Ancient timber tumbles in new battle over America's wild West

But now a new feature marks the landscape - the barren 'clear- cuts', where the trees have been felled. They appear like scars, slashed across what would otherwise be the most awesome landscape in America; wastelands gouged into what were once forest but are now huge stretches of castrated tree trunks and the debris of destruction.

They are a picture of the future as the lumber industry, after years of restraint by rules and protective regulations, is unleashed by new regulations, announced last week by the administration of George Bush, giving managers of America's 155 national forests rights to approve the exploitation of the land they control - primarily logging and mining.
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This is in my back yard. I made a trip a couple of years ago to the Olympic Peninsula. I hadn't been there in many years. There sure weren't as many trees as there used to be.