Gale Norton - Eliminating Parks Maintenance Backlog "Impossible"

[hatrack]

WASHINGTON - Eliminating a maintenance backlog in the national parks, as President Bush (news - web sites) promised in his 2000 campaign, is impossible, Interior Secretary Gale Norton said Thursday. She likened the park system to an old house that will forever need repairs.

"Just like in your house," Norton said in answer to a reporter's question. "You never get to the point where you say, 'Well, all done, totally zero left to do.'"

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The National Parks Conservation Association, however, says the Park Service has spent only $662 million in new money to reduce a backlog of maintenance needs. The group says the rest of the money is going to repairs that do not ease the backlog. The Coalition of Concerned National Park Service Retirees brushed off Norton's progress report as "surreal happy talk that is divorced from the genuinely dire reality of the situation."

Last month, House Republicans who oversee Interior Department spending approved a $1 billion budget for park operations. But they took issue with hundreds of millions of dollars spent for construction and travel rather than to reduce the maintenance backlog. Norton suggested those lawmakers were misinformed. "Congress, like all the rest of us, responds to the information they hear," she said."

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[barbaraann]

1. Anyone else been up the "road" to Crater Lake? (Oregon)

It's crumbling and simply terrifying! It looks like all they have done is put up a couple of cones in a couple of spots. I can't believe people aren't dying there by falling off the road or viewing areas.

[StClone]

2. Do I hear wedding bells

Sounds like our National Park System is turning into an old maid with the only rescue being a Rich Private Sector Suitor with old Parson Bush presiding over the ceremonies.

[NNadir]

3. It's "impossible" if your priority is funding Halliburton and financing

the machinery of murder.

[midnight armadillo]

4. The 'Starve the Beast' strategy

You see, now that they are starved of funds, they can shrug their shoulders and say 'what can we do?' This is EXACTLY what conservatives have been claiming they're trying to do with massive deficits. Here it is in action, and as usual the public well being is paying the price for it. They can then point to the deteriorated park conditions and make the claim that government is incompetent and that privatization is the only way out.

[bex]

5. Siskiyou Wild Rivers imminently threatened

I don't have enough posts to start a new thread. I would really appreciate it if someone would repost this as a new topic. Anyone who has been to the California/Oregon border area will understand the grave seriousness of this threat. Please spread the word.
Bush Team Pushes Huge Timber Sale Under Guise of Fire Protection
Under the guise of preventing forest fires, the Bush administration is planning the biggest timber sale on public lands in modern history. The Biscuit Project would allow logging of 372 million board feet of timber across 30 square miles of southwest Oregon's Siskiyou National Forest—enough timber to fill 70,000 logging trucks. The logging would be done on wildlands of uncommon beauty and ecological diversity, far from any community that could be damaged in a fire.
"It's the biggest logging sale since World War II," says Steve Holmer, communications director with the Unified Forest Defense Campaign, a coalition of national and regional conservation organizations. "Timber companies have made huge contributions to the Bush campaign. This project is political payback."
Holmer tells BushGreenwatch that the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) initially proposed a much smaller project. "When the Forest Service first started looking at the area, they planned maybe a 100 million board feet sale." That changed once Mark Rey, formerly a top lobbyist for the timber industry who is now the administration's undersecretary for natural resources and environment in the Department of Agriculture, began to work on the sale.
Conservationists will "fight tooth and nail" against sales in roadless areas and old-growth reserves, but may support some careful logging in the areas in between, called "matrix lands," says Holmer.
The Biscuit Logging Project may violate federal forest protection rules. Some areas are protected under the Clinton-era Roadless Area Conservation Rule, while the huge size of the project may violate the Northwest Forest Plan, also adopted during the Clinton administration. <1> Moreover, logging will disqualify 48,000 acres of the Siskiyou from consideration as federal wilderness area.
In an unusual step, the USFS has granted "emergency exemptions" to 11 sales included in the project. These exemptions enable the USFS to allow logging to begin immediately after issuing its final plan for each sale, even though there is usually a waiting period required for public appeal.
Holmer sees politics in this rush to cut. "This is an election year. Oregon was a close state in the last election. The Bush administration is using the Biscuit Project to show they've come up with a solution to the fire issue." There is also an economic factor. "If the trees aren't cut soon, they'll rot to the point of losing economic value. If they're not logged this summer, will pretty much lose their chance."
The areas encompassed by the Biscuit Project were burned in the 2002 "Biscuit Fire," the largest forest fire in Oregon's history. Fire is an intrinsic part of the ecology of western forests, and the Siskiyou has already begun to regenerate. <2> The burned trees are ecologically essential to the area's recovery, and sit on some of the Siskiyou's wildest and most fragile acres--including old-growth reserves, steep streambanks and riverbanks, and salmon spawning grounds.
In addition to being one of the largest public lands logging sales in history, the Biscuit Logging Project may be one of the most expensive to taxpayers, ultimately costing the public over $34 million.
"There are costs to preparing a sale," says Holmer. "The Forest Service has to build roads. Or if it's logging with helicopters, you've got to create landing pads, 2-acre clearcuts. Also, salvage timber sells at 25-percent of green timber. It's the same wood, same volume, at fire sale prices. The timber industry gets a huge windfall because it's a salvage project."
Holmer emphasizes the survival of the forest—a shelter for wildlife and wild rivers—is at stake.
"Under the Clinton administration, the Siskiyou was almost made a national monument. It's an area of unparalleled biological diversity, home to rare species that exist only in this region, clean water for salmon, and very important to the local tourism and recreation industry. If there was going to be a new national park on the west coast, the Siskiyou would be a prime candidate."
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Send an instant message: http://www.actionstudio.org/public/petition_view.cfm?op...
http://www.siskiyou.org/SWRC /
You can call your US Senators at 202-224-3121 and let them know what you think of this timber sale. To find out who your Senators are you can go to: http://www.senate.gov /

[phantom power]

6. Student Conservation Association

One way to help out is by supporting the Student Conservation Association. They hire students to work in the parks on various projects.
http://www.thesca.org/

[bex]

7. I'll check it out

thx