Don't know what to make of this, dang Bush anyways!

[azsnowman]

Hmmm....very interesting indeed! I'm ALL for logging, of course, you KNEW that HOWEVER....did BUSH and his buddies slip something UNDER the covers? You know my position and views on Radical Environmentalists BUT..I have to agree with them on a few points here. I've been on the fence about who's gonna get my vote this election, I feel a vote for Bush with further destroy the wilderness and a vote for Kerry, WELL Let's just say, Aslkahuna has the RIGHT idea, "Vote NO for President!"

http://www.azcentral.com

Will we pave pristine forests?

Mary Jo Pitzl
The Arizona Republic
Jul. 13, 2004 12:00 AM


Nearly 1.2 million acres of protected Arizona forest, from the dense woods along the Blue River to the cactus canyons at Saguaro Lake, could be opened to road construction under a plan announced Monday by the Bush administration.

The plan drew immediate fire from environmental and outdoor groups, which called it a pre-election assault on wilderness and a giveaway to the timber industry.

"The motivation is to provide access to not just road building, but to the logging industry that goes along with it," said Don Hoffman, executive director of the Arizona Wilderness Coalition.

But Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman painted it as a new approach to conserving pristine areas by relying more on local interests instead of following a one-size-fits-all federal policy.

Governors would play a key role. They would be charged with telling the Forest Service, which Veneman oversees, what forest areas need continued protection.

However, the governors' recommendations would be just that, suggestions, and final decisions would rest with federal officials.

Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano said through a spokesman that she was disappointed with the announcement.

It would make moot the "roadless rule" enacted by the Clinton administration just before he left office in 2001.

"Our forests are in the middle of fire season," said Paul Allvin, the governor's communications director. "What they need is more resources for firefighting and restoration. They don't need new talk about roads."

Allvin said it was too soon to say if Napolitano would seek protection for the nearly 1.2 million acres of forest land covered by the roadless rule.

Hoffman said his group and others would turn to the governor to seek protection for those lands, which exist in all six national forests in Arizona.

Hoffman, like other critics, fears that a move away from a consistent federal policy makes the forest vulnerable to development.

But supporters say the criticism is misplaced and premature.

"I think it's very close to sheer speculation to say that this will open up the forests to the timber industry," said Michael Mortimer, forest-policy chairman for the Society of American Foresters.

He hailed Veneman's announcement as an important shift from a "top-down" federal policy to a "bottom-up" local approach.

With a blanket ban on road construction in all forests, the Clinton administration risked ignoring local environmental and economic needs, he said.

Mortimer said foresters don't like having their options limited, which the roadless rule did.

But groups from the Sierra Club to Trout Unlimited said the administration's move will push roads through some of last remaining wild areas in the nation.

"What's at stake are America's last unroaded forests, including nearly 1.2 million acres in Arizona alone," said Taylor McKinnon, forest-conservation program manager for the Grand Canyon Trust. "Once they're gone, they're gone."

The rule will be open for public comment during the next 60 days.

Once the rule is final, and no one Monday could predict when that would happen, governors would have 18 months to propose which areas should receive continued protection.

Julie Quick, a spokesman in Veneman's office, said the governors' views will be important.

"If the governor proposes a certain area remain roadless, we'll work with them to be sure that's the best way to protect an area," she said.

The rule can be reviewed at http://www.fs.fed.us, a Web site that also contains information on how to submit public comment.


Dennis

[Guest]

It's the same everywhere in the world: they need space where cars can run.
Once it was a car per family, now the average is three (at least here in Italy). We need roads because we "need" cars and oil, they "need" to sell cars and oil. Simple. Or you wanna stop the progress and the economy?

[chadtm80]

It's the same everywhere in the world: they need space where cars can run.
Once it was a car per family, now the average is three (at least here in Italy). We need roads because we "need" cars and oil, they "need" to sell cars and oil. Simple. Or you wanna stop the progress and the economy?

Boy that kind of sounded conservative

[Stephanie]

Paolo - in those areas, there's really no reason to have additional roads. We're talking wilderness here.

Dennis - you know my feeling on the word "logging". THAT'S the very thing that I'm concerned with. It has NOTHING to do with preserving the forest which is what "thinning" is for as you taught me. It has EVERYTHING to do with dollars and cents.

