Gop Lawmakers Hear From Timber Families

Three Washington state Republican members of Congress spent the 25th anniversary of Earth Day meeting with timber workers who say they’ve been hurt by federal environmental laws.

Saturday’s gathering at a hotel, billed as a “timber family” hearing, was a panel discussion attended by Sen. Slade Gorton and Reps. Jennifer Dunn and Linda Smith. It was attended by a standing-room crowd of more than 100 timber workers and their families.

The Endangered Species Act is “broken, and needs to be fixed,” Dunn said.

The Endangered Species Act, passed in 1973, is a federal law that protects species of plants and animals that could go extinct without intervention. The northern spotted owl was listed as “threatened” under the act several years ago, leading to drastic cutbacks in logging in Northwest forests.

The Republican Congress, led by Gorton, is considering greatly loosening the act on grounds it does too much damage to people.

Barbara Mossman of Forks, a log truck driver, described herself as a victim of the act, saying the decline in timber production has cost her work.

“It is a cruel, vicious and unrelenting law,” Mossman said.

She and her husband were forced to cease operation of their trucking business in October 1991 and in 1992 received a foreclosure notice on their house.

“The most degrading and humiliating thing we had to do is ask for a voucher for food because we were hungry,” Mossman said.

Hollie Carlson, student body president at Lake Quinault High School, said the law has devastated rural communities.

She said 80 percent of her classmates are eating lunches subsidized by the federal government because they’re too poor to buy their own.