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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Indiana Forests: No Lessons Learned from The Lorax

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Thursday, January 28, 2016   

INDIANAPOLIS – The Indiana Forest Alliance has a vision of old growth forests being preserved for wildlife, and people who love nature to enjoy.

The group has tried three times to get legislation passed to make 10 percent of state forests off limits to timber harvest without success.

Jeff Stant, the alliance’s executive director, says this time his organization got Republican lawmakers to back the plan, hoping that would be enough to win approval, in the legislature, and with a Republican governor.

However, identical bills in both the House and Senate failed to get hearings.

Stant says it's like the Dr. Seuss tale of “Lorax," which focuses on what happens when too many trees are harvested.

"In the year 2016, it's being played out with a vengeance right in front us, on our public lands,” Stant points out. “This isn't something that we're decrying that's going on down in the rainforests of Brazil, or the ancient forests out in Washington – this is happening right here in Indiana."

According to the Department of Natural Resources, of Indiana's original 20 million acres of forest, fewer 2,000 acres considered old growth remain intact.

Opponents of the bill say many of the remaining sites are already protected as nature preserves or other landmarks.

Stant says Gov. Mike Pence’s administration has been selling timber to foreign governments and huge companies for a quick buck.

"This is not local loggers being sustained from our state forests,” Stant maintains. “The logging mills in Indiana don't depend on these trees, and most of the logging operations are larger operations that are getting away with murder as far as the price. Taxpayers are being robbed here."

Stant says Indiana has a very limited amount of forestland for the public to enjoy, and old growth forests are the only places for long distance hiking, backpacking and camping in a primitive setting.

He says conservation groups won't give up the fight for greater protections.






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