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

DATE: FRIDAY, April 30, 1993                   TAG: 9304300183
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A2   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: RESERVE, N.M.                                LENGTH: Medium

TIMBER-SALE CUTS PROPOSED

Under orders from the White House to try again to put federal timber sales on a sounder economic footing, the U.S. Forest Service has proposed changes that would end logging on more than one-third of the national forests - including the Jefferson and George Washington national forests in Virginia - by 1998.

Environmental groups and other opponents of the timber sales have long argued that the government charges too little and provides too many services to companies that log national forests, at a cost to taxpayers at hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Top Clinton administration officials have said they want to raise fees or halt logging, but they backed off earlier plans to push such proposals in the face of congressional opposition.

Now F. Dale Robertson, the chief of the Forest Service, has developed a plan, which he sent this week to federal forest managers and some timber industry executives, to end low-price logging on 62 of the 156 national forests.

If the White House approves the proposal, which could be put into effect without congressional approval, it would mean a huge political victory for the national environmental movement.

The national forests provided 7.3 billion board feet of timber last year, or roughly 12 percent of the 58 billion board feet used in the United States.

If the plan is put into effect, timber harvest on federal forests would drop to 4 billion to 4.5 billion board feet by the end of the decade.

Staff members of several environmental groups supported the Forest Service's efforts, but critics of the proposal said environmentalists are taking a narrow view that fails to recognize the consequences for millions of Americans.

The proposal affects more than 60 million acres of forestland in 23 states and would be one of the most significant changes in how the public forests are managed in the 88-year history of the Forest Service.

Agency officials said that those particular forests were chosen as the clearest examples of areas where current logging practices cost the government millions of dollars.

by CNB