Northwest Rain Forest

Your interesting article on the oil industry’s impact on the Lacandon rain forest in Mexico (World Report, June 2) mistakenly identified the Lacandon as “North America’s last rain forest.”

In fact, there is rain forest stretching from Oregon up through the Alaskan Panhandle. Most of it lies within the 16.8-million-acre Tongass National Forest in Alaska, the nation’s largest national forest. Because this is temperate rain forest, rather than tropical, it is sometimes forgotten.

Unfortunately, if the Lacandon can withstand the threat posed by oil drilling, it may soon deserve billing as North America’s last rain forest. Though portions of our Northwest and Alaska rain forest are off-limits to loggers, most of the areas with the largest and oldest trees are open to logging. Right now in the Tongass, Sitka spruce that were seedlings when the Magna Carta was signed and now soar as high as 250 feet are being cut down and shipped to the Far East to become paneling and toilet paper.

That’s bad enough. But in the Tongass, thanks to sweetheart contracts, the U.S. taxpayer is subsidizing this deforestation. For every dollar the U.S. Forest Service spends on road building, surveying and other overhead, the Treasury receives only 28 cents.

President Bush and his appointees are telling the Third World to halt deforestation. It’s time we started practicing what we’re preaching.

GEORGE T. FRAMPTON JR.

President

Wilderness Society

Washington