LETTERS: EDITORIAL TRIPS ON DISCREDITING ENVIRONMENTALISTS

To the editor:

In your rush to discredit environmentalists, you have tripped over your own feet. The April 10 editorial regarding logging in the Shawnee National Forest bemoans the efforts of a Southern Illinois group to prevent such by forcing an environmental study. You state that "the studies will have to be redone at considerable expense to the taxpayers." What about the logging itself?

An article in your own paper some weeks ago showed that Illinois lost approximately $400,000 on logging sales in 1994. The state, as a result of logging-industry lobbying, is forced to build roads into forest areas, at public expense, to ease logging, and to sell the timber on publicly owned land at far below its market value.

If the logging industry were forced to pay the real cost of cutting timber in the Shawnee forest, it would simply move its operations elsewhere. As it is, the timber industry exists in Southern Illinois at the expense of the taxpayer. The industry is drawing corporate welfare.

You discredit yourself by being so eager to discredit those with whom you disagree.

MIKE MURPHY

Cape Girardeau