CNN News
Science and Space
05:58 a.m. EDT (0958 GMT) August 22, 2004
Tree farmers enlisted to fight logging rule
Friday, August 20, 2004 Posted: 10:48 AM EDT (1448 GMT)
Tree farmer Mark Woodall on one of his two tree farms in Georgia. He opposes
the Bush plan to undo a Clinton administration move protecting federal forests.
ATLANTA, Georgia (AP) -- Mark Woodall is an unlikely environmentalist.
After all, he makes his living growing trees so he can cut them down.
But Woodall and other small tree farmers are aligning themselves with the
Sierra Club and other "green" groups as the White House proceeds with its
plan to open roadless forests to commercial logging.
While they care about the earth, Woodall and his counterparts care about
their livelihoods, too.
They're expecting to get aced out of the massive government contracts by
the timber, oil and gas goliaths. And if that happens, the ensuing lumber
glut means lower prices for the little guys.
"It's bad for the environment and bad for the pocketbooks of the tree farmer,"
said Woodall, who grows about 6,000 acres of trees near LaGrange in west Georgia.
The Bush administration is reversing the Roadless Area Conservation Rule,
a 2001 executive order by President Clinton, that prohibits road construction
on almost 60 million acres of federal forestland. No roads has meant no logging,
mining or oil and gas development.
The new policy, announced last month, calls for governors to decide in early
2006 whether to petition Washington to permit new roads in their forests or
keep them untouched.
Although the decision affects more than 30 percent of national forests,
the more than 700,000 acres in Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina,
Tennessee and Virginia are a relatively small portion compared to the huge
tracts in the West.
Those forests are worrisome to farmers such as Woodall, who has enjoyed
the rising price of sawtimber pinewood over the last 15 years. Prices now
reach almost $40 a ton.
"The restrictions doubled our prices, so if you went back it could cut our
prices in half," he said. "A 50 percent cut in our paycheck could not be good."
The logging business has not been all solid, though. Timber prices fluctuate
with droughts, and beetle infestations can devastate acres of farmland. Products
made from small wood chips melded together are draining the market demand
for timber, and business is being exported to places such as China and South
America where the climate encourages quicker timber growth.
The Southern Environmental Law Center, which has offices in Atlanta, Chapel
Hill, N.C. and Charlottesville, Va., and similar groups are hoping to harness
the power of concerned loggers before the two-month comment period on the
roadless restrictions ends Sept. 14.
"We're trying to get the information out widely," said David Carr, the head
of the center's public lands project. "There are folks out there getting the
information out to tree farmers and landowners."
Foresters and environmentalists have allied in the past, particularly to
fight encroaching urban sprawl, and both groups applauded the Clinton action.
Supporters of the reversal insist it will help preserve forest health by
allowing forest thinning to clear out the potentially dangerous undergrowth
that can fuel fires.
New roads, they also contend, will provide access to campers, bikers and
firefighters.
Environmental groups, though, point to about 9,500 roads that already cut
into forests in the South. "There's already tons of access," Carr said.
The lobbying extends beyond tree farmers, of course. Critics don't expect
responses to equal the hundreds of hearings and at least 1.5 million responses
gathered over a two-year period that welcomed the 2001 executive order. They're
trying to mobilize outdoorsmen as well as politicians to fight the rule. They
point to protest letters from both houses of Congress addressed to President
Bush.
Some tree farmers have already started to lobby governors, even though they
couldn't appeal to the federal government until 2006.
"I think here in the South all the governors we've talked to have said this
could be bad for the economy down here," said Woodall, a member of the Sierra
Club.
*********
Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed
.
http://www.cnn.com/2004
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RELATED
• White House Council on Environmental
Quality http://www.whitehouse.gov/ceq/
• Southern Environmental Law Center
http://www.selcga.org/
•Heritage Forests Campaign
http://www.ourforests.org/
• U.S Department of Agriculture
http://roadless.fs.fed.us/
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