He said years of overcutting had led to the current crisis.

The tree is protected in Japan because of its scarcity due to past overcutting.

Otherwise, bass modulation became excessive and overcutting took place into the next record groove.

Due to the overcutting of timber and collapsing sugar prices, the country's external debt increased threefold.

They turned their backs on the gross overcutting of our Federal forests, a disgraceful state of affairs that President Clinton is remedying.

As we understand it, the major cause of What's Coming is the present-day denuding of our planet-the massive overcutting of its forests.

But because of continued overcutting of forests and low seedling survival rates in newly planted sections, China's forests have been in a precarious situation.

"Our overcutting, our mismanagement of the forest, our export of raw logs, all are to blame for the situation we're in," she said in a recent interview.

Overcutting of vegetation occurs when people cut forests, woodlands and shrublands-to obtain timber, fuelwood and other products-at a pace exceeding the rate of natural regrowth.

Few of the forests are fully mature because of previous overcutting and also because of several violent storms during the 1960s, which snapped or uprooted millions of trees.

The overcutting of nearby forests has caused flooding in Ayutthaya, the ancient capital of Thailand, submerging Wat Pa Mok, with its colossal statue of a reclining Buddha.

Citing the devastation that decades of overcutting had wrought, Mr. Carter and other environmentalists gathered the 58,000 signatures needed to put on the 1996 ballot an initiative that would have banned clear-cutting in Maine's North Woods.

"I don't think it has been helpful, because it allowed industry to focus on Earth First and take the light away from the overcutting," says Gail Lucas of the Sierra Club, a prime mover behind the Forests Forever campaign.

Environmental groups praised the decision, saying that the preferential contract with the Alaska Pulp Corporation and a similar 50-year contract with the Ketchikan Pulp Company have led to widespread overcutting in the 17-million-acre forest in southeastern Alaska, with damage to wildlife and air and water pollution from pulp mills.