Quincy Library Group Forest Plan

Alexander Cockburn’s Column Left (July 17) on the Quincy Library Group forest plan is riddled with inaccuracies and does a great disservice to everyone involved in crafting this important proposal.

The Quincy Library Group is composed of local environmentalists, timber industry representatives and local elected officials who came together to try to resolve their differences on the incendiary issue of forest management at the negotiating table instead of in a courtroom. They held dozens of meetings and hearings at the public library in Quincy and spent a year and a half and hundreds of hours debating ways to protect fragile ecosystems, improve forest health and provide economic stability for their community. Their overarching goal was to develop a forest management plan that would help prevent catastrophic wildfires in the national forest and still provide jobs for people in the area. The legislation introduced in both houses of Congress embodies the demonstration project developed by this group.

The legislation explicitly states that all forest management activities under this plan must comply with all federal environmental laws. It explicitly protects the spotted owl, spotted owl habitat, riverside areas and roadless areas from logging activities.

Funds for the project are specifically authorized in the legislation in order to ensure that funds for other important conservation and environmental management programs will not be diverted, as Cockburn suggests.

The fact that the House of Representatives voted 429 to 1 to support this plan is a testament to the broad support from across the environmental and political spectrum for this bill.

SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN

D-Calif.

With regard to Cockburn’s column (“Bill and Dianne Go to Tahoe”), where the devil is Al Gore when we really need him?

JOHN PIERSON

Thousand Oaks

Adrian Raeside’s July 18 cartoon, accusing “save the forest” types of abandoning logging industry working stiffs, is about as barefaced a lie as has come out of this controversy. Conservationists, arguing that mega-logging practices will lead to fewer trees to cut and, therefore, fewer logging jobs, have long proposed approaches to save both forests and jobs. They are routinely rebuffed by the megaloggers.

In their frantic rush to line the pockets of stockholders, big logging companies have denuded forests without regard to the jobs ultimately lost. Apparently profits are more important than job security.

ALLAN RABINOWITZ

Los Angeles