Choosing Between Forests And Jobs

"Republicans have tucked provisions into the spending bill that the House and Senate conferences are negotiating to permit road building in two Alaska forests, expand timber harvesting in national forests and open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to exploratory oil drilling.Democrats say the provisions would weaken Clinton-era protections for national forests...Conservation groups said introducing those policies in the negotiations seriously undermined the 2.2 million comments that the public submitted before the policies were introduced in 2000. Industry groups said the sweeping policies surprised the timber industry in 2000."