Portland Bush visit Tree Sit! Plus live web cam

Press release on Bush visit and tree sit
by Viva Cascadia! 11:22am Thu Aug 22 '02
phone: 503-241-4879

Breaking News Update:
Cascadia Forest Alliance puts up tree sit in North Park Blocks (at West Burnside) in downtown Portland to kick off day of protest against President Bush's misguided and foolish forest policies and the blatant timber industry cronyism present in Bush's new 'Healthy Forests Initiative.'

For Immediate Release August 22, 2002

Forest Activists Join Bush Protests to Call Attention to Timber Industry Cronyism

Who: Citizens concerned about forest protection
What: Protest President Bush's forest policies
Where: North Park Blocks downtown Portland, OR and in the streets
When: Thursday, August 22, 2002
Why: The Bush Administration wants to suspend environmental laws and citizen involvement to push through logging of mature and old growth forests.

Forest activists will protest President Bush's forest policies in downtown Portland on Thursday, August 22. Already, activists with the Cascadia Forest Alliance have erected a tree sit in downtown Portland's North Park Blocks to help expose Bush as a timber industry 'puppet.' Under a Bush proposal to be released today in Medford, environmental laws and citizen involvement will be undermined or suspended so that federal land management agencies can increase logging and roadbuilding on public lands, one of the timber industry's highest priorities.

Environmentalists accuse the Bush administration of promoting misinformation about forest fires in order to capitalize on Oregon's wildfires and the public's fears to promote logging to benefit timber industry campaign contributors. In May 2000, Bush broke Oregon fundraising records while accepting huge sums of 'soft' money from wealthy timber company executives. Timber companies and their executives are expected to once again throw large amounts of money to Republican coffers in Bush's Thursday fundraiser for Senator Gordon Smith at Portland's Hilton hotel. Senator Smith, like the President and the timber industry, also favors eliminating environmental rules to promote destructive ancient forest logging.

Already, Bush has appointed people like former timber industry lobbyist Mark Rey to oversee the Forest Service. Mark Rey has a record of advocating destructive ancient forest logging and helped write the 1995 Salvage Rider while working under Idaho Senator Larry Craig. The 1995 salvage rider limited public participation and increased logging while environmental laws
were suspended for 18 months after the fire season of 1994. "The 1995 Salvage Rider resulted in a huge wave of destructive logging across the region, including the Eagle Creek timber sale,' said Ivan Maluski from American Lands. The rider also resulted in huge waves of public protest.

Forest and fire ecology provide evidence that years of commercial logging of healthy older forests and aggressive fire suppression and drought are the key sources of insect, disease and wildfire outbreaks. But 'Bush's latest proposals to 'streamline' environmental laws such as the National
Environmental Policy Act and to subsidize fuel reduction projects with logging mature and old forests will only increase fire risks while providing taxpayer subsidized logs to the timber industry,' said Cascadia Forest Alliance volunteer Carrie Taylor.

It is clear that the Bush administration's agenda is to keep the logging industry happy, not protect homes from fires or promote forest health. This agenda has already been seen to play out, perhaps exacerbating this year's fire season. According to a November 2001 report released by the Department of Agriculture's Office of Inspector General, the Forest Service has been inappropriately using National Fire Plan funds intended for fire restoration to conduct commercial timber sales far away from homes and communities.

http://www.cascadiaforestalliance.org