New Forest Service chief gets rough treatment in Congress. By Matthew Daly, Associated Press.
Good!
Hopefully the new Congress will finally rein in the land management agencies which have become increasing lawless during the Bush Administration. The new commitee chairman, however, is a supporter of cutting more timber, and he played an unsavory role in the flap over the Oregon State University’s graduate student’s article in Science Magazine showing the ill effects of post-forest fire salvage logging on forest regeneration.
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Ralph Maughan
Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University with specialties in natural resource politics, public opinion, interest groups, political parties, voting and elections. Aside from academic publications, he is author or co-author of three hiking/backpacking guides, and he is past President of the Western Watersheds Project.
So on one hand, Rep. Norm Dicks, Democrat – Washington is calling it awful, and then later in the article he calls the proposal to increase taxpayere funding for cutting trees in Oregon Washington and California a good thing.
Is this what the Democrats really want out of the Bush Forest Service? More old growth PNW trees cut? Here is a map of his district … if I’m reading it right, including the Olympic Peninsula.
http://www.house.gov/dicks/6thdist.htm
Dicks’ conservation deficits are well known, but he is just one Democrat, and the new majority party is investigating an agency that is out of control and has had no congressional oversight for six years.
The minority party can’t initiate congressional hearings. You should focus on the fact of the hearings, not Norm Dicks, IMO