Dear HCN,
I am skeptical of the
concept of “Charter Forests” (HCN, 3/18/02: Can ‘charter forests’
remake an agency?), especially when I observe who is backing it –
the timber industry and its supporters in Congress and the Bush
administration.
Under the guise of streamlining
decision making within the Forest Service, the real intent appears
to be to turn over selected forests to locally controlled “trusts”
that are more amenable to increasing logging while winking at
environmental laws. History is replete with examples of local
communities, seduced by visions of short-term profits,
over-exploiting and devastating (private as well as public) land.
This would be no exception.
Members of
forest-adjacent communities have a lot of knowledge and expertise
to contribute to forest-management decisions. They need to be
involved. But these are our “national” forests. People from other
sectors of society – scientists, conservationists, and
recreationists – need to be heavily involved as well.
The real need is not “remaking the Forest
Service,” but rather preserving and restoring our national forests.
If the Bush administration was truly interested in forest health
and the economic vitality of rural communities, it would: (1) end
the logging of mature and old-growth forests, and (2) fully fund
watershed restoration, job training and rural community development
projects rather than cutting off their funding as it proposes in
its budget.
Although they have been heavily
abused by excessive logging, our national forests remain crucial
reservoirs of biodiversity that must be preserved and restored.
They are owned by all of us and must be managed by the federal
government in a manner that ensures long-term benefits for the
creatures that inhabit them and current and future generations of
Americans.
Michael Closson
Seattle, Washington
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Under charter plan, forests would fall.
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