Senate Approves Controversial Logging Bill Clinton Will Sign Proposal, Angering Conservation Groups

The Senate gave final approval Friday to a contentious logging proposal that President Clinton says he will sign despite objections from environmentalists.

The logging provision, included in a Republican-backed spending cuts bill, waives laws protecting fish and wildlife in an effort to expedite logging in all national forests facing fire threats and Northwest forests with northern spotted owls.

Timber industry leaders and Western Republicans hailed it as the most significant step to ease fire threats and move wood to timber-starved mills in the Northwest since the owl was declared a threatened species in 1990.

“This legislation will give the Forest Service and the administration the tools needed to begin addressing the problem,” said W. Henson Moore, president of the American Forest & Paper Association.

Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., said the accelerated logging already approved by the House would allow Clinton to “keep his promises to working families in the Northwest.”

But lawyers for conservation groups predicted it would lead to a flurry of new lawsuits in federal courts nationwide aimed at blocking the logging.

“We’ve had an uneasy peace with a few skirmishes over forest management since Clinton was elected,” said Nathaniel Lawrence, a lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council in San Francisco.

“Most environmentalists will view the timber salvage provisions in this bill as a frontal assault on public values on public lands and a return to an all-out war,” he said in a telephone interview.

Clinton, who enjoyed strong support from conservation groups in his 1992 campaign, singled out the logging language as a “very bad environmental provision” when he vetoed an earlier version of the bill.

But much to the chagrin of conservationists and several Democrats who had urged his opposition to the measure, Clinton announced last month he reluctantly would accept a slightly revised version of the bill.

“President Clinton has completely flip-flopped by agreeing to sign this bill that allows logging without laws,” Sierra Club President J. Robert Cox said Friday.

Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., another critic, said the bill would allow logging along wild and scenic rivers and in sensitive areas, with no restrictions.

“Its definition of salvage is so broad that it opens the door to wholesale logging in the region’s remaining oldgrowth forests and roadless areas,” he said.