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So when I see an antienvironmental rider come on this beautiful bill, it is always distressing because, to me, the Interior appropriations bill, it seems to me, should be a positive statement of good things that we are doing for the environment.

[Page: S6515]  GPO's PDF

   So when I heard a rumor that Senator CRAIG would offer his amendment, I decided at that time I would try to talk the Senate out of adopting it. And this has become unnecessary.

   So let me quickly say, I am pleased that what is before us does nothing to stop this roadless policy from going into effect.

   As Senator WYDEN has stated, there have been countless meetings on it. The fact is, the roadless areas are the remaining gems of a forest system that has been degraded by centuries of logging and other types of heavy use. If we look at the big picture, we are really talking only about setting aside 2 percent of all our land in this country as roadless areas . What an important thing that is for us to do because it will in fact preserve our beautiful, priceless environment for future generations and preserve the fishing industry, stop erosion. It is a very important environmental initiative.

   So there is no misunderstanding, we know there are many inroads into these roadless areas . In the next 5 years alone, we are going to see more than 1,000 miles of roads inventoried. We are moving into these pristine areas .

   At some point, we have to say enough is enough in terms of destruction of our natural wilderness and our wonderful natural heritage. I think the U.S. Forest Service has taken a bold and positive step forward with its effort. I am very glad that nothing in this bill will stop them.

   Let me cite a couple of poll numbers. A recent poll done by some pollsters from the other side of the aisle found that 76 percent of the public supports the protection of roadless areas , and in my home State, asking Republicans and Democrats that question, 76 percent of Californians support roadless policies.

   We have editorials that I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the RECORD.

   There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:

   Clinton Seeks Legacy of Forest Protection

   In recent years, the Clinton administration has been pushing for a more balanced national forest policy, with a group of timber-oriented congressional leaders resisting every step of the way.

   The administration's approach, under U.S. Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck, was hardly radical. It was entirely consistent with the preservationist vision of President Theodore Roosevelt at the turn of the century when he greatly expanded the amount of national forest. It certainly jibes with the views of most Americans that conservation should get greater priority on public land.

   President Clinton this week took a bold step toward cementing those values by protecting about 40 million acres of U.S. forest land from road building. The proposal would effectively halt logging and mining in those still-pristine areas . About 4 million of the acres are in California, including significant parts of the Sierra Nevada.

   The timber industry, predictably, howled.

   ``These are not the king's lands, they are the serfs' lands, they are the people's lands,'' said Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, arguing that Congress should decide forest policy. In a letter to Dombeck, he argued that the Clinton plan would limit forest access.

   The Clinton plan will not curtail access to any of the 380,000 miles of logging roads in national forests--about eight times the length of the interstate highway system. These roads, typically dirt trails wide enough to accommodate a tractor-trailer, have often contributed to erosion, creek sedimentation and other environmental problems.

   This modest but essential effort to curtail further intrusion into the nation's forests will not spell doom and gloom for the timber industry. Less than 5 percent of timber cut in the U.S. comes from national forests, and less than 5 percent of that volume comes from roadless areas .

   It is important to note that the Clinton plan is not a done deal; it is the first step in a regulatory process that could take more than a year and most certainly will be influenced by public input.

   Notably missing from the president's eloquent call to conservation was a commitment to include Alaska's Tongass National Forest, the nation's biggest and the heart of the world's largest remaining expanse of coastal temperate rain forest. Tongass has been a major battleground for lawsuits and legislation over logging in an area with healthy populations of grizzly bears, bald eagles and salmon.

   These are the people's lands, natural treasures, and Americans who care about conservation must ensure their voices are heard in what promises to be a contentious process.

--

   Fight Over Forests--Which Public Lands Should Remain Roadless ?

   President Clinton used the Shenandoah Valley as the vista for his recent announcement to seek permanent protections for up to 40 million acres of pristine, roadless national forests. A more appropriate backdrop would have been somewhere between a rock and a hard place. Seeking to manufacture a legacy of forest protection in his remaining months in office, Clinton faces an uphill struggle.

   The president and Congress are supposed to work together to pass laws that protect forests as wilderness. This is how approximately 34 million acres of the 191 million acre national forest system are now officially protected with the wilderness designation. These 40 million acres that are the target of Clinton's new effort are not now legally designated as wilderness, yet function in nature as such. There are no roads on these lands--each of 5,000 acres or greater--and in many cases they are adjacent to a designated wilderness area.

   The Republican-led Congress, beholden on this issue to an extractionist ideology, is simply incapable of working with the president on wilderness issues, with the sole notable exception of an emerging bipartisan effort in western Utah. A compromise that could serve multiple interests--additions to wilderness areas in return for additional certainty on other lands for timber harvests--is not possible in this political environment. As Republicans use riders attached onto appropriation bills to thwart forestry planning efforts, many environmental groups have taken up the call for no logging whatsoever on any public lands. The average American, meanwhile, uses more paper products than anybody else on Earth.

