Houston Regional Group - News

Phone Calls, Faxes, and Letters Needed Now to Stop Bush Logging Assault

Brandt Mannchen

President Bush has unleashed an all out assault on your public forestlands (the National Forests/Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands). Unless your U.S. Representative and Senators hear from you, massive amounts of Pacific Northwest old-growth, Rocky Mountain Ponderosa Pine, and diverse Southern public forestlands will be stripped by private timber companies.

Here’s the deal. President Bush has disguised his massive commercial logging proposal, the innocent sounding “Healthy Forests Initiative,” in a cynical attempt to use burned Western forests as a cover to subsidize private timber companies and allow them to log millions of acres of mature/old-growth forests.

Mature/old-growth trees are the most fire resistant trees in our forests and should not be logged. The Bush plan will give these trees away for free as a subsidized payment to private timber companies who will then remove smaller trees/shrubs that catch fire and burn more easily.

President Bush has proposed removing your right to challenge, administratively and judicially, timber sales that will damage your public forestlands. The President also wants to change the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), our Nation’s # 1 environmental law, to make it easier to log public forests without asking the public to review and comment on the environmental impacts of logging proposals.

Here’s what you can do! Tell your Congresspersons (see below) that you oppose Bush’s “Healthy Forest Initiative” logging plan, any proposed removal of your right to judicial and administratively challenge logging plans, and any changes to NEPA!!!

Call or Fax Immediately: U.S. Senators Kay Bailey-Hutchison (202-224-5922, fax 202-224-0776) and Phil Gramm (202-224-2934, fax 202-228-2856) at U.S. Senate, Washington, D.C. 20510 and U.S. Representatives Kevin Brady (202-225-4901, fax 202-225-5524), Nick Lampson (202-225-6565, fax 202-225-5547), Sheila Jackson-Lee (202-225-3816, fax 202-225-3317), Tom Delay (202-225-5951, fax 202-225-5241), Ken Bentsen (202-225-7508, fax-202-225-2947), Gene Green (202-225-1688, fax 202-225-9903), Ron Paul (202-225-2831, fax 202-226-4871), and John Culberson (202-225-2571, fax 202-225-4381, at U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, D.C. 20515.

For more information call Brandt Mannchen at H713-664-5962 or W713-640-4313.

October 2002

Last updated:  10/02/2005.   Content © 1999-2002 by the Sierra Club.