Political Quotes

“I rise to urge everyone if you want forests to be healthy and be managed, to support this bill. I have heard stated here that we have mismanaged, that the Forest Service and other agencies cannot manage forests under the current law. It is impossible to manage. In the Allegheny National Forest in Pennsylvania, the finest hardwood forest in America, we just had 10,000 to 20,000 acres of blow-down in July. It has been assessed at somewhere between $50 to $100 million in value lying on the ground. The Forest Service chief there just determined that it would be at least 3 years before he could have people there harvesting trees on the ground. Tell me that the system season broke, that it makes sense to have $100 million worth of American assets to lie there and rot because in 3 years they are of little value at all. Folks, this system is broken. We do not want judges managing our forests. We want soil scientists, fish and wildlife biologists, and all the people that our Forest Service hires. They have every kind of scientist there is managing our forests. They should make those decisions.”