House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (R-WA) sponsored H.R. 1526, the Restoring Healthy Forests for Healthy Communities Act, which would mandate and incentivize destructive logging and other harmful industrial activities across vast swaths of America’s public lands. This intense expansion of logging and development would decimate our forests, which provide important benefits like clean drinking water, recreational opportunities, and fish and wildlife habitat. Even priceless landscapes such as inventoried roadless areas, wilderness study areas, old growth, and other conservation lands could be opened up to logging. While the bill purports to address concerns about forest fires, sufficient authority to facilitate fire and insect treatments already exist in the Healthy Forest Restoration Act. On September 20, the House approved H.R. 1526 by a vote of 244-173 (House roll call vote 483). NO IS THE PRO-ENVIRONMENT VOTE. The Senate took no action on this legislation.