Wrong Turn on Roads in National Forests

Re “New Forest Rules May Pave Way for Roads,” July 13: While your article discusses the environmental damage that logging will cause, it does not mention the financial burden that this logging will have on American taxpayers.

The Tongass National Forest in Alaska, already exempted from roadless protection, is a devastating example: In 2002, American citizens paid timber companies $36 million in subsidies to log in Tongass yet received only $1 million back. Thankfully, the Senate will soon vote on whether to end subsidies for this Tongass destruction. Let’s hope Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein stand up for our forests and our tax dollars.

Renata Silberblatt

Alaska Wilderness League

Berkeley

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Your front-page story on new forest rules says court decisions were conflicting, with two federal district judges ruling against the Clinton road ban protecting national forests and a federal appeals court upholding it. This is not a conflict. This is the way the court system works. The higher court rules on lower court decisions. The Bush administration saw that further court appeal of the Clinton policy would be fruitless. Therefore, to enable multinational corporations to plunder our public lands for timber, oil, gas and minerals, it will change the rules. It has already allowed these multinationals to come in and mine where they can. Now the administration would expand the area for this largess. True to its methods, the Bush administration changes the rules while people are looking elsewhere.

Tom Freeman

Pinon Hills

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After a three-year campaign that generated more public comments than many other issues, concerned citizens were able to convince President Clinton to institute the landmark roadless rule. With no respect to the wishes of his constituents, Bush has spent the last three years working to reverse this policy, placing the future of our national forests in the hands of state governments. The lack of federal accountability makes it a little too easy to face the pressure of the powerful in state timber or mining companies. Bush is trading democracy and ecological preservation for industrial and corporate growth.

Kelly Mitchell

Van Nuys

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[The Bush administration has] sold off our great wilderness area to mining and energy friends. They say this will be responsible use of natural resources with minimal impact on the environment.

Everyone who has flown from L.A. to Seattle knows this is not true. Look out the window and you will see the nude landscape from clear cutting of millions of acres of forests.

Once again, the anti-environment White House and its congressional lap dogs have stolen America’s natural heritage from our children’s children.

Dave Ohman

Irvine