EDITORIAI A Bruising Brawl

flNCe AGAIN, the forest products industry V is involved in a struggle to preserve its access to the nation's timber base. The situation has all the makings of as bruising a brawl as the industry has ever fought.

We're talking, of course, about the U.S. Forest Service's RARE II program, the Roadless Area Review and Evaluation. It's the second time around, hence the II, to decide once and for all whether some 62 million acres of public land will be allocated for multiple use so thit all the people can enjoy and derive benefit from the land or whether public lands will be locked up forever as wilderness, available only to backpackers, canoeists and hikers.

As this is being written, the first battle in what may be a long war is just being concluded; the Forest Service's gathering of public comments. It is now tallying the results and by January of next year it will present its recommendations to the Congress. Given the present condition of Congress, many do not see any final decision forthcoming until 1980.

The danger in this for the forest products industry is that the temptation exists to do nothing now and rely on a last minute crash program to get as favorable a piece of legislation as possible to industry. We think this is a serious mistake. We also feel, incidentally, that too many who should know better waited too long to urge everyone who earns his or her living from forest products to respond to the early stages of RARE II.

Whatever the final recommendations of the USFS, now is the time to implement the plan (someone does have a plan, don't they?) to tell our side of the story.

The magnitude of the proposals in RARE II make it imperative that this ill-advised attempt to lock up millions of acres of productive forests and grasslands be prevented. If it should pass the supply of forest products would be severely strangled, with inevitable price increases all along the line. If you think prices are high now, what do you think this would do to the prices for buying and selling wood-based products?

Well continue to monitor the progress of RARE II and will keep you advised of its current status. Many of you have already written the Forest Service. Many more letters will be needed to convince Congress that we need to lock up 62 million acres of land as wilderness areas about as much as we need more inflation and another war.

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