   As Clinton wades into this ideological war, he has few options. Legally, the strategy with the best chance of permanency is to embody new protections for roadless areas within an environmental impact statement that offers a scientific basis for the action.

   The strategy may prove to be a long shot. On forestry issues in the Sierra, for example, the administration has been unable since 1993 to finish an environmental impact statement that offers final guidelines on how to protect the California spotted owl. Courts, meanwhile, have stalled Clinton's logging strategy for national forests in the Pacific Northwest. Environmental groups successfully challenged the adequacy of the environmental impact statements, which did not include surveys for certain rare species such as mollusks.

   Ironically, the very legal techniques used by roadless advocates to challenge logging plans will be handy weapons to attack Clinton's roadless plan--if the Forest Service manages to produce the environmental documentation before he leaves office. There's not much time left to count mollusks on 40 million acres of roadless America. In the forests, the biologists better start counting. And in Washington, leaders on both sides of the aisle should contemplate a bipartisan approach to forestry policy.

--

   Clinton's Legacy as Preservationist?

   For someone who paid no attention to environmental issues during his first year in office, Bill Clinton may wind up with an impressive legacy as a preservationist. In addition to his earlier programs to restore the Everglades and to protect Yellowstone, the forests of the Pacific Northwest and the redwoods in California, the president recently set in motion a plan that would, in effect, create 40 million acres of new wilderness by blocking road building in much of the national forest.

   In recent months, his secretary of the interior, Bruce Babbitt, has been exploring the possibility of additional action under the Antiquities Act of 1906, a little-known statute that allows presidents, by executive order, to protect public lands from development by designating them as national monuments. If used intelligently, the act offers Clinton a useful tool to set aside vulnerable public lands before he leaves office.

   Because it allows a president to act on his own authority and without engaging Congress, the Antiquities Act is an attractive weapon to any president whose time is running out and who wishes to quickly enlarge his environmental record.

   In 1978, President Jimmy Carter designated 15 monuments in Alaska, which in turn accelerated passage of a bill that added 47 million acres in Alaska to the national park system. Near the end of his first term, Clinton created the Grand Staircase-Escalante national monument on 1.7 million unprotected acres in Utah.

   In the last 93 years, all but three presidents--Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George Bush--have designated at least one national monument. There are now more than 100.

   Congress has never revoked a designation, though it has the power to do so, and some monuments have become revered national parks, like the Grand Canyon. Yet Congress has never really liked the law because it so clearly gives the president the upper hand.

   All it can do is rescind a designation, which is politically difficult. After Clinton's Grand Staircase-Escalante designation in 1996, a bill requiring congressional approval of any designation exceeding 5,000 acres passed the House, but died in the Senate.

[Page: S6516]  GPO's PDF

   Babbitt is considering a dozen sites. The largest is one million acres on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Others include the Missouri Breaks, along 140 miles of the Missouri River in Montana, and hundreds of thousands of acres in Arizona, Colorado, California and Oregon.

   All the projects are worthy, but as a matter of caution he and the President need to winnow the list to sites most deserving of immediate protection. Western Republicans, complaining about a federal ``land grab,'' are looking for any excuse to revive their attack on the act, which has survived in part because it has been used sparingly.

   Overuse could also divert support from even broader open-space initiatives, including what is expected to be another serious push to seek $1 billion annually in permanent financing for the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

   Within these limitations, there is no reason not to use the act, a statute with an honorable history that has produced illustrious results.

--

   Prescription For Forest Health Probably Would Kill the Patient

   The Clinton administration's recent proposal to protect roadless areas in our national forests is already under attack in Congress. One often-repeated objection is that roads are needed for logging, logging is necessary for a healthy forest, and our forests are suffering a health crisis. As prescriptions go, this one verges on quackery.

   The term ``forest health'' is so poorly understood and defined nowadays that it's virtually useless. When first coined, in 1932, it referred solely to insects and tree diseases. Now people use it to encompass fire, storms, or virtually anything. But all of the data, both from the Forest Service and studies by many forestry researchers including me, indicate there's been no change in the real condition of our forests, other than through excess and ill-advised logging.

