KC>On July 26th of last year, the salvage "rider" was passed into law, 
pening
KC>our public lands to massive pilliage and bad science. On July 26th, please
KC>write or e-mail the president and your representatives to repeal this 
specia
KC>interest rider on the anniversary of it's passage.  Letters to the Editor 
an
 
Massive pillage and bad science?  Bad science indeed!
 
There is currently a significant bias favoring old-growth research.
The government is undermining our more complete understanding of how the
pieces of nature fit together with their preoccupation with protecting
single wildlife species, especially the northern spotted owl and the
marbled murrelet, threatened species government scientists say are old-
growth dependent.
 
For every old-growth research project, there should be companion
research involving young and middle-aged forests.  Biological diversity
is the sum of all ecological processes, not those we can observe in
old-growth forests.
 
What they have are theories that until tested, are only educated
guesses.  It is time for science to produce some defensible,
reproducible experiments.  It's imperative that we verify or otherwise
correct land policy decisions made on the basis of these theories.
 
The consequences of error....social, economic and environmental are
simply too great to rest on conjecture.
 
Cheers...
 
Warren
--- GEcho 1.10+
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