=Forest%20Rules
Monday, July 12, 2004 · Last updated 2:41 a.m. PT
U.S. to propose new plan for more logging
By MATTHEW DALY
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration will propose a new plan to open up national forests to more logging, confirming a draft plan published two weeks ago, The Associated Press learned.
Under the plan, to be announced by Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman on Monday, governors would have to petition the federal government to block road-building in remote areas of national forests, replacing a national rule against such projects adopted by the Clinton administration.
The Bush administration for nearly two years has been weighing changes to the so-called roadless rule, which blocks road construction in nearly one-third of national forests as a way to prevent logging and other commercial activity.
Officials call the new roadless policy a commonsense plan that protects backcountry woods while advancing a partnership with the nations governors, particularly in the West. (me: If it truly 'protected', then it would be the other way around...the logging industry would have to petition the Governors of each state!)
Veneman, whose department includes the Forest Service, was to announce the policy at the Idaho Capitol in Boise with Gov. Dirk Kempthorne and Sen. Larry Craig, both Republicans.
"Our actions today advance President Bush's commitment to cooperatively conserving roadless areas on national forests," Veneman said in remarks prepared for the event. "The prospect of endless lawsuits represents neither progress, nor certainty for communities.
"Our announcements today illustrate our commitment to working closely with the nation's governors to meet the needs of local communities, and to maintaining the undeveloped character of the most pristine areas of the National Forest System," she added. (me: <> Uh huh...sure...that's why the states are the ones that will now have to bare the onus of 'petitioning' to protect forest lands.)
As part of the plan, the administration said it will reinstate for 18 months an interim rule requiring that Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth approve any new road construction in previously protected areas. The administration had let the interim rule lapse last year as it considered a permanent rule to replace the Clinton-era policy.
As a practical matter, officials said they expect few, if any, changes in roadless policy during the next 18 months, noting that Bosworth did not approve a single new road during the two-plus years the interim directive was in place.
Environmentalists howled when the draft rule was made public earlier this month. Without a national policy against road construction, they said, forest management will revert to individual forest plans that in many cases allow roads and other development on most of the 58 million acres now protected by the roadless rule.
Environmentalists say it is unlikely that governors in pro-logging states such as Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and Utah will seek to keep the roadless rule in effect. Kempthorne is among several Republican governors in the West who have strongly criticized the rule, calling it an unnecessary restriction that has locked up millions of acres from logging and other economic development.
Citing such complaints, the Bush administration said last year it would develop a plan to allow governors to seek exemptions from the roadless rule. The latest plan turns that on its head by requiring governors to petition the Agriculture Department if they want to protect against timbering in their state.
The Clinton administration adopted the roadless rule during its final days in office in January 2001, calling it an important protection for backcountry forests. Environmentalists hailed that action, but the timber industry and some Republican lawmakers have criticized it as overly intrusive and even dangerous, saying it has left millions of acres exposed to catastrophic wildfires. (me: The 'catastrophic wildfires' happened long before we were ever here. They are a part of the cycle of nature. Logging will not reduce that risk significantly because many of the wildfires in the northwest are in areas that they can't log anyway - too inaccessable to be profitable.)
Federal judges have twice struck down the 3-year-old rule, most recently in a Wyoming case decided in July 2003. That case, which environmentalists have appealed, is one of several pending legal challenges, complicating efforts to issue a new plan.
The new plan will be published in the Federal Register this week, with a 60-day comment period extending into September.
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On the Net: Roadless Area Conservation: http://www.roadless.fs.fed.us/
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Sorry, I couldn't read beyond this--lying becomes spin. Barf
Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy
by Robert F., Jr. Kennedy
Available at: Quimby Warehouse
ISBN: 0060746874 Subtitle: How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Subject: Environmental Conservation & Protection - General Subject: Political Ideologies - General Subject: United States - 21st Century Subject: Government - Executive Branch Subject: Conspiracy & Scandal Investigations Publication Date: July 2004 Binding: Hardcover Language: English Pages: 256
Publisher Comments:
In this powerful and far-reaching indictment of George W. Bush's White House, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the country's most prominent environmental attorney, charges that this administration has taken corporate cronyism to such unprecedented heights that it now threatens our health, our national security, and democracy as we know it. In a headlong pursuit of private profit and personal power, Kennedy writes, George Bush and his administration have eviscerated the laws that have protected our nation's air,water, public lands, and wildlife for the past thirty years, enriching the president's political contributors whilelowering the quality of life for the rest of us.
Kennedy lifts the veil on how the administration has orchestrated these rollbacks almost entirely outside of public scrutiny -- and in tandem with the very industries that our laws are meant to regulate, the country's most notorious polluters. He writes of how it has deceived the public by manipulating and suppressing scientific data, intimidated enforcement officials and other civil servants, and masked its agenda with Orwellian doublespeak. He reports on how the White House doles out lavish subsidies and tax breaks to the energy barons while excusing industry from providing adequate security at the more than 15,000 chemical and nuclear facilities that are prime targets for terrorist attacks. Kennedy reveals an administration whose policies have "squandered our Treasury, entangled us in foreign wars, diminished our international prestige, made us a target for terrorist attacks, and increased our reliance on petty Middle Eastern dictators who despise democracy and are hated by their own people."
Crimes Against Nature is ultimately about the corrosive effect of corporate corruption on our core American values -- free-market capitalism and democracy. It is about an administration, the author argues, that has sacrificed respect for the law, public health, scientific integrity, and long-term economic vitality on the altar of corporate greed. It is a book for both Democrats and Republicans, people like the traditionally conservative farmers and fishermen Kennedy represents in lawsuits against polluters. "Without exception," he writes, "these people see the current administration as the greatest threat not just to their livelihoods but to their values, their sense of community, and their idea of what it means to be American."
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=17287
Guess they are consistent... not for choice, not for same sex marriage... guess Republicans are rather fond of the federal government after all (when it suits them.)