CHRIS@CTS.COM
Here is an article that appeared in the S.D. Union-Tribune today.  Letters 
are needed in response.
WASHINGTON DROPS PLAN FOR MORE SIERRA LOGGING
Associated press
WASHINGTON- The Clinton Administration has quietly discarded a
 Forest Service draft proposal to permit significantly more logging in 
California's Sierra Nevada.
White House Cheif of Staff Leon Panetta and Agriculture Secretary Dan 
Glickman made the decision this week after concluding the proposal ran 
counter to efforts to protect the spotted owl, which nests in the old©growth 
forests of the Sierra Navada.
"They came to the conclusion that the draft plan was insistent with the best 
scientific evidence," White House deputy press secretary Barry Toiv said 
Saturday.
Toiv said Panetta and Glickman also concluded that the plan was
inconsistent with with Clinton administration policies.
"This administration has tried to look at the impact of the plan on the 
entire ecosystem," Toiv said.  "The feeling was that draft didn't do that."
At stake are thousands of jobs in the timber industry and  fate of thousands 
of acres of forests and the wild nature they contain.
The draft plan, covering timber production in 10 national forests in 
Ca;lifornia, would have permitted more trees to be cut over a broader area 
than currently allowed.
It would have relaxed protections that cutting of trees with diameters larger 
than 20 inches.
And it would have allowed annual logging of 620 million board feet of timber 
from the Sierra Forests, an increase from the 416 million board feet proposed 
by an earlier plan.  The proposal would have increased logging jobs by 50% in 
the region.
Don Zea, executive director of the California Forestry Association, said the 
decision was more about politics than the ecology of the Sierra Nevada.
"It's about voters (Clinton) thinks he has to state...the environmental 
voters," Zea said.
POINTS FOR ARGUMENTS Ô
1) As of 1990, 95-98% of all old-growth forests have been lost to logging in 
the lower 48 states.
2) As to jobs lost© 25,000 timber jobs disappeared during the 1980's when 
Reagan upped the cut to maximum allowable.  These losses were due to 
automation and log exports.
3) In 1995, about 1.6 billion board feet of unprocessed logs harvested on 
private lands were exported outside the U.S. for processing, costing 
thousands of jobs.
4) Between 1980©1991, the logging program on National Forests operated at a 
net loss to taxpayers of 7.3 billion.  In 1995, our road©building and 
replanting subsidies to private companies cost us $28,687,000.
5) While timber harvest increased nationwide by 64% from  1951-1994, jobs in 
the paper and pulp industries increased by only 2%.
Thanks-and please write a response into the Union-Tribune.
E-mail is letters@uniontrib.com.
Mailing address is:
San Diego Union-Tribune
P.O. Box 191
San Diego, Ca. 92112-4106
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