GOP pushing for more logging in national forests - NO, NO, NO

[ensho]

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/10/03/125965/gop-pushing-for-more-logging-in.html


A century-old federal program that compensates counties straddling huge tracts of nontaxable national forests has expired, and House Republicans are using its reauthorization to push for opening the land to more logging and mining.

The GOP wants to shift the forest-payment program closer to its 1908 origin, when the federal government directly split revenue from timber, mining and other activities to pay for local schools and roads in Washington state and around the country.

Environmentalists and the U.S. Forest Service oppose the changes, including proposals to re-link payments to the amount of timber or minerals extracted and to set first-ever minimum timber-harvest targets for each national forest.

-long snip on how the gop wants the money for states to use and further baloney-

But he's skeptical of the Republican proposal to mandate minimum harvest levels. Americans' view of national forests has changed markedly in a generation, he noted, and they treasure the environmental and recreational benefits of the forests as much as the economic value of the trees and minerals.

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its not just logging, its mining too. both of which will mess up the forests for decades and just fill the pockets of Barons