Copyright 1999 The Atlanta Constitution
The Atlanta
Journal and Constitution
February 12, 1999, Friday, CONSTITUTION
EDITION
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 01C
LENGTH: 499 words
SERIES: Home
HEADLINE: Clinton acts to safeguard forests;
Limiting logging: Road construction is being put on hold on millions of
acres of wilderness.
BYLINE: John Harmon
BODY:
In a move that could result in vast
tracts of remote and wild country in the Southern Appalachians being preserved
as wilderness areas, the Clinton administration announced Thursday its
long-awaited policy to halt road construction in America's national forests.
Agriculture Department officials said that for the next 18 months, the
U.S. Forest Service will protect from road construction more than 33 million
acres of "roadless areas" in national forests, mostly in the
West, while the service revamps its long-standing policy of building roads and
maintaining timber roads.
In the South, the big surprise in Thursday's
announcement was that the George Washington National Forest in Virginia, which
contains 260,000 acres of roadless areas, was included in the
moratorium after Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck had exempted it from last
year's proposal. The new policy is the latest move by the Clinton administration
to change the priority of the Forest Service from timber production to resource
protection. And the move affirms a decision last year by Southern Regional
Forester Elizabeth Estill to protect Southern Appalachian roadless areas.
The vast majority of roadless areas in the South are within the
Appalachian national forests of Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia and the Carolinas.
The total affected acreage in the mountains is almost 800,000 acres in about 180
roadless or potential wilderness areas.
"We are therefore calling an
official timeout so we can examine the science, involve the public and build a
roads policy for the 21st century," said Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman.
But while environmental groups in the South broadly praised the move,
national organizations criticized the plan for exempting from protection
expanses of old-growth timber in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. And the plan
still allows logging in the roadless areas, although the moratorium on new road
construction will make logging operations virtually impossible in many of the
areas.
The moratorium is one of the single biggest moves to protect
forests in the lower 48 states in almost 100 years, since the days when
President Theodore Roosevelt moved to create national forests in the West.
"This is a significant first step, no doubt about it," said Tom Hatley,
director of the Southern Appalachian Forest Coalition. "It represents an agency
attempting to modernize its management and reflect what the public is
demanding."
David Carr of the Southern Environmental Law Center was more
cautious. "This is a window of opportunity to permanently protect these areas,"
he said. "But it's not done yet."
The policy is opposed by the timber
industry, which contends it will cost jobs because it will result in less tree
harvesting.
The moratorium had been expected since last year when
Dombeck made the proposal. In what was a significant shift of Forest Service
policy, Dombeck said roads not only harm the forest ecology but are often too
costly to justify.
LOAD-DATE: February 12, 1999
