The folks in Washington who gave America the Healthy Forest Initiative, which equates forest health with felled timber, are at it again. This time, "forest recovery" after a catastrophe provides the cover for chopping down trees.The Forest Emergency Recovery and Research Act (HR 4200) would allow logging on public land after a catastrophic fire, hurricane or other disaster. To streamline extraction, the act would prevent the public, the courts and those pesky environmental laws from interfering.
Supporters hold up the blackened trees left behind after massive fires in the West as the sort of lumber loggers would remove, but eastern forests would feed sawmills, too. Fires, ice storms and hungry gypsy moths would open the George Washington and Jefferson national forests to axes and saws.
It was no accident that a timber company representative from Covington testified in favor of the bill at a December congressional hearing before the House Committee on Agriculture, which Rep. Bob Goodlatte of Roanoke chairs. Goodlatte gushed support at the hearing, and both he and Virgil Goode of Rocky Mount are among its co-sponsors.
Sounds like another Goode-sponsored giveaway of federal resources to corporate interests! Somebody make sure the timber company employees didn't just make a mass "contribution" to Virgil's reelection fund.