Monday, September 08, 2003

Lube That Chain Saw, Bush is set to roll back protections under the Northwest Forest Plan.

...WHEN THE NORTHWEST Forest Plan took effect in 1994, the intent was to find a balance between the needs of the timber industry for wood from public land and the need to preserve forest ecosystems. It hasn't exactly worked out as advertised for the loggers.
In the intervening years, the annual harvest has only run at about 25 percent of what loggers say they were promised by the federal government, largely a result of environmental groups tying up timber sales in court. When the Bush administration took office in 2001, the message from the Northwest timber industry, which donated more than $1 million to the campaign, was to rejigger the plan so there would be fewer impediments to logging. The feds listened, much to the chagrin of the enviros.
Within the next two weeks, the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management—the two agencies that administer federal lands in the Northwest—will unveil changes to the forest plan's provisions, known as "survey and manage," to monitor mollusks, red tree voles, lichen, and other flora and fauna unique to Northwest forests. (The survey-and-manage species, as they are known, did not include such animals as the northern spotted owl and the marbled murrelet, both covered under the much-stricter Endangered Species Act.) The idea behind survey-and-manage is to ensure that before timber is cut, biologists clamber about the forests to discover what species might be harmed. Discovery of a red tree vole nest, for example, could result in 10 acres of forest being deemed unsuitable for logging...

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