Vermont Senator Applauds Clinton’s Timber Stand Leahy Says Industry’s Economic Doomsday Predictions False

A ranking Democrat urged President Clinton on Wednesday to stand firm against congressional pressure to suspend environmental laws so diseased national forests can be logged without challenge.

U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said doomsday predictions that more than 80,000 Pacific Northwest timber jobs are at stake is a “fallacy.”

Environmentalists and some scientists also claim the forest health crisis touted by industry and supporters on Capitol Hill is a hoax.

“I applaud your courage to stand up to special interests and your vision for sustainable economic growth,” Leahy wrote Clinton.

Last week, the president used his first and only veto to derail a $16.4 billion spending cuts package.

In addition to saying education programs would be harmed, Clinton rejected a provision that would allow the U.S. Forest Service to bypass environmental regulations and court challenges. The measure would have opened to harvest nearly 7 billion board feet of burned and diseased timber called salvage - enough to build almost a half million typical homes.

Oregon Republican Sens. Mark Hatfield and Bob Packwood said this week they believe Clinton will buckle on the timber provision.

Democratic insiders said Clinton will stand firm.

Telephone calls to the White House press office were not returned.

The spotted owl and other environmental crises have nearly shut down federal forests to logging. The American and Forest Paper Association in Washington, D.C., predicts that a continued plug in the timber pipeline will cost 85,000 jobs in Washington, Oregon and northern California.

But Leahy’s letter to Clinton said 1,800 new timber-related jobs have been gained in Washington and Oregon since January 1993.

The state employment offices in Washington and Oregon said Wednesday that Leahy actually understated the jobs gain.

Washington state got nearly 2,500 new jobs in lumber, wood, paper and pulp operations since January 1993, said Dennis Fusco, the state’s chief economist.

New forest-related jobs in Oregon are at 1,000, economist David Cooke said.

Timber industry officials said the new jobs probably are in high-tech areas, such as computers, and are not related to manufacturing. And they trot out their own figures.

Since 1989 in the Pacific Northwest, 223 mills and 20,000 jobs have been lost, said Bob Dick of the Northwest Forestry Association in Olympia.

Any salvage timber offered by the Forest Service would be symbolic only and do little to feed starving mills, adds industry consultant Paul Ehinger in Oregon.

“The performance level of the agency has been dismal, at best,” he said.

The industry and environmentalists also are debating the health of America’s forests.

Logging interests say public timberlands are sicker than ever from insects and disease, and just rotting on the ground - fuel for fires.

University of Idaho professor Arthur Partridge claims tree mortality is within historic levels, however.

The latest Forest Service data agrees. In 1992, trees were dying faster on industry land in the Pacific Northwest and Rocky Mountains than in national forests. Regardless of land ownership, the mortality rate is still less than 10 trees are dying per 1,000, the 1992 study shows.

“Insects and disease are the engines that drive forest succession,” Partridge said. “Insects and disease are not at epidemic levels … The forest health argument is shot to hell.”

Industry officials note that Idaho and Washington have several hot spots where trees are dying at alarming rates - up to 40 per 1,000 - and can only be saved by selective logging.

“Deplorable” is how Sherrie Bond of the Washington Lands Coalition describes the condition of federal timberlands. “Soon we will have no Evergreen State, only red, dry, brittle trees that endanger wildlife and humankind …”

, DataTimes