who gives A hoot? 265
the productive capacity of these hard-working people in just four years?
Is it ‘balanced’ to exalt the spotted owl at the expense of the human
condition?”^33
MneXt cA e the MARBLed MuRReLet. Gorton said 300 million board
feet on the west side of the Cascades was now in bureaucratic gridlock
to protect the newest member of what he called “the creature-of-the
month club.”
Timber industry lobbyists, working with Republicans in the House
and Senate, drafted legislation in 1995 that left the environmentalists
reeling. “Salvage” riders were appended to an omnibus congressional
budget bill. The amendments mandated a two-year program to remove
damaged, dead or dying timber. Trees “imminently susceptible to fire or
insect attack” and “associated trees” also could be harvested. All such
sales, moreover, would be exempt from administrative appeals and envi-
ronmental regulations. Gorton shrewdly enlisted Senator Hatfield’s help
for his version, which also insulated from legal challenge all new timber
sales authorized by the Clinton plan. Since the administration had been
unable to deliver the billion board feet of timber it promised, Gorton said
he was pleased to be “helping” with a short-term solution that would also
address the “forest health crisis.” Apoplectic, environmentalists said the
crisis was a hoax and warned that the rider could undo much of what had
been accomplished in the past seven years. Loggers surely were warm-
ing up their Husqvarnas, they said, because the fine print would allow a
full-scale attack on national forests. The salvage rider also directed fed-
eral land managers to proceed with all of the timber sales that had been
on hold since 1989.^34
A nationwide environmental SOS produced a deluge of calls and let-
ters to the White House. Clinton duly vetoed the budget bill, denouncing
the salvage rider as a blank check that would saddle the taxpayers with
the bill “for whatever damage occurs to the environment.” Gorton and
Hatfield went back to work. Slade couldn’t have found a more influential
ally. Hatfield headed the Senate Appropriations Committee. Sometimes
called “Saint Mark,” Oregon’s gentlemanly former governor was in Gor-
ton’s eyes “the very model of a United States senator” yet also adept at
hardball. Hatfield reportedly threatened to attach the salvage rider to ev-
ery appropriations bill, a move that would leave Clinton with the Hob-
son’s choice of vetoing every one or letting the federal government close
up shop. “At the same time, Hatfield promised the president that under
the rider, his agencies still would have the latitude to follow environmen-