Congress attached a rider to the 1995 Budget Rescissions Act to permit timber companies to purchase and log parcels in our national forests without regard to federal environmental laws. Logging without adequate environmental safeguards has ravaged old-growth and healthy, green trees under the guise of "salvaging" dead or diseased timber. It imperils fisheries, destroys habitat for endangered wildlife, degrades water quality in streams and rivers, and undermines commercial and sportfishing industries. The rider prevented legal challenges to these timber sales.

Reps. Elizabeth Furse (D-OR), John Edward Porter (R-IL), Sidney Yates (D-IL), and Constance Morena (R-MD) offered an amendment to H.R. 3662, the Fiscal Year 1997 Interior Appropriations Bill, to prohibit the spending of any 1997 funds for implementation of the 1995 salvage timber rider. On June 20, 1996, the House of Representatives defeated the Furse amendment, 209 - 211. YES is the pro-environment vote. (See Senate vote 2.)