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| Voice of the Environment's mission is to educate the public regarding the transfer of public trust assets into private, mostly corporate, hands. | ||
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Ukiah office: 1330 Boonville Rd Ukiah, CA 95482 707-467-0329 |
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Marin office: 270 Beach Rd Belvedere, CA 94920 415-435-2007 |
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| For two decades, Voice of the Environment has stood up for the people and our communities against the avarice of corporations and the misguided policies of the corporate-dominated state. |
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Print This Article Tuesday, August 2nd, 2005 Money talks Costs force abandonment of extensive national forest roads system Daily Astorian During the 1980s, the dirty little secret of national forest management was exposed. Some “conservatives” didn’t want to talk about it, but fiscal analysis demonstrated that the great bulk of timber sales off the national forests were money losers. The Forest Service was reluctant to implement cost accounting, because too many members of Congress didn’t want to know the true cost of timber sales. But thanks to a retired Library of Congress researcher named Bob Wolf, the secret was made public. Forest roads are a component of timber sales. In Oregon and Washington, the national forest roads system is extensive. Michael Milstein of The Oregonian reported Thursday that the Forest Service will be letting the great bulk of its road system go back to nature. Pure and simple, it’s a matter of money. There is an irony in this. Milstein noted that the Bush administration, not renowned for its environmentalist values, is doing something with forest roads that conservationists have long advocated. Every profession has its mythology – matters that are almost religious, in that they don’t yield to fiscal analysis or rational debate. As Russell Sadler recounted in a column published on this page Thursday, even the most thorough scientific analysis is not immune to the timber industry’s mythology. Money, however, can be a decisive factor in environmental debates. That’s what happened to the Washington Public Supply System’s (WPPSS) nuclear plants in the 1980s. It wasn’t anti-nuclear environmentalists who pulled the plug on WPPSS. It was Wall Street. Now money is forcing a transformation of the national forest road system. On balance, this is a salutary development. SOURCE Print This Article |
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Voice of the Environment is a 501 (c-3) not-for-profit Montana-based corporation formed in 1991.
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