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Date:         Thu, 4 Dec 2003 10:15:57 -0500
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From: Sean Cosgrove <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Des Moines Register: The GOP and our forests
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 Editorial: The GOP and our forests


      Iowa Republican Leach has a better idea than Bush's "healthy forests"
      charade.


 By Register Editorial Board

 12/04/2003 The two President Roosevelts - Republican Theodore and Democrat
 Franklin - were the best friends that outdoor America ever had in the White
 House. "Teddy" Roosevelt saved much of the West's awesome landscape for the
 enjoyment of future generations. FDR - a fifth cousin of Teddy - established the
 Civilian Conservation Corps, and the army of young workers he recruited
 established lasting landmarks in parks nationwide.


 But over the ensuing years, concern for the environment has taken on a puzzling
 partisan slant. And that is very bad news.


 Some equate the birth of the environmental crisis - and the awakening of the
 environmental movement - to President Reagan's appointment of James Watt as
 secretary of Interior. The Watt view holds that natural resources are valuable
 only for exploitation, at whatever cost to the salmon streams, water and air
 quality, the scenic landscapes. Mountains are there to be mined, forests to be
 clearcut, wetlands to be drained and plowed. Among his fervent advocates was
 former House GOP leader Newt Gingrich, who wanted the national parks sold to the
 highest private bidders.


 Today, Republican President Bush is fond of extolling Theodore Roosevelt's
 conservation efforts, while his administration pushes policies that would undo
 the environmental protections that Roosevelt and others fought so hard to
 establish. Typical is the "Healthy Forest Initiative," which the president signed
 into law Wednesday. Despite its heroic title, it paves the way for the
 destruction of the last of the public-owned forest giants.


 Polls show the public considers the environment to be an important issue. But it
 lacks immediacy. The hot buttons are attached to tax and job and war issues.
 Republican strategists seem to have signed off on the environment, referring to
 its problems as exaggerated, its advocates as extremists.


 Not all Republicans have abandoned the issue that was once so vital to their
 party, however. A small (2,000 members) but active nationwide group, Republicans
 for Environmental Protection, would put a solid conservation plank in the party
 platform. In an essay, REP President Martha Marks writes that "the
 administration's agenda usually matches the agendas of the same selfish special
 interests that [Theodore] Roosevelt fought throughout his career."


 And then there's the lonely and gutsy stand taken by Iowa Republican Congressman
 Jim Leach, who for a decade has pushed a national-forest management policy that
 is simplicity itself: Stop cutting. No more arguments over clearcuts, no more
 phony"salvage" cutting, no more forcing taxpayers to build roads for loggers and
 then give away the trees.


 The nation has 300,000 square miles of national forests. More than half that land
 has been prepared for logging or already logged. Much of the rest is protected as
 wilderness. The Leach bill would put it all out of reach of the chain saws.


 Leach has 92 co-sponsors. Only three of them - all Easterners - are Republicans.
 The bill isn't going anywhere under the present administration. But Americans of
 all political stripes will be the losers if it languishes until there is nothing
 left to protect.


 A chance to experience the magic of the unspoiled outdoors is the right of all
 Americans. Preserving our natural wonders for our grandchildren is a solemn
 obligation in which politics is utterly out of place. If there was ever an issue
 that should be erased from the partisan agenda, it is environmental protection.

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