Owls vs. Weyerhaeuser, Simpson, Plum, et al.: Which Side Are You On??
Talk about a mismatch. On one side we've got some of the most merciless resource-exploiting corporations in North America. These folks are lifetime-subscribers to the corporate mania for profit and less and less of anything resembling real competition since they probably share the same shameless "lobbyists" (a term that of course in this age of the Republican Party/DeLay "K-Street Project" stands for what amounts to a government bought and owned by money, no longer representing actual citizens). I have to wonder whether they might be subject to the "LTDs" (my personal coinage of this moment - lobbyist-transmitted disease) that scum like Abramoff have been spreading. Hard to believe that those Corporations have all refrained from the sort of influence-peddling and criminality that seem to have become routine for the Republicans.
This is all of course part of the obvious program in the Bad Washington of shredding any actual control ("regulation") of industry. On the other side we have genetic diversity, the Spotted Owl, innumerable other species that individually are at risk of extinction in the interests of the Big Buck, and, in general, the whole concept of wild space or anything else that might get in the way of profits.
Sometimes the victories seem tiny, but they still IMO merit celebration.
U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman deserves an enthusiastic atta-judge here:
SEATTLE (AP) - A federal judge who struck down a Bush administration decision to ease logging restrictions last summer issued an injunction Monday blocking as many as 144 timber sales in three states.
The sales in Washington, Oregon and northern California had been approved under the administration's decision to stop requiring that the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management look for and protect rare plants and animals before logging on 5.5 million acres covered by the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan.
The Bush administration eliminated the so-called ``survey and manage'' rule in spring 2004 as part of a legal settlement with the timber industry. Environmental groups sued over the decision, arguing that it was arbitrary and that the government had not evaluated what the impact would be on protected species such as the great gray owl.
Last August, U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman agreed, striking down the new rule. At the time, she did not say whether she would allow the 144 timber sales - approved since the rule's adoption - to proceed. About half of those sales included old-growth logging.
In her decision Monday, she reinstated the survey-and-manage rule, and made clear that no timber sales would proceed unless they met that standard.
The potential harm to the approximately 300 species protected by the old rule outweighed the potential harm to the government, which put its projected economic loss from stopping the timber sales at $2.7 million. The judge noted, as the environmental groups had, that the court should not be concerned about any money the government stood to make by breaking the law.
[clip]
This is all of course part of the obvious program in the Bad Washington of shredding any actual control ("regulation") of industry. On the other side we have genetic diversity, the Spotted Owl, innumerable other species that individually are at risk of extinction in the interests of the Big Buck, and, in general, the whole concept of wild space or anything else that might get in the way of profits.
Sometimes the victories seem tiny, but they still IMO merit celebration.
U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman deserves an enthusiastic atta-judge here:
SEATTLE (AP) - A federal judge who struck down a Bush administration decision to ease logging restrictions last summer issued an injunction Monday blocking as many as 144 timber sales in three states.
The sales in Washington, Oregon and northern California had been approved under the administration's decision to stop requiring that the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management look for and protect rare plants and animals before logging on 5.5 million acres covered by the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan.
The Bush administration eliminated the so-called ``survey and manage'' rule in spring 2004 as part of a legal settlement with the timber industry. Environmental groups sued over the decision, arguing that it was arbitrary and that the government had not evaluated what the impact would be on protected species such as the great gray owl.
Last August, U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman agreed, striking down the new rule. At the time, she did not say whether she would allow the 144 timber sales - approved since the rule's adoption - to proceed. About half of those sales included old-growth logging.
In her decision Monday, she reinstated the survey-and-manage rule, and made clear that no timber sales would proceed unless they met that standard.
The potential harm to the approximately 300 species protected by the old rule outweighed the potential harm to the government, which put its projected economic loss from stopping the timber sales at $2.7 million. The judge noted, as the environmental groups had, that the court should not be concerned about any money the government stood to make by breaking the law.
[clip]
posted by Sir Gumbo at 10:04 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home