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Stop logging, USU professors tell Bush
Dr. Charles Romesburg, Dr. Barrie Gilbert, and Dr. Michelle Baker of Utah State University are among more than 200 scientists from across the nation who signed a letter to President Bush recently, urging him to end commercial logging of national forests and renew the Forest Service's original vision of forest protection. In the letter, released by Sierra Club, National Forest Protection Alliance, and U.S. Public Interest Research Group, the scientists address the benefits of forest protection to the economy, water quality, wildlife and recreation. Noted scientist signers include Edward O. Wilson, Harvard University professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Dr. Anne Ehrlich, Associate Director of Stanford University's Center for Conservation Biology, and Dr. Peter Raven, Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden. "These professors and 200 other scientists recognize the need to protect and restore the Wasatch-Cache, the Ashley, and other national forests in Utah and around the nation. We hope the President listens," said Jim Steitz of the Sierra Student Coalition, the student arm of the Sierra Club. Several national forests in Utah face threats from commercial logging. The Wasatch-Cache and Ashley National Forests in the Uinta Mountains have endured decades of overharvesting. Inappropriate logging continues on the Manti-LaSal, Fishlake, and Dixie National Forests, including the extremely destructive and controversial South Manti timber sale on the Manti-LaSal National Forest, Steitz said. This was recently struck down in court for failure to abide by legally established procedures for monitoring sensitive wildlife. "There is so little original forest vegetation left, the uncut forest is very important for threatened and sensitive species," said Gilbert, senior scientist in the College of Natural Resources. "If we hope to have to have any of the heritage of our original forests, we need to stop the commercial cutting of our National Forests," he added. "We should stop logging in our national forests because they are places where one goes to get spiritual value, and only large expanses that are unlogged and untouched by people can give you that," said Romesburg, a professor in the College of Natural Resources. "Large, wild places without people feed the human artist and soul." Undersecretary of Agriculture Mark Rey is a former timber lobbyist now charged with overseeing the management of the nation's 192 million-acre national forest system. Under his tenure the Forest Service is pursuing numerous avenues for increasing logging on national forests, Steitz said, including recent attempts to rewrite the Northwest Forest Plan and gut the Roadless Area Conservation Rule to allow for more logging, mining and drilling. The timber industry has turned America's publicly owned National Forests into a patchwork of clearcuts and logging roads, Steitz said. Commercial logging, subsidized by American taxpayers, drains nutrients from the soil, washes topsoil into streams, destroys wildlife habitat and intensifies the severity of forest fires. "Scientific research has repeatedly affirmed the tenet that wildlife need an abundant, healthy, and intact environment to survive," wrote the scientists. "Unless the destruction of fragile ecosystems is immediately reversed through scientifically based restoration and recovery, the damage done to terrestrial and aquatic habitat will be irrevocable." To read a copy of the letter and a complete list of scientists signers, go to http://www.sierraclub.org/logging/letter.
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