Word: timber
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...including a resort lodge. Idaho Governor Cecil Andrus declared an extreme emergency to call in more than 300 National Guardsmen to help 9,000 fire fighters battling to control the burning land. Although the fires are not quite as bad as last year's, 462 million board feet of timber have been destroyed in the Boise National Forest alone...
Environmentalists fear that the same thing will happen in Sarawak and Sabah, which contain some of the oldest rain forests on earth. Chin estimates that careless, wholesale cutting will denude the remaining forests of their commercial timber within as little as seven years. Local officials have given loggers access to an estimated 95% of Sarawak's forests that are outside existing or proposed parks and protected areas. Even those tracts are coveted by corrupt politicians. According to Harrison Ngau, a Sarawak native being held under house arrest for taking part in antilogging protests, some forests have been excised from protected...
Senator Mark Hatfield arranged the Salem session to work out a compromise between two bitter enemies -- Oregon's powerful timber industry and militant conservationists. The industry needs to harvest trees to preserve some 68,000 jobs, while the environmentalists are fighting to protect ancient forests and creatures for which the old growth is an indispensable habitat. The meeting at times seemed overwhelmed by the whoop-de-do of 3,000 loggers sporting baseball caps with yellow ribbons and T shirts with provocative slogans (SAVE A LOGGER -- EAT AN OWL). But when it was over, the two sides appeared ready...
...deal, though, never quite materialized. While the timber industry announced its "reluctant acceptance" of the compromise, Andy Kerr, conservation director for the Oregon Natural Resources Council, complained that environmentalists did not have enough time to analyze the plan. Moreover, the group, which has been able to halt logging by obtaining court injunctions, was unwilling to drop all litigation for two years, as stipulated. In addition, the conservationists contended that the proposal, which allows loggers to harvest 8 billion board feet in the disputed lands through 1990, some 2 billion less than under normal conditions, surrendered too much...
...environmentalists' stand could push the timber industry back into its hard-line position. Before the compromise was conceived, the lumbermen had made it plain that they would reject any reduction in permissible logging. In Washington, Oregon's congressional delegation was angered and disappointed. Lamented Hatfield: "I wonder if those who saw fit to torpedo a fair, short- term solution have anything to offer...