Fact:
Public forests belong to all Americans. Local input in the decision
making process, while
important, will not yield the best result because of conflicts of interest
at the local level where a
greater number of people are employed by extractive industries.
For example, 25 people in the
small timber town of Quincy, California, contrived with the region's
largest purchaser of public
timber to triple the logging on 3 National Forests in the heart of
the Sierra Nevada. If
implemented, millions of people in southern California will suffer
from decreased quantities ajid
quality of their drinking water.
'The statutory establishment of the Shelton Sustained Yield Unit in
Washington State in 1946
gave the Simpson Logging Company, a local business, a virtual monopoly
on federal timber.
The intent of Congress was to ensure a sustained flow of timber to
support the local
communities. The result was that the area was heavily logged
and is widely considered - even
by the Forest Service - to have been a disastrous experiment in social
Service - to have been a disastrous experiment in social engineering.
Both the forest and the
community suffered as a result.