
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 23, 1993                   TAG: 9306230262
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

BILL WOULD END DESTRUCTIVE PRACTICE

THE "FOREST Biodiversity and Clear-cutting Prohibition Act of 1993" is working its way through the U.S. Congress. This bill offers to conserve native biodiversity and to protect all native ecosystems against losses that result from clear-cutting on all timberland owned or operated by the United States.

This bill highlights all the evils of even-age logging. Clear-cutting and other forms of even-age logging cause a substantial reduction in native biodiversity, kill immobile species and the very young of mobile species of wildlife, deplete the habitat of deep-forest species, deteriorate the soil, increase stream sedimentation, lessen the plant community's resistance to insects and disease, decrease recreational diversity, and cause various other destructive effects.

This legislation offers a chance to end the environmentally destructive practice of clear-cutting in our forests. The Environmental Protection Agency has ranked the loss of biodiversity equally with climate change and ozone destruction as a major threat to the planet. The region of the Appalachian national forests is acclaimed as one of the two most important areas for biodiversity in the United States. MARK E. BARKER ROANOKE

by CNB