Wow. Gel-mann amnesia. Did you read both sources? It's hard to even connect the article to the policy. In fact, it reads like a political move by political agents, considering that the "policy change" won't be published in the federal register until after the election, and then faces a 90 day review for commentary before being adopted or rejected.
So I really don't think this is real, in any governance sense, more as a propaganda piece, but you wanted the conservative thoughts.
There are many layers of bureaucracy to deal with between today and the first tree to be harvested. There is plenty of time for this to be reversed. Effectively years.
This is opening a new forest to logging. Now would be an excellent time to study environmentally friendly forestry practices.
Logging doesn't need to equal clear cut. Thinning to encourage growth is more labor intensive. That's a plus to the local economy. Restricting skidding to wintertime, when the ground is frozen. Restricting some areas to windfall and scavenge harvest only. Restricting harvest to X% of the canopy, in Y years. Holding individual loggers liable for damage to standing trees. Whatever restrictions you can justify.
Stud mills, (so called because they are sawmills optimized for turning young, small logs into 2x4's.) Have saturated the market in the lower 48. Canada is turning 100 year old forests into toilet paper at a truly industrial scale. These are not markets worth entering.
What this area should have is large to very large trees, by today's market standards. Cater to a premium market, with a premium product. Environmentally harvested, large logs. Everything has to be shipped out anyway, better to ship finished products.
Further south, the west coast caught fire last summer. This was blamed on not removing biomass, causing a build up of flammables to fuel those fires. The same changes in climate that affect the lower 48, and cause fires are happening here, too. Saving this forest may only be possible by good management, now.
Now would be the time to set up such programs, if you were so inclined. None of this was possible under the old policy.
There you go, and I'm not even a conservative.
To me, this looks like a sampling error.my experience with rural folk is that being at the forefront of natural depredation they tend to be for depredation—yes, some wise souls among them do see value in conservation (e.g. some smart ranchers i know work together with environmentalists) but others can’t see past the quick payoff, and damn what comes after. short-termism is universal.
suburban and city people on the other hand as you’ve pointed elsewhere tend to virtue signal more than reduce their actual demand for resources, which they don’t actually see mined or logged or farmed—nevertheless, some do make the effort, same as it happens among the rurals. unfortunately, just as elsewhere, they’re a minority.
Perhaps you should try to get to know wiser people, in general. CCCC, the lower the level one is operating at, the less interesting one's operations. I would suggest that more interesting people would give you more interesting results.
But yes, most folks are useless in this regard.