Support
the Grassroots Forest Appropriations Initiative
Posted
4/8/97
Our
national forests are under siege. The U.S. Forest Service is supposed
to be the protector of our national forests. Instead the Forest
Service has demonstrated its determination to cut down the last
of our ancient forests. The agency must be made accountable.
Citizens want to see America's forests protected, its water and
wildlife safeguarded, and its watersheds restored. Unfortunately,
the Forest Service and the timber industry have another idea.
The recently
expired Salvage Logging Law clearly demonstrated the Forest Service's
lack of accountability: Healthy, green forests were logged as "salvage
sales," water quality was endangered in the name of "forest health."
And no record exists showing that even a dime from any of the
salvage sales sold under the Salvage Law made its way to the U.S.
Treasury. Under the management of the Forest Service both the
ecological integrity of our forests and the appropriate use of federal
tax dollars have been sacrificed.
The Grassroots
Forest Appropriations Initiative is a nationwide effort to bring
more accountability and oversight to the Forest Service. By forcing
the agency to become more accountable we will help protect our imperiled
forests.
The initiative
would amend the appropriations bill for the Forest Service by:
-
Eliminating
the Forest Service road-building budget.
-
Prohibiting
logging on steep and unstable terrain.
-
Abolishing
Forest Service slush funds.
-
Ending money-losing
timber sales.
We urge the
105th Congress to take these steps to restore the accountability
of the Forest Service and protect the interests of both taxpayers
and the natural environment:
1. Prohibit
new roadbuilding on the national forests by ending any appropriation
for new roads and by prohibiting the use of purchaser road credits
to build new roads. The elimination of purchaser road credits
in the President's budget is a good first step.
2. Prohibit
logging and road-building on unstable and potentially unstable national
forest land. Recent landslides in the West have demonstrated
the "hidden costs" to public safety and the environment, posed by
subsidized logging and road building on steep, unstable slopes.
3.
Restore accountability by reforming or abolishing off-budget funds.
There is a growing consensus that the various off-budget funds–
the Knudsen-Vandenburg (KV) Brush Disposal and Salvage Funds–
either must be reformed or abolished. The Green Scissors Coalition
of forest-reform organizations urges abolishing the KV Fund. The
Clinton Administration proposes new limits on this fund in the 1998
budget. The administration also has proposed the creation of a new
fund for ecosystem restoration called the Forest Ecosystem Restoration
and Maintenance (FERM) fund. While we support the intent of
the new FERM fund, as currently envisioned it would only perpetuate
the same perverse incentive to log that plagues the other funds.
Instead, we support the administration's request for $30 million
of appropriated funds for restoration activities and urge Congress
to appropriate necessary funds for restoration rather than creating
another off-budget fund.
4. End money-losing
timber sales. The annual report of the White House Council of
Economic Advisors shows that the Forest Service spent $234 million
more than it collected in timber receipts in 1995. "Generally,
the Forest Service subsidizes timber extraction from public lands
by collecting less timber sale revenues than it spends on timber
program costs," the report says. According to the Government
Accounting Office the timber sale program lost nearly $1 billion
during 1992-94. For the sake of both the environment and the taxpayer,
it is time to end subsidized logging on the National Forests.
Please contact
U.S. Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, as well as your
U.S. Representative. Ask them to support the Grassroots Forest
Appropriations Initiative. Remind them that California is home
to 18 national forests.
To obtain your
Congressperson's name, phone the Congressional switchboard at 202/224-3121.
Write to:
Rep.
__________
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515. |
Your letter
can help save national forests from the high costs of abusive logging.
Thanks
to Western Ancient Forest Campaign for helping prepare this alert.
Contributing
Artist: Larry Eifert.
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