Robert Smith: “This is finally a compromise that I have been looking for for at least 10 years. In my experience we have not hit…”

“This is finally a compromise that I have been looking for for at least 10 years. In my experience we have not hit balance in the practice of forestry in this country, and certainly that is evident by what has happened in the Pacific Northwest where we find in region 6, the States of Oregon and Washington, 85 percent of the public forests are shut down to any kind of management. For the first time in after 4 years, and of course it plays a very important part here, after 4 years the Quincy Library Group has finally found balance, I believe, and here again, if there are those of my colleagues who are concerned about the environmental impact here, there are four environmental impact studies in this legislation, four. So do not let anybody fool us about how the environment is going to be taken advantage of here. The issue here very simply is what happens when we lose the resource, and that is catastrophic fire. We rely upon science now. We rely upon science as the evidence of what will happen in the future if we do not manage forests.”