CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

The Latest ‘Sustained Yield’ Scam Will Devastate Montana’s National Forests

Log landing, western Montana. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

Way back in 1995 Bob Brown, the Republican president of the Montana Senate, called me into his office.

He had co-sponsored a bill with a pro-logging Missoula Democrat to establish a “sustained yield” level of logging on Montana’s state trust lands – and he was worried it wasn’t working out the way he hoped.

Bob was right to be worried then and Montanans are right to be worried now because Trump’s Forest Service Chief and former timber industry lobbyist Tom Schultz, has just unleashed the “sustained yield” scam on Montana’s National Forests.

To appreciate Brown’s concerns, it’s important to understand that the 1995 Montana legislature had two-thirds Republican majorities in the House and Senate and Republican Marc Racicot in the Governor’s Office.

Those majorities put Montana’s environment in the cross-hairs with a raft of industry-friendly deregulatory bills.  That included the timber industry, which was losing the “timber wars” in........

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