Where is the Sierra Club’s Condemnation of Senator Daschle? by Christopher Burger
BACKGROUND: The Sierra Club is vehemently against logging in our national forests, but has declined to condemn Senator Tom Daschle (D-SD) for supporting logging projects in the Black Hills National Forest in South Dakota. The most powerful Democrat in Congress recently introduced a proposal that would prevent lawsuits and appeals ...
Senate Bill Introduced to Codify Forest Roadless Plan; Plan Bans Building Roads for Fighting Forest Fires, by Gretchen Randall
BACKGROUND: Yesterday Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) added language to a spending bill that would exempt the Black Hills National Forest in South Dakota from environmental lawsuits that prevent logging. This proposal would outlaw litigation and appeals that attempt to prevent logging to thin that forest. Thinning the Black ...
TSR Extra: Recess Notes: Answers to Questions on Common Environmental Questions, by Tom Randall and Gretchen Randall
BACKGROUND: As members of the House and Senate head home for the August recess, many important issues regarding energy and the environment will be on constituents' minds. Here are succinct responses to common questions in the areas of: I. global warming II. energy III. nuclear energy IV. wildfires V. land ...
Wildfires Linked To Environmental Extremists As Disingenuous Denials Fly, by Tom Randall
BACKGROUND: The Clinton Administration's compliance with environmentalist diktats on forest management has been a major contributor to the monster wildfires roaring across the U.S. Despite this, Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, issued a denial of responsibility for the fires on June 25, 2002, as have other environmentalists ...
Wildfires Exceed Record Year of 2000 by 50 Percent, Continue to Grow in Overfueled Forests, by Tom Randall
BACKGROUND: As of June 20, wildfires in the U.S. had devastated 1,857,500 acres, almost entirely on federal land. This is more than double the ten year average for wildfire destruction by this date and 50 percent greater than the "modern record" year of 2000, according to the National Interagency Fire ...
Bush Administration, Senate Finance Committee Formally Approve Placing Tax Subsidy to Environmental Groups in Tax Code to Promote Land Grabs by Environmentalists and the Government, by Gretchen Randall
BACKGROUND: Yesterday the U.S. Senate Finance Committee approved out of committee the U.S. Care Act of 2002, a bill initially designed to promote donations to charitable organizations through tax incentives. However, Senator Max Baucus (D-MT), Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and Senator Charles Grassley, (R-IA), ranking member, added a ...
Forty-Five Members of Congress Urge President to Resist Efforts to Implement Clinton-Era Roadless Rule, by Tom Randall
BACKGROUND: U.S. House Western Caucus Member John Thune (R-SD), Caucus Chairman Richard Pombo and Scott McInnis, chairman of the Forests and Forest Health Subcommittee were joined, on June 5, 2002, by 42 other Representatives in signing a letter to President Bush urging him to resist efforts by environmental extremists to ...
Monster Wildfires are Preventable, by Thomas M. Bonnicksen, Ph.D.
A monster fire in Arizona is devouring trees and houses with unprecedented ferocity. It has already consumed 300,000 acres of forest and forced 30,000 people to evacuate their homes. This is just one of 17 big fires scorching the West. So far, they have burned nearly twice as many acres ...
Federal Government Raises Price of New Homes to Protect the Lumber Industry It Has Nearly Killed, by Tom Randall
BACKGROUND: The International Trade Commission has upheld a U.S. tariff of 27 percent on Canadian softwood lumber, the type used for the framing of homes. The action was taken because imports of Canadian lumber pose a "threat of injury" to the U.S. lumber industry. According to Congressman Gary Miller (R-CA), ...
Pay Americans First: More Federal Land Purchases Would Add to PILT Burden, by Gretchen Randall
BACKGROUND: The Bush Administration has asked Congress for $165 million for fiscal year (FY) 2003 for the Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) program -- a decrease of $45 million from last year. The federal government does not pay local counties property taxes on the land it owns in those ...
Senator Barbara Boxer Proposes Designating 2.5 Million More Acres as “Wilderness” In California, by Gretchen Randall
BACKGROUND: Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) wants to designate an additional 2.5 million acres of federal land in California as wilderness with her introduction of the "California Wild Heritage Wilderness Act of 2002." Her bill (yet unnumbered) would add to 14 million acres already designated wilderness in California (or 13% of ...
Tom Daschle and Senate Democrats Attack Bush Administration for Reassessing the Secretly-Developed Clinton Rule to Halt Forest Road Building, by Tom Randall
BACKGROUND: Half of all Senate Democrats recently signed a letter to President Bush accusing him of failing to uphold the Roadless Area Conservation Rule. They claimed in their letter that this so-called "Roadless Plan" was the product of years of deliberation and input from 1.6 million people. In fact, however, ...
Sportsmen and Hunting Groups Write President Bush about Forest Management, by Gretchen Randall
BACKGROUND: In the ongoing argument over logging in national forests, a group of hunting and sportsmen's clubs wrote President Bush last week pointing out that forest management is as essential for wildlife conservation as it is for healthy forests. Young forests, which grow after either forest fires or logging, are ...
Rep. John Doolittle Introduces Bill Calling for Release of 15-Year Old Wilderness Study Areas, by Tom Randall
BACKGROUND: Congressman John T. Doolittle introduced The Wilderness Study Area Release Act, H.R. 4589 to prevent the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management from continuing to close of millions of acres of public land through improper use of Study Areas. Today these agencies avoid release of WSAs ...
Bush Administration and House Democrats Oppose Bill to Restrict Federal Land Acquisition
BACKGROUND: H.R. 3962, the "Good Neighbor Act" was the subject of a U.S. House Forests and Forest Health subcommittee hearing held April 10, 2002. Under the bill's provisions, if more than 50 percent of a county's land is owned by the federal government no new acquisitions of land can be ...
Lincoln Chafee Advances Bill to Usurp Local Control of Land Use Planning and Zoning, by Tom Randall
BACKGROUND: S.975, euphemistically titled the "Community Character Act," was introduced last May and is now scheduled to come before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Thursday, April 11, 2002. The bill, introduced by Senator Lincoln Chafee (R-RI), with Senators Robert Bennett (R-UT), Jim Jeffords (I-VT), Carl Levin (D-MI), Arlen ...
Interior Department Proposes Joint Federal, Environmentalist Land Grab Via Tax Code, by Gretchen Randall
BACKGROUND: The U.S. Interior Department's 2003 budget recently submitted to Congress contains a "Conservation Tax Credit" that would cut the capital gains tax by 50 percent if a property owner "voluntarily sell[s] land or water to a government agency or qualified conservation organization for conservation purposes." The tax credit is ...
Bush Proposes “Charter Forests,” by Gretchen Randall
BACKGROUND: President Bush has proposed a new pilot program called "charter forests" in his 2003 budget. This proposal is not clearly defined yet but the budget does propose to "establish certain forests or portions of forests as separate entities outside the Forest Service structure that report to a local trust ...
Federal Government Unsure about Appealing Bitterroot Decision, by Gretchen Randall
BACKGROUND: A federal judge in Montana has barred the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) from opening 46,000 acres of the Bitterroot National Forest to salvage logging, saying the USFS decision did not allow for public comment and thus violated the Forest Service's own rules. The Forest Service said that the logging ...
Endangered Species Act Studies May be Hoaxes Designed to Restrict Human Use of Government Lands, by Gretchen Randall
BACKGROUND: Seven officials from the U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife were found recently to have submitted falsified samples of Canadian lynx hair to labs as part of a study to determine if lynx live in three national forests in ...
