SOS Forests

Tester Forest Bill Unraveling

Montana Senator Jon Tester’s proposed “Forest Jobs And Recreation Act” (S. 1470) is in a death spiral.

The bait-and-switch wilderness bill [here] was prepared by a small cabal of radical enviro groups [here] and has met stiff resistance [here] from excluded groups of all stripes. Tester’s bill has all the same defects as Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden’s proposed “Oregon Eastside Forests Restoration, Old Growth Protection, and Jobs Act” [here].

Now Tester’s Senate comrades have butchered the bill in a bungled attempt to put lipstick on it.

Forest bill backers rap panel’s changes

By JOHN S. ADAMS - Great Falls Tribune June 4, 2010 [here]

HELENA — A new Senate committee rewrite of Sen. Jon Tester’s forest bill is circulating among members of the group that helped draft the original measure, but some of the original bills supporters say the proposed changes are unacceptable.

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee has developed a “discussion draft” version of Tester’s “Forest Jobs and Recreation Act,” which removes one of the most controversial provisions of the bill. That provision call for the mandated logging of 100,000 acres of timber on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge and Kootenai National Forests. …

Tester’s “compromise” trade off was to be a million acres of newly designated wilderness set aside for No Touch, Let It Burn, Watch It Rot destruction in exchange for 100,000 acres dedicated to restoration. All those acres are dedicated to restoration right now — a point lost on most observers — so the trade off was as phony as a three dollar bill.

But the 100,000 acres has now been scratched, blowing up the phony compromise and eliminating any chance for “broad-based” support.

Told you so.

The next phony bill to be butchered by a Senate makeover is Wyden’s OEFROGPJA bill. Say what you want about the U.S. Senate; there is a silver lining to their gross incompetency. They tend to shoot themselves in the foot, which is a good thing considering that most of the bills they come up with are hugely undesirable in the first place.