Protect our forests

Dallas Morning News: The Bush administration wants to lift a blanket ban on logging in 58 million roadless acres within the national forests. Tuesday is the deadline for public comment, and, to no one's surprise, companies built on wood have already weighed in.
There's Building Materials Holding Co., one of the nation's largest building material distributors; two leading forest products companies, EarthSource and Golden State Lumber; heavyweight homebuilder KB Homes; and International Paper. Each of them has asked the U.S. Forest Service to keep the ban intact.
In part, they're motivated by a reverence for wilderness, but economics comes into play, too. Having the 58 million disputed acres off limits would allow the Forest Service to spend scarce dollars maintaining the roads that exist, rather than neglecting them to build new ones, a representative of Golden State Lumber explained.
Makes sense to us.
Philosophically, we tend to agree with the late author Wallace Stegner, who advocated preserving wilderness, "as much of it is still left, and as many kinds -- because it was the challenge against which our character as people was formed."
America's wealth
Like any human society, however, the United States also derives much of its wealth from its natural resources. We must balance our reverence for nature against our desire for prosperity. President Bush tends to focus more on the economic side of the equation. In Utah, his administration has removed the Fisher Towers rock formations from the list of potential wilderness areas; in Alaska, it has begun offering timber sales in the Tsongas National Forest; in Montana, it has taken steps to allow drilling for oil and gas in the Lewis and Clark National Forest.
Especially in view of the industry comments cited above, we call on the president and his appointees to recalibrate their policies in favor of greater wilderness protection.