The timber industry supports HR 4200 (the Emergency Recovery and Research Act) and its Senate counterpart, S 2079 (Forests for Future Generations Act), because these bills would:
1) Gut environmental laws that protect our national forests;
2) Declare war on Nature by labeling natural events, like rain, wind, and fire as “catastrophes” to compel logging to “save” the forest;
3) Put millions of old-growth forest acres and wild lands at risk of logging.
HR 4200 and S 2079 would replace the bedrock National Environmental Policy Act with a Bush Administration rule that will allow any and all kinds of logging, including clearcutting, after a so-called “catastrophe.” The bills define a “catastrophe” to be all things natural that happen in a forest, like wind, rain, snow, soil erosion, and fire.
HR 4200 and S 2079 have the full support of the Bush Administration and its former timber industry lobbyist, Undersecretary of Agriculture Mark Rey. They are endorsed by the leading anti-environmental legislators in the House of Representatives and Senate.
Please, call and write your House representative and senators today at (202) 224-3121. Tell your legislators that “HR 4200 and S 2079 will be a catastrophe for our national forests.” Your phone call and letter will help prevent these bills from passing in 2006. Please, call and write today.
ADDITIONAL TALKING POINTS
1. HR 4200 and S 2079 bypass environmental laws that protect forests, fish and wildlife in order to rush logging after normal natural events, such as rainstorms, fires, and droughts.
2. HR 4200 and S 2079 limit public involvement regarding logging activities after normal natural events.
3. HR 4200 and S 2079 promote logging that harms water quality, spreads noxious weeds, and destroys large live and dead trees that are vital to old-growth forests.
4. Forest fires thin forests and promote forest health. Logging after fires damages sensitive soils and retards forest recovery.
5. HR 4200 and S 2079 are all about misrepresenting natural processes to exploit our national forests for the timber industry. Salvage logging after forest fires not only harms the environment, it costs taxpayers more than the burned trees are worth.
