Logging on Public Lands is Destroying Our Forests

Logging on Public Lands: A Chainsaw Massacre

As long as humans have lived in forested areas, they have cut down trees for lumber and/or to clear space for agricultural purposes. However, this practice has resulted in the destruction and near extinction of our national forests. Today, fewer than five percent of our country's original forests remain (Thirteen) and the U.S. Forest Service continues to allow more than 136,000 square miles to be logged each year (Byrant). Even more alarming, is the fact that only twenty percent of the current public forest lands are permanently protected by law, leaving nearly eighty percent to be consumed by chainsaws and bulldozers (Heritage...).

National forests, or the sections of land set aside by the government for public use, were first established in 1891. It wasn't until June 4, 1897, however, that the first logging operations were permitted (Ending...). Since then, approximately forty million acres of national forest have been destroyed (Thirteen). According to Dominick DellaSala, the Director of U.S. Conservation Programs, "The United States currently has one of the poorest forest protection standards of any developed nation on Earth" (Wildlands...). For a good part of this century, our national forests have been heavily logged, mined and exploited for the good of corporate America, destroying much of our worlds delicate forest ecosystems. There is absolutely no justification economically, nor ecologically to allow logging operations to continue in our national forests (Thirteen...).

Logging not only destroys trees, it also wrecks havoc on fish and wildlife habitats. Logging clouds streams with sedimentation, smothers spawning beds and raises water temperatur...

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