Protecting Environment and Public Lands

* Re “GOP Drops Bill to Rein In Laws on Environment,” March 6:

A battle has been won, but the victory in the war against pollution is still up for grabs. The GOP House has found that the American public will not accept the gutting of our environmental laws.

However, battles are still being fought in the federal and state budget processes. Even now, funding cuts to regulatory agencies are preventing those laws from being enforced. When you combine these yearly funding cutbacks with appointed agency heads who refuse to collect fees that go to help fund their departments, the air, water, land and wildlife of this country are still in danger.

It is not enough to have laws on the books if there’s no one left to enforce them.

MARK SMYTHE

Yorba Linda

* Thank you for your March 3 article about the damage to fish, soil and wildlife from cattle ranching in the Inyo National Forest by the Anheuser-Busch Corp. and others. This type of destruction is going on in most of our national parks and wilderness areas.

Doesn’t it seem odd that in these days of deficit, presidential candidates, now fulminating about high taxes, are ignoring a source of revenue that would benefit taxpayers? Grazers’ fees for use of public lands are a fraction of what they would have to pay to lease private land. Miners and loggers also exploit, and in many cases degrade and even destroy, our national lands, fish, soil and wildlife for very low fees.

Readers should ponder the figures you give for Inyo. The government collects $46,000 a year from grazers. It spends between $175,000 and $350,000 a year attempting to, among other things, remediate the harm grazers have done. Politicians obviously don’t care about the taxpayer.

ANN ALPER

Pacific Palisades

* The March 6 letter from Donn Zea of the California Forestry Assn. must not go unanswered. Zea is wrong on several points.

The so-called emergency salvage is not about forest health. It is an outright logging law. Beautiful forests of old-growth trees in the Northwest are now being clear-cut--green, healthy trees that bring big profits to the timber industry because this logging on public land is subsidized by taxpayers.

This is logging without laws. Under the terms of the salvage logging rider, the Endangered Species Act is suspended in any of the forests to be logged, citizen groups may not legally challenge any of these cuts due to a “sufficiency” clause, and the term “salvage” is a total deceit because language in the law allows cutting of any tree that is subject to fire or infestation (time unspecified).

But national grass-roots opposition to this resource grab is growing daily and politicians in Washington are getting the message.

PATTI LAURSEN

Ancient Forest Task Force

Sierra Club, Angeles Chapter