Concerned about President George W. Bush's commitment level to the environment, four Duke professors along with 200 colleagues nationwide signed a letter last week from the Sierra Club, urging Bush to end commercial logging in national forests and begin a process of habitat restoration.
William Schlesinger, dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, John Terborgh, James B. Duke professor of environmental science and biology, Loraine Kohom, a visiting assistant professor and Boyd Strain, professor emeritus of biology, signed the April 16 letter, joining notables such as author of Sociobiology and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner E.O. Wilson.
"[I signed] because of a long-standing concern that our national forests are being over-logged for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many," Terborgh said. "[There is a] large infrastructure paid for by taxpayers to make resources accessible to the logging industry, who then can harvest more [timber]."
Terborgh said that although logging in national forests has been a problem in the past, the Bush administration could exacerbate the problem since it is considering downscaling President Bill Clinton's policies on banning roads from some forests and protecting old-growth trees.
"I'm concerned about the logging of old-growth forests. I would have preferred [the letter] if it focused on old-growth rather than all growth," Schlesinger said. "I would take the... old-growth forests and essentially put them away as a reserve.... It's not a huge area of land."
He added that old-growth forests are particularly important to preserve biodiversity since many species that live in old-growth forests live nowhere else.
"We need to realize that the growing human population is coming to a level that its impact on the planet is not sustainable," Schlesinger said.
Sean Cosgrove, a national forest policy specialist with the Sierra Club, said in addition to the ecological benefits, protecting national forests also maintains clean water and fish and wildlife populations.
"National forests are special places," Cosgrove said. "They are lands that are owned by all Americans [and] should be managed for their benefit."
Over $1 billion in government money goes to logging incentives annually, Cosgrove said. He explained that the Forest Service, which controls logging in national forests, has an incentive to allow logging since it retains much of the revenue derived from it rather than remitting the money to a common government fund.
"Why should we invest taxpayer money in protecting a destructive industry that hurts the economy?" Cosgrove asked, arguing that for every job created by the logging industry, several others in different industries are destroyed.
As of late last week, the White House had not responded to the letter, he said.
Schlesinger, also James B. Duke professor of the environment, said he does not expect the administration to confront this issue but predicted that the Sierra Club and other non-government organizations will continue to push the importance of protecting national forests.
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