Today’s debate will consider the following proposition: That it is better for the environment to have a Republican in the White House. Now I’m sure a lot of you out there started giggling as you read that statement. This must be a joke, right? Republican presidents are famous for believing that trees cause air pollution. For trying to change the definition of “wetlands” so the Everglades won’t qualify. The creed of every Republican on the right side of the culture war insists that the only reason God created nature was so businessmen could make a profit by destroying it.
At issue is Option Nine, a set of management choices for the forests that is currently the Clinton administration’s official idea for how to save the spotted owl, the marbled murrelet, various populations of salmon, and the hundreds of other plants and animals dependent on the continued existence of old-growth forest. Calling Option Nine deeply flawed would be to praise it beyond its worth. It creates no inviolate reserves of old-growth forest beyond existing parks and wilderness areas. It opens up to immediate logging about 40 percent of the estimated five million acres of old-growth that still exist. It allows logging in the “forest matrix,” a term that refers to forested lands that lie between two existing parks or wilderness areas. Cutting on that land would have the effect of making islands out of the protected old-growth forests. Option Nine allows the continued export of raw logs, eliminating jobs in the sawmills of the northwest. It allows logging in roadless watersheds and suggests a level of logging–1.2 billion board feet per year–that is unsustainable. It promises nothing in the way of reform of the Forest Service and its practices.
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We are currently in the middle of a public-comment period that will allow all parties to register their objections. The national groups will be stating strong objections to the lack of inviolate reserves, to cutting in roadless watersheds, and other provisions of the plan.
That argument has some merit. The problem is that it may give us environmental organizations that are worrying about staying friendly with Foley not just because they want his support for the Clean Water Act, but also because the president needs his support on the budget, health-care reform, and dozens of other issues.
