GOP pushing for more logging in national forests

A century-old federal program that compensates counties straddling huge tracts of nontaxable national forests has expired, and House Republicans are using its reauthorization to push for opening the land to more logging and mining. The GOP wants to shift the forest-payment program closer to its 1908 origin, when the federal government directly split revenue from timber, mining and other activities to pay for local schools and roads in Washington state and around the country. Environmentalists and the U.S. Forest Service oppose the changes, including proposals to re-link payments to the amount of timber or minerals extracted and to set first-ever minimum timber-harvest targets for each national forest. Currently, logging in national forests produces about 3 billion board feet of timber annually, a 75 percent drop from its peak 20 years ago. Beleaguered local officials, already grappling with budget shortfalls, are pressing for quick reauthorization of the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act to avert an interruption in payments. At the same time, they want Congress to revamp the payments, which they consider inadequate and undependable. House Republicans, led by Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, are using the reauthorization to push two of the issues that have dominated their agenda this year: cutting federal spending and rolling back environmental regulation. Among other things, they would set minimum requirements on timber sales and annual revenue for each national forest. They also want to speed up environmental reviews of logging, grazing, drilling and mining, blaming the reviews for hindering projects on federal lands. In addition, Republicans have called for paying counties 75 percent instead of the historical 25 percent of revenue from federal forests, handing local officials a tempting financial motive to support cutting more trees...more