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Article: Dead wood.(reform of the U.S. Forest Service)
- Article from:
- The Washington Monthly
- Article date:
- October 1, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1996 Washington Monthly Company. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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When the Clinton Administration made Jack Ward Thomas chief of the Forest Service in late 1993, environmentalists couldn't have been happier. Thomas was the agency's senior wildlife biologist who earlier that year had developed Clinton's plan to protect the northern spotted owl in the Pacific Northwest, where furious logging of old-growth forests had, until 1991, been driving the owl towards extinction. The federal judge who stopped the logging with an injunction that year fingered the Forest Service, accusing it of "a deliberate and systematic refusal ... to comply with the laws protecting wildlife."
By that time, the Forest Service had a long and ...