[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book I)]
[July 1, 1993]
[Pages 964-966]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks Announcing the Forest Conservation Plan
July 1, 1993

    Ladies and gentlemen, this issue has been one which has bedeviled 
the people of the Pacific Northwest for some years now. It has been one 
that has particularly moved me for two reasons: first of all, because so 
many people in that part of the country brought their concerns to me in 
the campaign on all sides of this issue, the timber workers and 
companies, the environmentalists, the Native Americans, the people who 
live in those areas who just wanted to see the controversy resolved, so 
they could get on with their lives; and secondly, because I grew up in a 
place with a large timber industry and a vast amount of natural 
wilderness, including a large number of national forests. So I have a 
very close identity with all the forces at play in this great drama that 
has paralyzed the Pacific Northwest for too long.
    We're announcing a plan today which we believe will strengthen the 
long-term economic

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and environmental health of the Pacific Northwest and northern 
California. The plan provides an innovative approach to forest 
management to protect the environment and to produce a predictable and 
sustainable level of timber sales. It offers a comprehensive, long-term 
plan for economic development. And it makes sure that Federal Agencies, 
for a change, will be working together for the good of all the people of 
the region.
    The plan is a departure from the failed policies of the past, when 
as many as six different Federal Agencies took different positions on 
various interpretations of Federal law and helped to create a situation 
in which, at length, no timber cutting at all could occur because of 
litigation, and still environmentalists believed that the long-term 
concerns of the environment were not being addressed.
    The plan is more difficult than I had thought it would be in terms 
of the size of the timber cuts, in part because during this process the 
amount of timber actually in the forests and available for cutting was 
revised downward sharply, in no small measure because of years of 
overcutting, and in a way that provides an annual yield smaller than 
timber interests had wanted, and a plan without some of the protections 
that environmentalists had sought. I can only say that as with every 
other situation in life, we have to play the hand we were dealt. Had 
this crisis been dealt with years ago, we might have a plan with a 
higher yield and with more environmentally protected areas. We are doing 
the best we can with the facts as they now exist in the Pacific 
Northwest.
    I believe the plan is fair and balanced. I believe it will protect 
jobs and offer new job opportunities where they must be found. It will 
preserve the woodlands, the rivers, the streams that make the Northwest 
an attractive place to live and to visit. We believe in this case it is 
clear that the Pacific Northwest requires both a healthy economy and a 
healthy environment and that one cannot exist without the other.
    I want to say a special word of thanks to the Vice President, to the 
Interior Secretary, Bruce Babbitt, to Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy, 
to Labor Secretary Reich, Commerce Secretary Brown, Environmental 
Protection Administrator Browner, Environmental Policy Director Katie 
McGinty, and many others in our administration who worked together to 
bring all the forces of the Federal Government into agreement, not 
because they all agreed on every issue at every moment but because they 
knew that we owed the people of the Pacific Northwest at least a unified 
Federal position that would break the logjam of the past several years.
    This shows that people can work together and make tough choices if 
they have the will and courage to do so. Too often in the past the 
issues which this plan addressed have simply wound up in court while the 
economy, the environment, and the people suffered. These issues are 
clearly difficult and divisive; you will see that in the response to the 
position that our administration has taken. If they were easy they would 
have been answered long ago. The main virtue of our plan, besides being 
fair and balanced, is that we attempt to answer the questions and let 
people get on with their lives. We could not, we could not permit more 
years of the status quo to continue, where everything was paralyzed in 
the courts.
    We reached out to hundreds of people, from lumber workers and 
fishermen to environmentalists, scientists, business people, community 
leaders, and Native American tribes. We've worked hard to balance all 
their interests and to understand their concerns. We know that our 
solutions will not make everybody happy. Indeed, they may not make 
anybody happy. But we do understand that we're all going to be better 
off if we act on the plan and end the deadlock and divisiveness.
    We started bringing people together at the Forest Conference in 
April. In the words of Archbishop Thomas Murphy then, we began to find 
common ground for the common good. As people reasoned together in a 
conference room instead of confronting each other in a courtroom, they 
found at least that they shared common values: work and family, faith 
and a reverence for the majestic beauty of the natural environment God 
has bequeathed to that gifted part of our Nation.
    This plan meets the standards that I set as the conference 
concluded. It meets the need for year-round, high-wage, high-skilled 
jobs and a sustained, predictable level of economic activity in the 
forests. It protects the long-term health of the forests, our wildlife, 
and our waterways. It is clearly scientifically sound, ecologically 
credible, and legally defensible.
    By preserving the forests and setting predictable and sustainable 
levels of timber sales, it protects jobs not just in the short term but

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for years to come. We offer new assistance to workers and to families 
for job training and retraining where that will inevitably be needed as 
a result of the sustainable yield level set in the plan, new assistance 
to businesses and industries to expand and create new family-wage jobs 
for local workers, new assistance to communities to build the 
infrastructure to support new and diverse sources of economic growth, 
and new initiatives to create jobs by investing in research and 
restoration in the forests themselves. And we end the subsidies for log 
exports that end up exporting American jobs.
    This plan offers an innovative approach to conservation, protecting 
key watersheds and the most valuable of our old-growth forests. It 
protects key rivers and streams while saving the most important groves 
of ancient trees and providing habitat for salmon and other endangered 
species. And it establishes new adapted management areas to develop new 
ways to achieve economic and ecological goals and to help communities to 
shape their own future.
    Today I am signing a bill sponsored by Senator Patty Murray and 
Congresswoman Jolene Unsoeld of Washington and supported by the entire 
Northwest congressional delegation to restore the ban of export of raw 
logs from State-owned lands and other publicly owned lands. This act 
alone will save thousands of jobs in the Northwest, including over 6,000 
in Washington State alone.
    Today Secretary Babbitt and Secretary Espy are going to the 
Northwest to talk to State and local officials about how to implement 
the plan and give to workers, companies, and communities the help they 
need and deserve. And soon we will deliver an environmental impact 
statement based on the plan to the Federal District Court in Washington 
State. We will do all we can to resolve the legal actions that have 
halted timber sales, and we will continue to work with all those who 
share our commitment to achieve these goals and move the sales forward.
    Together we can build a better future for the families of the 
Northwest, for their children, and for their children's children. We can 
preserve the jobs in the forest, and we can preserve the forest. The 
time has come to act to end the logjam, to end the endless delay and 
bickering, and to restore some genuine security and rootedness to the 
lives of the people who have for too long been torn from pillar to post 
in this important area of the United States. I believe this plan will do 
that, and this administration is committed to implementing it.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 10:34 a.m. in Room 450 of the Old Executive 
Office Building. H.R. 2343, approved July 1, was assigned Public Law No. 
103-45.