WHITEFISH — Montana's governor thanked the timber industry for its consistent support of her administration Friday, saying she would continue to work on the industry's behalf after leaving office later this year.

"Yours has been an issue of my heart," an emotional Gov. Judy Martz told the crowd at the annual Montana Logging Association convention.

Martz used her luncheon address in Whitefish to emphasize her support of the timber industry in general, and of President Bush's Healthy Forests Initiative in particular. She also said she would work to return slurry bombers to the skies above wildfires, and praised loggers' efforts to reduce the threat of future fires.

Working in support of the Healthy Forests Initiative has been a "highlight" of her term as governor, she said.

Martz said she believes "forest health is about active management," adding that too often heavily forested states such as Montana are importing wood products from countries with few, if any, rules protecting the environment and workers. Those who oppose logging in Montana but buy imported wood products are "hypocrites," she said.

She said she believes all Montanans want to protect forest ecosystems, but some environmentalists want to protect it all.

She told the MLA it was "criminal" to unreasonably restrict loggers from forests burned in wildfires, advocating instead for the "timely removal of dead and burned timber."

She praised state Department of Natural Resources and Conservation foresters, who, she said, were planning timber sales even as the fires still burned.

Martz announced that after leaving office she will pursue the lecture circuit, speaking about issues, like logging, that affect the people of the West.

She has driven through the state's prairies and forests, she said, and what's impressed her most is not the resources, but the people.

"Take our Montana people out of that environment and you've got nothing," Martz said.

And those people, she said, deserve a strong economy, the path to which is the traditional path of natural resource development.

"Improve the forests," she said, "improve the jobs. Show me loggers at work."

That so many loggers still are at work, she said, speaks to the industry's "stubborness" and "fortitude."

"It's been my honor to support your industry," Martz said, adding that logging was, and is, "a vital part of this state's foundation."