   In terms of disease and insects, there has been no difference in true forest health for at least 50 years. In fact, a report from the U.S. Forest Service indicated that between 1952 and 1992 the amount of damage from disease, insects and all other major causes--including fire--was less than 1 percent of the standing commercial timber throughout the United States. And the numbers stayed at those levels the entire time, with no ups and downs. The same thing is true of both public and private lands.
* * * * *

   Unfortunately, this basic reality often gets distorted in order to accomplish some kind of cutting plan. In the Pacific Northwest, for instance, we hear that in many regions the Douglas fir is threatened by bark beetles. But when we go to those areas and investigate, we find that a significant problem just doesn't exist. There are some beetles, all right, but the overall beetle population is in decline and the amount of damage is extremely low. Of course if you only look for trees with beetles, you'll find them. But in the whole forest the mortality rates hover around the historical rates of 1 to 2 percent. And this is true of root diseases and other pests, of different species of trees, and in different areas of the country.

   Claiming harm to forest health is merely an excuse to log, but logging in the roadless areas is plain foolishness. The reason they weren't logged long ago is that early loggers knew there was little worthwhile timber in these areas .
* * * * *

   Widespread clearcutting has also brought changes in the water cycles, creating rapid runoff and melting during the spring, leaving little available water during the summer, when it's needed most. Even the local weather has been affected: If you change the structure of the forest, you change wind patterns and rainfall as well.

   In spite of this, I'm more optimistic than I was 15 years ago. Back then, nobody would listen to such concerns. All they could think about was the product and not the results of producing that product. Now even the industry is more sensitive to what it's doing, and it's changing some logging practices.

   We need to continue to improve the way we maintain our forests. If we cut timber, we have to do it more gently than in the past. And we have to stop using wrong-headed excuses like ``forest health'' to log in the few and fragmented remaining roadless areas that America still treasures. If we destroy such areas through needless incursion, we will leave our descendants far poorer than justified by the small immediate profits, and they will wonder what sort of physicians made such poor judgments about health.

--

   Forests Need Protection

   President Clinton has directed the U.S. Forest Service to produce an environmental impact statement and develop a proposal that potentially will protect more than 40 million roadless acres of its 155 national forests and 20 grasslands. Reactions from the two most vocal sides insist Clinton has erred, but he is moving in the right direction.

   The timber industry is angry about losing future access to these woods. Where will its product come from? Hmm. Well, probably the same place it comes from now--and that's not primarily federal forests. Only 5 percent of the annual timber load comes from national land and only 5 percent of that comes from areas that could come under protection. Besides, the 380,000 miles of road already in forests--more miles than the interstate system--will still be usable.

   That the plan provides for only 40 million acres and only inventoried, roadless areas 5,000 acres or larger upsets many environmentalists, as does not including Alaska's Tongass Forest. The heart of the world's largest remaining expanse of coastal temperate rainforest, Tongass is under siege, its supporters feel. Logging does take place in specified areas , and efforts to increase cut levels in Tongass are already in progress. Supporters feel an urgent need for more federal protection and were intensely worried when this proposal that excludes Tongass was chosen by Clinton.

   The plan also deals almost strictly with road-building; it will prohibit it, which hampers development. Environmentalists would of course like the regulation to stop logging, mining, many kinds of recreation and other exploitation.

   Clinton went with what was the weakest of his choices of plans, particularly making no rule to protect wildlife, to avoid needing congressional approval. His is an effort to have something happen instead of nothing. Part of the proposal also calls for a 60-day (only about 45 days to go now) public review and comment process, and all sides are hoping your voice will make a difference on what the final plan becomes. (Send comments to: U.S. Forest Service-CAET, Attn: Roadless Areas NOI, P.O. Box 221090, Salt Lake City, UT 84122.)

   We encourage you to support this effort. Only about 18 percent of the 192 million acres of federal forests are now protected from development. Roadless areas are reference areas for research, bulwarks against invasive species, and as aquatic strongholds for fish as well as vital habitat and migration routes for wildlife species, especially those requiring large home ranges. Tongass by merit of its uniqueness should be included in any plan that will protect it.

   We also would like to see forest lands remain untouched where they can so that they will still be around for centuries to come and our children won't have to explain to their grandchildren what forests were.

   Mrs. BOXER. These editorials are in favor of roadless protections. The two Senators from New Mexico have offered us a great service because they have essentially, by their amendment, stopped us from a very controversial amendment that was antienvironment, that the administration would have been very opposed to, and may well have caused a veto of this bill. I thank them again.

   I say to my friend from Idaho, Senator CRAIG, I hope he will not bring this back to us. I think it would drive a wedge into the heart of our environmental heritage. I hope that will not happen.

   I yield the floor.

   Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I rise in support of the amendment to add $240 million to the budgets of the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service for fuels reduction on our public lands.

   In April 1999, the General Accounting Office reported to the Congress that 39 million acres on the national forests in the interior West are at high risk of catastrophic wildfire. The GAO also stated in that same report to Congress that the ``most extensive and serious problem related to the health of national forests in the interior West is the over-accumulation of vegetation, which has caused an increasing number of large, intense, uncontrollable, and catastrophically destructive wildfires.''

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