Before former President Clinton left office in 2001, he signed
an executive order placing nearly 60 million acres of public land
off-limits to logging, road-building and development. Emboldened by
the opening of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling,
President Bush has now moved to strike down the federal ban that is
a key part of Clinton’s legacy.
Bush’s actions encourage industry to fight for increased
access to land, while making it harder for states to conserve
roadless areas. But the Bush administration puts a positive spin on
this regulation relapse by insisting that it puts more power in the
hands of state governors.
This actually means that governors allied with business in
industry-friendly states will have the go-ahead they’ve been
waiting for to open up federally owned lands to development and
resource extraction. Meanwhile, those who resist will face
increasing pressure to cater to the interests of industry.
Our federal government exists to prevent the states from
exploiting their resources without regard for the future. But under
the Bush administration, the government is foregoing its
responsibility to preserve our last remaining resources ““ and
with it, the national well-being.
Bush recently made an Earth Day stop at the Great Smoky
Mountains National Park in Tennessee. In his speech, he stated,
“We have a duty and an obligation to protect our environment.
We’re meeting that obligation.”
This blatant attempt by Bush to deceive the American public is
even more ironic considering he’s referring to the Smokies
““ named the country’s most polluted national park by
the National Parks Conservation Association on the basis of its
levels of haze, ozone and acid precipitation.
Bush also manipulates the use of “we” to shift some
responsibility for the state of the environment to his audience. By
establishing mutual responsibility, he makes it harder for people
to criticize his actions, or lack thereof, because he implies that
we somehow share responsibility for the results of his
inaction.
The administration also claims that by allowing logging, fire
managers will be able to control the destructiveness of forest
fires. Proper thinning retains the older, better-established trees
and removes younger adjacent trees. This reduces competition for
nutrients and water, producing healthier trees, the argument goes.
But we don’t know that loggers aren’t going into
forests with a different agenda. In the absence of regulations to
prevent abuses of logging privileges, Bush is essentially giving
logging free license and letting individual states deal with
problems as they arise.
The problem with allowing logging is in determining which trees
will be cut. The timber industry wants to cut down the straightest
and oldest trees, which bring the most money. This technique takes
the best trees and leaves the lower-grade trees behind. Turning
selective logging on its head, this practice leaves us with a bunch
of crooked, decrepit-looking trees.
More importantly, it lowers the quality of the gene pool,
leaving only trees of lower genetic quality, which succumb to
insect infestations and disease much more easily. This threatens
the future productivity of the forests.
Even in selective logging, roads are built to facilitate the
movement of cut lumber. The building of roads encourages further
development and paves the way for permanent settlement. It’s
all downhill from there.
John Buckley, director of the Central Sierra Environmental
Resource Center, dismisses the administration’s decision as
“just another effort by the Bush administration to reward
industry.”
The idea that the primary purpose of public lands should be to
serve people is a basic premise of the Forest Service, the agency
that oversees public lands in national forests.
But over the years, multiple environmentalist groups have
accused the Forest Service of being influenced by the very timber
industry it is meant to regulate. The appointment of Mark Rey, a
former timber industry lobbyist, to the post of current
Undersecretary of Agriculture only bolsters their accusations.
Bush’s environmental policies have been lacking thus far.
With an administration wallowing in the pocket of industry, Bush
has left the states to fend for themselves. Bush’s antics
would be laughable if we weren’t the ones being
shortchanged.
Yee is a UCLA student.