- The Bush administration has intensified its campaign
to open up the last of America's nature areas to commercial exploitation,
unveiling a plan to allow logging in forests under the federal government's
protection.
-
- Environmentalists say the proposed legislation would
affect a combined area of 78m hectares (192m acres) of forest and grasslands
- more than three times the size of Britain - and dismantle a generation
of protective regulations.
-
- The new forest management rules announced on Wednesday
are seen as an attempt to roll back guidelines issued during the last days
of President Clinton's term.
-
- But they also represent an underlying campaign to dismantle
environmental legislation that has gathered pace since the Republican party's
victories in the mid-term elections earlier this month, environmentalists
say.
-
- The plan gives the local managers of some 155 federally
protected nature areas the power to approve commercial exploitation of
the lands entrusted to their care.
-
- They would also no longer be compelled to conduct detailed
scientific studies on the impact of commerce on animal life and the environment.
-
- It also takes away one of the most effective tools of
the environmental movement - postcard, email and letter campaigns - saying
that such methods would no longer be officially registered as objections
to forest management plans.
-
- The plan was immediately condemned by America's leading
environmental organisations as a sop to the country's timber companies
and an attempt to dismantle 1970s-era legislation by stealth.
-
- They also accused the White House of manipulating the
timing of the announcement, on the eve of the Thanksgiving holiday.
-
- "These new forest rules reflect the Bush administration's
belief that only timber companies belong in America's national forests,"
said Carl Pope, director of the Sierra Club, an environmental group. "When
the Bush administration rewrote the rules, they wrote the public out of
the equation."
-
- Another leading environmentalist organisation, Defenders
of Wildlife, said the proposals were identical to a wishlist drawn up by
the American Forest and Paper Association.
-
- The measures, which could become law within 90 days following
public consultations, mark the latest attempt by the White House to exploit
America's national forests, and tame its environmentalist lobby.
-
- Earlier, the administration sought to open up America's
forests for logging in the name of "fire reduction" by felling
"excess trees" that could lead to wildfires. "The Bush administration's
draft regulations are but the tip of an iceberg that threaten to demolish
all of our nation's forest protection laws," said Randi Spivak, the
director of the American Lands Alliance .
-
- "In addition to rolling back the National Forest
Management Act with these new planning regulations, we know the administration
is trying to gut the National Environmental Policy Act and the Appeals
Reform Act, both of which guarantee public involvement in land management
decisions."
-
- The administration argues that the legislation on forests
is cumbersome and that individual forestry officials need to be flexible
in making development plans.
-
- "Instead of trying to make a cookie-cutter approach
where we say 'this is good for all 155 national forests', it would allow
individuals to pursue the plan that best serves that locality," said
a spokesman for the US forest service.
-
- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2002
|
