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FEATURED LETTER |
| Under the Clinton administration the Tongass National Forest in
Alaska, the nation's largest,
was added to a protection plan that prohibited road building and set strict limits on logging. |
Public forests not for private enrichment |
| It is hard to think
of a worse envi-
ronmental policy decision than the Bush administration's move to loosen restrictions on road build- ing in roadless areas of our national forests. Most people probably don't know that taxpayers actually pay for much of the road building and maintenance. Logging companies in turn use those subsidized roads to remove the publicly owned timber sold to them at below-market rates by the federal government. According to the nonpartisan group Taxpayers for Common Sense, the federal tim- ber program lost more than $2.5 bil- lion between 1992 and 1998. There is also a $10 billion road mainte- nance backlog in the national forest, which new roads would only worsen. Despite this backlog, Presi- dent Bush's 2005 budget slashes the Forest Service's deferred road maintenance budget by 68 percent. |
I have proposed
updating the district's land use policy. The commissioners of the Forest
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Distrect to preserve its holdings "in
their natural state and condition, for the purpose of the education, pleas- ure, and recreation of the public." Commissioners in decades past demonstrated that they would not waver from this central goal; in one instance, they even refused to allow the federal War Department to use forest preserve land for military pur- poses. My fellow commissioners and I are proud to continue this tradition of responsible local stewardship. In contrast, the Bush administra- tion has no problem allowing national forests ---a treasure that belongs to all Americans ---to be damaged for the benefit of well-con- nected lumber companys. Cook County residents should know that my colleagues and I are working hard to ensure that our local lands will not be so egregiously misused. . Mike Quigley,
Cook County commissioner |