Word: timbers
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Forest Service defends the logging on the ground that the timber industry is vital to the Western economy. But conservationists counter that too much of the ancient forest is already gone and the destruction should stop. Thus the forests have become the hottest battleground in a broader war between the forces of economic development and the armies of conservation being waged from the wetlands of the East Coast to the oil-stained shores of Alaska's Prince William Sound...
...forests had its origins in the late 1940s, when a postwar housing boom resulted in the voracious cutting of trees on private lands. The logging industry was forced to turn to public lands, including those with old-growth forests (prized because of the high quality and quantity of their timber). The National Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management have cooperated, selling rights to new tracts of forest every year. This policy, combined with modern logging machinery that makes cutting on mountain slopes easier, has put vast stands of old-growth trees in the chain saw's path...
...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...
...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...