In a new pamphlet about why logging is good for the Sierra Nevada region, the U.S. Forest Service has grossly misrepresented forests before and after logging. (Link goes to a Sacramento Bee article on the pamphlet; an online version of the pamphlet is located here.) Why on Earth could this be? It is well known that the George W. Bush placed cabinet secretaries in an ironic way. Gale Norton, Secretary of the Interior, is in charge of the nation's lands. Before she had the job of administrating America's wilderness, she was the national chairwoman for Republican Environmental Advocates, a group funded in part by Ford and BP Amoco (opensecrets.org). The Undersecretary of Agriculture for Natural Resources and Environment, the man in charge of the Forest Service, is Mark Rey, a former timber industry lobbyist. Environmental Media Services offers an interesting piece of news on an ongoing problem with the Bush Administration: openness:

A federal court yesterday criticized the US Department of Agriculture and the US Forest Service for their response to efforts by Defenders of Wildlife and the Endangered Species Coalition to find out how and why comprehensive nationwide forest rules, drafted by an independent Committee of Scientists, were junked soon after President Bush took office. The groups had filed a FOIA request for documents pertaining to the decision to scrap the regulations amid concerns that they were tossed out so that more industry-friendly regulations could be crafted by former timber industry lobbyist Mark Rey, appointed by President Bush to oversee the Forest Service as Undersecretary of Agriculture for Natural Resources and Environment. Rey maintained there was not a single document in the Office of the Undersecretary pertaining to this major federal rulemaking process, a response the court deemed "inadequate" and which Defenders of Wildlife President Rodger Schlickeisen called "laughable." The Forest Service was also reprimanded for being so vague in its reasons for withholding nearly three quarters of the documents requested that neither plaintiffs nor the court could assess whether the withholdings were proper.

In the tradition of Orwellian titles for his programs, Bush's forestry program was entitled the "Healthy Forests Initiative" (like PATRIOT Act and No Child Left Behind Act; who wants to leave children behind? Obviously anyone opposed to that bill). The Olympian reported on the controversy surrounding the Healthy Forests initiative: "The final rules would leave intact some of the most controversial proposals from an earlier version released in November. Like that version, the final plan would give regional managers of the Forest Service more discretion to approve logging, drilling and mining operations without having to conduct environmental impact statements."