ABSTRACT
Ron Nixon was reporting for the Roanoke Times in 1998 about the practice of clear-cut
logging in the Virginia mountains. State forestry officials told Nixon that 90 percent of
the companies operating complied with the department’s logging guidelines, assuring that
logged areas would be less susceptible to landslides, erosion and flooding. Nixon then
learned that the Virginia Department of Forestry had audited logging sites. Using the
state’s open record law, he obtained the computer data that was the basis for the audits
and discovered that 92 percent of logging sites audited at random in 1997 failed at least
one of the department’s “best management” guidelines (O’Donnell, 2004).
