Logging Ban

It was with pleasure that I read of President Clinton’s proposal to ban logging in 58 million acres of roadless national forest (Nov. 14). It is high time we stopped giving away our forests. In fact, we taxpayers have been not only giving them away but literally paving the way for the timber industry. We should let the timber and paper companies maintain their own forests on their own land and let the market set a fair price for forest products based on actual costs.

The response of the American Forest and Paper Assn. to this proposal was laughable. You quote Michael Klein as saying, “They’re absolutely condemning the national forests to rot and burn.” What he seems to be forgetting is that forests prospered for hundreds of millions of years without any help from the paper products industry.

DAVID SALAHI

Laguna Niguel