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closed. Over 50 million dollars which annually went into 

 the local economy from this hub of economic infrastructure 

 is now gone. Environmental lawsuits have and continue to 

 block the Forest Service from doing their job. 



In 1987 our northern forests had a series of 

 lightning fires ignited by over 1,000 lightning strikes in 

 one big storm. 578,806 official Forest Service acres 

 burned. More than 1.9 billion board feet of timber was 

 torched. 1.5 billion feet was located outside of 

 wilderness and protected areas. 1.2 billion feet of dead 

 burned trees were put up for sale. Environmentalists 

 effectively cost the U.S. Forest so much time and 

 expensive legal fees trying to stop the salvage operations 

 that only 896 million board feet was removed. 

 Approximately 600 million board feet was left standing to 

 rot. An even greater disaster, was that reforestation 

 only occurred on harvested accessible burn areas. Due to 

 the delays caused by the environmentalists, so much brush 

 grew in, seedlings could not be planted and the forests 

 continue to be mismanaged and desiccated. 



When Redwood National Park expanded in 1977, George 

 Meany, AFL-CIO, got Congress to recognize, that many 

 working people who lost their jobs due to that taking of 

 private land, should be helped. Part of that deal was 

 that the Six Rivers National Forest would increase their 

 harvest levels to compensate the taking of the private 



