Dead Wood
The lousy economics of Bush's new forest policy.

It's perhaps true, as Forest Service officials claim, that current forest- management rules are too complex and costly to administer. But if so, it's equally true that the proposed rule changes are essentially an effort to open national forests to more logging than they have seen in years.

Among those with fingerprints on the proposal is Mark Rey, the undersecretary of agriculture who runs the Forest Service. Rey was a longtime foe of logging regulations on national forests, primarily as vice president of the American Forest and Paper Association, an industry trade group that bitterly fought logging cutbacks during the early '90s. "This is a timber industry proposal, pure and simple," Charles Wilkinson, a University of Colorado law professor, told the Denver Post.

But the real problem with the logging changes is not that they are pro- timber industry, it's that they are economic nonsense. It's curious that an administration that is so business-friendly would take measures that actually would hurt business, let alone dozens of small towns across the West. But that's exactly what would happen.
[more]