[azsnowman]

That's EXACTLY right Stephanie.....there are PLENTY of roads, we don't NEED anymore! Now, as far as the logging goes, I say "CUT IT ALL!" WELL....not a CLEAR cut but dang, our forests are SO overgrown.

Dennis

[Stephanie]

I think that "logging" implies "clear cutting" to so many that whenever that term is brought up, red flags go up. We need to provide more education on the differences.

[kittcat]

The Bush administration has not been a friend to the environment. He makes decisions in favor of the oil, gas, utility and mining corporations, which are by the way major campaign contributors. This President Bush seems to be moving backwards, undoing his own father's legacy towards ensuring a habitable earth for future generations.

[USAwx1]

The Bush administration has not been a friend to the environment. He makes decisions in favor of the oil, gas, utility and mining corporations, which are by the way major campaign contributors. This President Bush seems to be moving backwards, undoing his own father's legacy towards ensuring a habitable earth for future generations.

That's true kittcat, BUT the liberals and radical environMENTALists have way over-exaggerated and blown far out of proportion the global warming threat and any possible effects from it as a reasult of CO2 (greenhouse gas) emissions.

[azsnowman]

The Bush administration has not been a friend to the environment. He makes decisions in favor of the oil, gas, utility and mining corporations, which are by the way major campaign contributors. This President Bush seems to be moving backwards, undoing his own father's legacy towards ensuring a habitable earth for future generations.

*extends his hand for a handshake* FINALLY....SOMEONE ELSE who agrees with me

Dennis

[Stephanie]

I agree as well!

[chadtm80]

I bet you three are upset about high gass prices though huh?

[Stephanie]

I am Chad. We also have the ability to build more hybrid cars and make alternative fuels.

[Kiko]

Yes, I suspected this, it's a grab for oil, gas and timber rights which may be sanctioned by some disgruntled western governors:

July 18, 2004
Surrender in the Forests

The Bush administration has taken apart so many environmental regulations that one more rollback should not surprise us. Even so, it boggles the mind that the White House should choose an election year to dismantle one of the most important and popular land preservation initiatives of the last 30 years — a Clinton administration rule that placed 58.5 million acres of the national forests off limits to new road building and development.

There are no compelling reasons to repudiate that rule and no obvious beneficiaries besides a few disgruntled Western governors and the timber, oil and gas interests that have long regarded the national forests as profit centers. It's not even a case of election-year pandering to Western voters; indeed, early returns suggest that most Westerners below the rank of governor do not like the Bush proposal at all. Especially aggrieved is the so-called hook and bullet crowd — anglers and hunters who, though overwhelmingly Republican, have become increasingly disenchanted with the administration's timid and in some cases careless policies on wetlands, mercury pollution and oil and gas exploration on sensitive public lands.

One explanation is that the timber industry's allies in the Agriculture Department, where the proposal was hatched, sensed they were running short of time to complete their demolition job on the forest protections they inherited from the previous administration. Over the last three years, the department has weakened carefully devised agreements aimed at preserving old growth trees in the Tongass National Forest, in the Pacific Northwest and in the Sierra Nevada. It has persuaded Congress to adopt a fire-prevention strategy aimed at least as much at helping the timber industry as it is at saving communities from devastation. And it has proposed revisions in forest management policies that would short-circuit environmental reviews, weaken safeguards for endangered species and limit public participation in land-use decisions.

For broad impact, though, nothing quite matches the decision to scuttle the roadless rule. Nearly three years in the making, that rule essentially gave blanket protection to some of the last truly wild places in America, critical watersheds for fish and wildlife and important sources of drinking water for metropolitan areas in the West.

The Bush administration offers instead a less protective and more uncertain system under which state and local officials would become the moving force in deciding whether to log or conserve forest lands. This represents a big swing in the ideological pendulum, essentially returning control of an important part of national forest policy to the very people from whom Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot, both Republicans, wrested it when they established the Forest Service a century ago.

Killing the roadless rule is also indefensible on fiscal grounds. There are already 365,000 miles of roads in the roughly 90 million acres of national forests that are and will remain open to commercial development. Many of these roads are in poor shape, crying out for maintenance. It makes no economic sense to build more.

