Groups To Nail Clinton With Boards Anti-Salvage Logging Campaign To Send 2x4s To White House

Environmentalists trying to persuade President Clinton to veto a logging proposal think they’ve come up with an idea that will appeal to activists bored with the typical letter-writing campaign: Send a board.

Voice of the Environment, a Montana-based group, has printed 100,000 mailing labels to be affixed to 2x4 pieces of lumber urging Clinton to reject the measure that would exempt salvage logging on national forests from environmental laws.

“Veto Salvage Logging. Salvage Your Presidency,” the labels read.

“I found out from the Post Office that for $3 you can send a 2-foot long 2-by-4 to the White House first class,” said Lewis Seiler, president of the group.

“We want to show the president there’s enough salvage wood already. We don’t need to cut down trees in our national forests,” he said.

More than 50 environmental groups across the country have agreed to help with the effort, Seiler said.

Greenpeace has agreed to distribute 14,000 of the labels, the Native Forest Council of Eugene, Ore., 18,000, the National Audubon Society 7,000, The Wilderness Society 6,000 and the Sierra Club 3,000, he said.

“By the end of the week, there should be a substantial number of 6-inch to 2-foot long boards arriving at the White House,” Seiler said.

“We are going to keep sending the labels to Clinton whether he signs the bill or not. We are not willing to have our forests cut down so people who own timber companies can become richer than they are,” he said.

The White House had no immediate comment Thursday, a spokesman said.

The Senate last month approved, 48-46, a salvage logging proposal by Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., intended to speed the removal of dead and dying timber from national forests in an effort to reduce fire threats.

Sue Kupillas, a county commissioner and unsuccessful Democratic congressional candidate in Oregon last fall, told a Senate panel on Wednesday that existing environmental laws block the Forest Service from proper management of national forests.

“Unfortunately, custodial management allows us to extinguish wildfires but not to treat the major forest health problems which plague the federal forests in southern Oregon,” she said.

“We can only watch as our forests burn in major wildfires and our county emergency management costs escalate,” she said.

Gorton said logging cutbacks in the Northwest to protect the northern spotted owl have cost the region thousands of jobs.