Bill Clinton: “Do you think that's a good description, Elizabeth, of what happened? Yes? Let me say that in northern California and in…”

“Do you think that's a good description, Elizabeth, of what happened? Yes? Let me say that in northern California and in Washington and in Oregon in the Pacific Northwest of the United States where Elizabeth lives and where her father works, a lot of people make their living in the forests. Part of the forests are called old-growth forests. They're very, very old trees. And most of the old-growth forest has all been cut down, but a little of it is left. And there's some logging in that. And then, as Elizabeth can tell you, there are forests sort of rimming the old-growth forest where the trees are newer where some of the land is being ordered to be set aside for the spotted owl. We have a law in the United States called the Endangered Species Law which says that if an animal is placed on that list, then it has to be protected, even if it costs some jobs to protect it. So there's been a big fight going on for the last few years about how much land should be set aside to preserve the spotted owl and how much land should be left alone to log in the forest. I want to make two points to you. First of all--and let me say, I live in--my State, Arkansas, has--over half the land is covered with timber, so I have a lot of personal friends who make their living the same way your father did. First of all, the problem has been made worse because the United States Government has not come up with a solution. So that as you may know, the courts have stopped logging all over northern California and Washington and Oregon, including some places where people should be allowed to log. So I have committed myself to organize, along with Vice President Gore, a forest summit. And the Secretary of the Interior, Bruce Babbitt, in particular, is doing a lot of work on that now. We're trying to set up a forest summit out there to bring all the people together to try to come up with the best compromise that will permit us to save not just the spotted owl but this other point I wanted to make is the old-growth forest that remains, and still let people log. Let me say it to you in another way: We could remove all the restrictions on logging tomorrow and even put more people to work; not only secure your father's business, but we could put more people to work. But then in a few years we'd have no trees at all to log. So the issue is, how can we have a stable logging environment and keep a significant number of people working and still preserve the old-growth forest, and by the way, the spotted owl. I think we can do a much better job if we can just get this out of the courts and start--there is a lot of land available, that should be available for logging that's been tied up in the courts that our Government does not want to tie up anymore. So what I'm going to try to do is put a group of people together to come out to Washington, Oregon, and northern California and sit down and go through all this and see if we can't resolve it so we can keep the largest number of people working and still preserve the forests.”