News from a congressional hearing yesterday regarding a logging bill in California.
An excerpt.
Lawmakers, environmentalists tussling over logging bill
By Erica Werner
ASSOCIATED PRESS
5:50 p.m. July 27, 2006
WASHINGTON – Angry lawmakers lambasted environmentalists at a congressional hearing Thursday over their opposition to a new bill to speed logging in the Sierra Nevada.
“If we have a forest fire it's your fault, and I hope your group will take the responsibility when we're not thinning out the forests properly,” Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Tulare, scolded Craig Thomas, director of the Sierra Nevada Forest Protection Campaign.
Rep. George Radanovich, R-Mariposa, interrupted Thomas to accuse him of trying to destroy the last saw mill in the area.
“If you stop these sales, sir, with your lawsuits, this logging company is going to go out of business,” Radanovich said.
Thomas said he hoped the company, Sierra Forest Products, could stay in business. But he told lawmakers that Nunes' bill, which would boost two logging projects, would result in extreme tree-cutting without adequate environmental reviews.
The projects also could deal a fatal blow to the Pacific fisher, a small carnivore whose habitat has been reduced by logging and other activities and which is a candidate for government protections, Thomas said.
“The fisher will not withstand that project. As it is currently designed, it is flawed,” Thomas testified at a hearing of the House Resources Committee's forests subcommittee. The bill would “aggravate the disputes and undo the opportunities for improving scientific understanding of how to manage important resources,” he said.
Nunes' bill, the Giant Sequoia National Monument Transition Act of 2006, has two components:
1) It would allow completion of logging projects on 2,413 acres in the 327,769-acre Giant Sequoia National Monument. These projects were under contract with Sierra Forest Products when the monument was designated in 2000, but the company set them aside for several years. When it returned to them last year environmental groups sued, arguing that federal law required reassessment of environmental reviews because so much time had passed and conditions had changed and the Pacific fisher was at risk.
2) The bill also would speed a forest-thinning and restoration project called the Kings River Research Project covering more than 130,000 acres in the southern Sierra Nevada. Environmentalists say tree-cutting in the project as it is now envisioned is extreme. They complain Nunes' bill doesn't give enough protection because it says actions on the project shall be “deemed to be in compliance” with federal law.
