LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: ENVIRONMENTALISTS DECLARE WAR ON MISSOURI OZARKS

Dear Editor,

The Spotted Owl has invaded the Missouri Ozarks in the form of a salamander and a bird nest.

Environmentalists threw down the gauntlet on June 13, 1994, with the filing of Appeal #94-09-00-0981 to end logging in Mark Twain National Forest. The Spotted Owl doesn't live here, so the tools the environmentalists are using are salamanders, which logging is said to disturb, and migratory woodland birds, protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Had these not been available, other creatures would have been used as tools to justify an Appeal.

Environmentalists, the great majority of whom live in distant cities, have long coveted the Ozarks and sought to control the land. The Natural Streams Act, voted down by a huge majority of Missourians, was one recent attack. The ongoing Mississippi River Heritage Corridor project is another attempt, in this case to control all land one county wide along both sides of the river for the entire length of the Mississippi River, plus all land drained by the Mississippi, which includes the Ozarks. The Mississippi plan is backed by the National Park Service, Corps of Engineers, environmentalists and others.

Environmentalists were successful in destroying the logging industry in the Northwest, and they shut down logging across the river from us in the southern Illinois Shawnee National Forest. Now it's our turn to come under environmentalist attack.

Soon we'll be on national television as families lose their livelihood, business closes, forest products workers go on welfare and city and county governments go bankrupt. Remember that in the Northwest, the ban on logging began on public land but soon spread to private woodlands. Environmentalists filed hundreds of lawsuits against landowners threatening fines, jail time and confiscation of property if Mom and Pop allowed the timber to be cut on their farm.

This is deadly serious and must concern every job holder, every property owner, every teacher, business person, farmer, chamber of commerce -- everyone! Published environmentalist literature states flatly that the goal is to return the Ozarks to pre-settlement conditions and create a gigantic, region-wide Nature Preserve.

But first, they must run you off your land.

The Mississippi project and the recent Appeal are the nail in the foot that will spread infection and wipe out the Ozarks population. It worked in Washington and Oregon. It can work in the Ozarks. The Sierra Club and other organizations have the money, legal clout and political power to force this on us.

WILLIAM F. JUD

Fredericktown