Our natural heritage should not be liquidated for the profit of private corporations. Native forests play an important role in creating soils and minimizing soil erosion, lessening flood and drought potential and maintaining clean air.
Public forests contain over half of the nation's remaining wildlife habitat.
The federal logging program operates at an increasing loss each year. Taxpayers, not industry, pay for administrating the timber sale program, constructing logging roads, replanting trees, and restoring degraded habitat. The costs of deforestation to biodiversity, clean water and air, fisheries, tourism, and our spiritual well-being are incalculable. Half of the trees cut in this country are wasted through inefficient utilization and lack of recycling. Eliminating this waste would save more than 3 times the amount cut on public forests.