Logging Industry gets Early X-Mas Gift, Rest of Nation Mourns

Y'know, over the long term the only issue that really matters is the environment. Everything else is temporal. But when you fuck with the planet, you just can't move to another one. It ain't happenin.' Now, team BushCo® isn't generally known for their gentle hand in dealing with..Hell, anything, other than those CC(Conservative Christians) that are core GOP voters, but this just pisses me off.

Goodbye, Alaska wilderness: Bush expands logging area in Tongass National Forest

Date: Wednesday, December 24 @ 09:51:51 EST

Topic: The Environment


The decision, approved by the White House Office of Management and Budget, will add 300,000 more acres.

By Miguel Bustillo, Los Angeles Times

The Bush administration Tuesday opened 300,000 more acres of Alaska's Tongass National Forest to logging by exempting it from a Clinton-era rule that barred road-building in most of the 17-million-acre area, the biggest expanse of temperate rain forest left on the planet.

The widely expected decision by the U.S. Department of Agriculture stemmed from the Bush administration's settlement of a lawsuit by the state of Alaska. The state charged that the Clinton administration's 2000 "roadless rule," which had declared most of the forest off-limits to vehicles, was excessively restrictive and would cause economic hardship.

U.S. Forest Service officials said Tuesday's action, which was approved by the White House Office of Management and Budget, would bring the total acres exposed to logging to 4% of the forest.

However, conservationists noted that it lifted the road-building restriction on a much larger area -- 9.3 million acres -- and argued that it would clearly lead to roads through a much greater portion of the forest as loggers pushed to reach the most desirable old-growth trees.

"The Bush administration claims this only affects the 300,000 acres, but that is the part of the forest they actually intend to log the biggest and best trees on the Tongass," said Nicole Whittington-Evans of the Wilderness Society. "What they don't mention is that to get to those areas, they will allow roads to be built through 9 million acres."


Lots more

The thing that really irritates me is that it'll take thousands of years to regenerate this forest resource. That will never happen. Humankind has to this point, proven itself to be terrible stewards of the planet. It's encoded in our genes to fuck shit up. Dammit, we're good at it as well.

Maybe Santa will leave me a new Jonsered under the tree. Oh, the irony.