Senators protest timber cuts

United States Senators John Tester and Max Baucus of Montana are two of the countries senators leading the charge in a coalition of senators who formed to protest President Barack Obama’s plan to reduce timber sales on United States Forest Service land.

According to the US Forest Service’s budget proposal for 2014, the timber sales could be cut by 15 percent, which could directly impact the business of local employer Tricon Timber LLC.

“It will impact Mineral County if Tricon can’t get a steady supply of logs,” Mineral County Commissioner Duane Simons said.

The bipartisan coalition said that the president’s plan “threatens” jobs in rural communities such as Mineral County and the proposed cuts are “inconstant” with the agency’s forest restoration goals.

“At a time when we need to be increasing timber harvest, the Administration’s blueprint sets us even further back,” the coalition wrote President Obama. “The cuts would have serious consequences for counties and businesses in our states and across the country.”

The letter to President Obama continues by stating that the coalition “understands” the fiscal “constraints” that both the administration and Forest Service are currently working under but stresses that the budget would not only have “serious consequences for counties and businesses in our states and across the county” but that it could also have negative consequences in terms of wildfires across the nation.

“Increased timber harvest will create jobs in our forests and help mitigate the raging wildfires that are becoming all too commonplace in the west,” the letter reads.