Vanishing green

even as commercial logging is taking a high toll of usa 's national forests, the us forest service has approved a new management plan for the great Tongass national forest in southeast Alaska. The plan awaits the approval of the agriculture secretary Dan Glickman. The plan would allow more logging than required by either the current state of demand for timber products, or the long-term economic health of southeastern Alaska. It is almost as if the forest department -- in setting the maximum logging levels -- is trying to entice back the timber industry that has only recently departed from the region and of which the forest is well rid.

The national forests that once seemed a limitless resource are now dwindling. Commercial logging, especially in pristine forests, needs to become the exception, not the rule. Unfortunately, the us Congress -- and to a lesser extent the administration -- continue to follow policies pointing in the opposite direction. Under the guise of balance and sustainability, they are responsible for appeasing the destruction of forests. Only the pace has slowed. And that is inadequate.

Officials defend the plan by saying that it is based on better science and is more protective of the forest than the earlier policies. The plan would, however, do unnecessary and irreparable environmental harm.

The us Congress seems well on the way to pass the legislation, short-circuiting the normal procedures and ordering the adoption of another management plan for three forests in northern California. The president is also expected to approve the plan. It would permit a significant amount of logging. Its virtue from the politicians' standpoint is that it was put forward as a consensus proposal by a group representing industry and -- supposedly -- environmentalists in the affected region. Supporters tout it as a possible model for a new approach to forest management. Local consensus becomes the key in this. But these are national, not local forests. While local views need to be taken into account, they need to be managed as other than adjuncts to local economies. The model appeals to those who would shift political power from the federal to the local level. But in this case, it might be wrong.

It is to be noted that the Congress came within a whisker, a vote or two in either house, of cutting funds for further construction of roads in the forests this year. The road building programme is doubly objectionable. It would amount to a subsidy to the industry that simultaneously opens up and allows itself to enter parts of the forests previously inaccessible. But now, instead of a cut in these funds, the interior department's appropriations bill is said to contain a provision that will lead to an expansion of the road-building programme in that it removes a previous cap. Particularly in the House of Representatives, the administration failed to limit these funds as it should have done. A greater effort on its part would have resulted in the vote coming come out the other way.

Debate about whether the president should approve or veto the proposal continued within the administration last week. With the issue of cuts in government expenditure assuming prominence in the us in the last year of so, there is hardly a better reason to reject the proposed plan. There has been an effort in the Senate to rewrite the forest management law in a way that would lead to a larger cut each year. The chances that the bill sponsored by senator Larry Craig will make it all the way are slim. What is needed instead is a tightening of the law in the opposite direction.

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