Redirect forest funds to fix roads, safeguard homes.Byline: GUEST VIEWPOINT By Ivan Maluski For The Register-Guard The Register-Guard's March 2 article regarding the debate among environmental groups on the question of appropriate forest thinning missed some key points and deserves clarification. Whether large-scale timber production should continue to be the primary use of Oregon's national forests is an important topic. Even as the U.S. Forest Service celebrates its 100th anniversary, it continues to plod forward with thousands of acres of misguided timber sales in old growth on public lands across the Northwest. The Sierra Club Sierra Club, national organization in the United States dedicated to the preservation and expansion of the world's parks, wildlife, and wilderness areas. Founded (1892) in California by a group led by the Scottish-American conservationist John Muir, the Sierra Club , other conservation groups and many citizens believe that as long as the commercial timber sale program exists, the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management will abuse our public forests, selling off old growth trees, damaging drinking water drinking water supply of water available to animals for drinking supplied via nipples, in troughs, dams, ponds and larger natural water sources; an insufficient supply leads to dehydration; it can be the source of infection, e.g. leptospirosis, salmonellosis, or of poisoning, e.g. supplies and watersheds, and intruding into our last wild roadless areas. The drive to produce timber from public lands is fueled not only by aggressive lobbying from timber industry groups, but also by the agencies' own internal financial incentives to log big, ancient trees. The Forest Service and BLM BLM n abbr (US) (= Bureau of Land Management) → les domaines have a direct financial interest in selling the public's old growth because these agencies retain most of the receipts from the sales. These receipts do not contribute to the U.S. Treasury U.S. Treasury Created in 1798, the United States Department of the Treasury is the government (Cabinet) department responsible for issuing all Treasury bonds, notes and bills. Some of the government branches operating under the U.S. Treasury umbrella include the IRS, U.S. or return money to taxpayers, but are mostly used to maintain bureaucracies within the Forest Service and BLM. Thus, these agencies have a terrible incentive to promote logging of the most commercially valuable big trees at the expense of clean water, wildlife habitat and recreation. The Forest Service's ongoing effort to push the destructive and arguably ar·gu·a·ble adj. 1. Open to argument: an arguable question, still unresolved. 2. That can be argued plausibly; defensible in argument: three arguable points of law. illegal Biscuit timber sales in Southern Oregon This article is about the southern region of the U.S. state of Oregon. For the University, see Southern Oregon University. Southern Oregon is a region of the U.S. is a sad reminder of this. The largest federal logging project in modern history, the Biscuit sales are planned for vast roadless forests, old growth reserves and critical salmon watersheds. By some estimates, they could cost taxpayers more than $30 million. Until the commercial chain saw is taken out of the agencies' hands, the debate about plantation thinning as a restoration tool is primarily academic. Lost in this debate are stories about the key restoration and community protection values that the Sierra Club and others support as a means to shift federal agencies away from their traditional fixation on ancient forest logging and timber production. The national forests have hundreds of thousands of miles of crumbling logging roads, in total, eight times more miles than the U.S. highway system. These roads erode into streams and damage watersheds. While the Forest Service acknowledges a $10 billion road maintenance backlog, road restoration sits on the back burner Noun 1. back burner - reduced priority; "dozens of cases were put on the back burner" precedence, precedency, priority - status established in order of importance or urgency; "... while scarce resources are spent trying to log old growth forests and build even more forest roads. An aggressive and well-funded program of road maintenance and appropriate decommissioning Decommissioning is a general term for a formal process to remove something from operational status. Some specific instances include:
Invasive species is a phrase with many definitions. The first definition expresses the phrase in terms of non-indigenous species (e.g. and improving stream quality for fish and wildlife, we can both create jobs and protect the environment. Redirecting timber sale subsidies, which amount to hundreds of millions of dollars annually, would be a good start. Further, the Sierra Club and our colleague organizations favor thinning flammable flam·ma·ble adj. Easily ignited and capable of burning rapidly; inflammable. [From Latin flamm brush and small-diameter trees in the Wildland Urban Interface to protect homes and communities. Research shows that communities and homes can be best protected by removing flammable brush and other materials within a quarter-mile radius and by fireproofing fireproofing, method of making normally combustible materials as nearly noncombustible as possible. Fireproofing generally applies to textiles and construction materials that are treated with a solution or coating of some substance that will tend to retard their structures and the immediate areas around them. Unfortunately, the Bush administration still focuses scarce dollars on backcountry back·coun·try n. A sparsely inhabited rural region. logging schemes and in cutting old growth forests instead of true community protection. In addition to giving communities the protection they need and deserve, small-diameter fuels and brush reduction can create jobs and economic opportunities while protecting our older forests. Community protection and true restoration of past logging damage, not timber volume production, should be the highest priorities for federal forest management. Ivan Maluski works on forest protection and restoration issues for the Oregon Chapter of the Sierra Club. |
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