The administration promises that prohibitions on roads and logging will be continued on a much smaller number of roadless acres already protected under forest plans that predated the Clinton rule — a "just trust us" attitude that inspires universal suspicion among conservationists. White House officials argued further that the rule's one-size-fits-all policy ignored local needs, and that two unfavorable court decisions had left them little choice but to junk the Clinton program and propose a new one.

This is disingenuous. It is true that district judges in Idaho and Wyoming had invalidated the rule. But the administration offered only a perfunctory defense in Idaho and not much more in Wyoming. More to the point, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit overturned the Idaho decision, and there was a good chance the 10th Circuit would overturn the Wyoming decision. Indeed, the real motive for the rollback may have been to get the new rule out before the legal landscape shifted completely in favor of the old rule — or before somebody less attentive to the needs of the timber industry moved into the White House.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/18/opini ... 1.html?8br

"Just trust us"...? ha What's Cheney invested in these days, back home in Wyoming?

[FWBHurricane]

In some cases, its a good thing but sometimes its a bad thing. One good thing is that fires are spreading across that area, with new roads it would probably help with getting to the fires quicker...this is a growing problem yearly. Good for tourism too anyways...the bad thing is, yes you are cutting down trees out of these beautiful forests. But you have to understand, we are a growing nation and development is spreading and growing. Plus the issues with the fire is one good reason to put roads in these forests.

[Aslkahuna]

NOVA had an interesting show on KUAT the other night showing what the Pine Forests should look like when fire is allowed to play its natural role and what they look like now after 100 years of fire suppression-the latter look not good. But that aside, putting roads in wilderness will not do any good in today's fire prone forests because a wildfire can jump a quarter mile or more at a time and you are not going to put crews in front of that at any time. What putting roads in wilderness WILL do is open the places up to developers who will rape the land. Before the arrival of American Settlers in AZ, the Tucson and San Pedro Valleys were lush grasslands and the Santa Cruz and San Pedro Rivers were free flowing and the Indians living here had a good life. Tucson is now desert, the Indians are poor, the Santa Cruz River is bone dry 99% of the time and the San Pedro is on its last legs fighting to stay alive against a City and County Government that gives lip service to the River but approves every development from the developers who pay them under the table. Basically, what it boils down to is that Bush is just carrying this legacy forward on the Federal level.

Steve

[Kiko]

"...putting roads in wilderness will not do any good in today's fire prone forests because a wildfire can jump a quarter mile or more at a time and you are not going to put crews in front of that at any time."

"What putting roads in wilderness WILL do is open the places up to developers who will rape the land.

Before the arrival of American Settlers in AZ, the Tucson and San Pedro Valleys were lush grasslands and the Santa Cruz and San Pedro Rivers were free flowing and the Indians living here had a good life.

"Tucson is now desert, the Indians are poor, the Santa Cruz River is bone dry 99% of the time and the San Pedro is on its last legs fighting to stay alive against a City and County Government that gives lip service to the River but approves every development from the developers who pay them under the table.

"Basically, what it boils down to is that Bush is just carrying this legacy forward on the Federal level."

Or in other words, giving his blessing to the States to carry out the dirty work so the fed won't have to take the blame under the guise of more state control? <question) All this, while still allowing his special interest cronnies in on whatever action they can wrangle from their locals. <supposition)

Locals who just might not have a fishing hole left to go to someday...

Richard B. Cheney has been one of the leading Wyoming political figures of the last quarter century. He grew up in Casper, graduated from the University of Wyoming and served in the Office of Economic Opportunity during the Nixon administration. He was later a deputy assistant and chief of staff during the Ford administration. Cheney was elected to Wyoming's sole seat in the House of Representatives in 1978 and was relelected five more times. He served as Secretary of Defense under George H.W. Bush and in 1995 became the president and chief executive officer of the Halliburton Company. Cheney successfully ran for vice-president on the Republican ticket with George W. Bush in 2000.

http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1491.html

Golly, look what Cheney's old company cronnies sell, pond liners. Once the states open up for some mining destruction, these guys will make a killing.

Bentonite, and they named it "Wyoming":
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/18/opini ... 1.html?8br

Of course it's not junk science if someone can make some money off it?

And what's this we're not drilling off the coast of Florida?
http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?docID=183

Oh wait, they are drilling. It's just 100 miles offshore... out of sight. Just not in our National Parks, eh? That's got to make brother Jeb look good?

(sorry, had to get that in there)