Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, yesterday "ripped into the Clinton administration's top forest officials," asking whether they were members of the Sierra Club, during an Interior Appropriations subcommittee hearing on the US Forest Service's FY '98 budget request.
After Agriculture Undersecretary Jim Lyons and USFS Chief Mike Dombeck denied affiliation with the enviro-group, Stevens "demanded" they produce any correspondence they have had with the Sierra Club concerning its campaign to ban logging in national forests.
Stevens and subcommittee chairman Slade Gorton, R-Wash., also alleged that Dombeck, a fisheries biologist who has served as chief for three months, has replaced three of his top five deputies in an effort to shift away from timber production.
Stevens: "I get so frustrated I can't think, since you people came into office."
Stevens, who has been critical of the loss of timber jobs in southeast Alaska, has recently slammed the agency for delays in issuing a new management plan for Tongass National Forest (Greenwire, 3/24) (David Whitney, Anchorage Daily News, 4/18).
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