Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company
The Boston
Globe
October 10, 1999, Sunday ,City Edition
SECTION: NEW HAMPSHIRE WEEKLY; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1165 words
HEADLINE:
Roads in forest for logging come under scrutiny;
Input is sought for plan;
NEW HAMPSHIRE WEEKLY
BYLINE: By Robert Braile,
Globe Correspondent
BODY:
CONCORD
- Scattered throughout the 774,000-acre White Mountain National Forest are vast
swaths of land - some thousands of acres - on which roads have never been built
to haul out timber.
But they could be built anytime, to some an economic
gain, to others an ecological threat. As the US Forest Service begins work on a
new 10-year management plan for the Whites, with a public meeting this week in
Andover, Mass., and three more later this month in New Hampshire, an emerging
issue is whether the roadless areas should be protected. Some
conservation groups say yes, but the timber industry says no. Conservation
groups, including the Wilderness Society, Appalachian Mountain Club and
Conservation Law Foundation, have proposed that dozens of roadless tracts
totaling about 113,000 acres be permanently protected from road construction.
The groups were among those that conducted a tour in the Whites last Thursday.
"The best bet for protecting large blocks of remote, forested
backcountry in New Hampshire is in the White Mountain National Forest," said
Julie Wormser, Northeast regional associate for the Wilderness Society. With
sprawl threatening from the south, and land sales and "intensive" timbering
threatening from the north, "the Whites are becoming an island in a rapidly
shifting sea of land use."
The Heritage Forests Campaign, a coalition of
conservation groups, will hold a "statewide town meeting" at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday
in the Concord Public Library. There it will unveil its proposal to designate
roadless areas "heritage forests," making them part of the 60 million acres of
such forests that it wants protected.
John Demos, the campaign's
northeast representative, said its proposal differs from the other in that it
would protect tracts down to 1,000 acres; the other would protect tracts down to
5,000 acres. As a result, the campaign's proposal "would definitely result in
more land protected than 113,000 acres," he said.
But Eric Kingsley,
executive director of the New Hampshire Timberland Owners Association, said "we
think taking that much land out of the timber base is unacceptable. As it is,
more than half of the White Mountain National Forest is off-limits to timber
harvesting, and what is harvested is spread out through the remaining lands. We
will certainly work against adding large blocks of roadless areas in the forest
plan revision."
And at least one conservation group also has
reservations. The Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests says that,
while it has supported protection for roadless areas in the past, the proposal
by the Wilderness Society, Conservation Law Foundation, and Appalachian Mountain
Club may go too far. The society said the proposal also wrongly presumes that
timbering is antithetical to the kinds of wilderness values - wildlife habitat,
human solitude - in roadless areas.
Timbering is currently allowed on 45
percent of the land in the Whites. Pull out the 113,000 acres, and timbering
will be allowed on only 30 percent of the forest. At 45 percent of the land,
timbering in the Whites represents 4 percent of the timbering done in New
Hampshire. At 30 percent of the land, it would drop to 2.7 percent.
"And it's not like these lands benefit just timbering," said
Charles Niebling, the society's policy director. "They get a lot of recreational
use, a lot of hiking, fishing, snowmobiling."
And while the increasingly
ecological direction of the Forest Service nationally makes clear that "the
reality is that road building is coming to an end on the national forests,"
Niebling said private land acquisitions are occurring all across New England in
which roadless areas are being protected on parts of the acquisitions. "So our
public lands are not the only places to expand roadless areas."
The
Forest Service "is looking for this kind of input" in devising its new plan for
the Whites, said forest planner Bryan Armel. "We value it." As for whether and
to what extent roadless areas in the Whites should be protected, he said, "we
haven't taken a position on that yet." There are 538 miles of existing roads in
the forest.
The public meeting on the plan in Andover this Wednesday
will be at the Ramada Inn Rolling Green off Interstate 93 at Exit 43. An Oct. 21
meeting in Conway will be at the Sheraton Four Points Hotel on Route 16. An Oct.
21 meeting in Bethel will be at the Evans Notch Ranger District office on Route
2. And an Oct. 22 meeting in Gorham will be in the Town Hall. All of the
meetings will be from 7 to 9 pm.
The debate comes as the Forest Service
nationally released new draft regulations 10 days ago for planning timber,
recreation, preservation, and other activities on all 191 million acres of
national forest across the country. The regulations emphasize sustaining the
health of ecosystems, drawing upon scientific research, and collaborating with
the public, in devising new management plans.
Armel said the public can
comment on the new regulations through Jan. 4. The agency expects to finalize
them by next April. He added that a public meeting on the regulations will be
held on Oct. 26 in Hanover. But he said the new regulations should not
significantly affect the development of the new plan in the Whites, because that
plan has already incorporated the new emphases. "It won't be a totally new
direction for us," he said. The regulations are on the agency's Web site at
www.usda.gov.
And the debate comes as the Forest Service nationally is
completing a new policy for maintaining, developing and decommissioning roads in
the national forests, amid an 18-month moratorium on new road construction
imposed by agency chief Mike Dombeck last year. The agency is currently not
building any new roads in the Whites, he said.
Wormser said the proposal
to protect the 113,000 acres, detailed in a Sept. 9 report by the Wilderness
Society, Conservation Law Foundation and Appalachian Mountain Club, targets
tracts abutting lands already protected from timbering and roads. Were the
113,000 acres protected, a total then of about 500,000 acres in the Whites would
be used only for wilderness preservation, scenic and natural areas, and
recreation.
"We're talking about picking up little fragments of land
here and there and protecting them, not about a radical shift in how the forest
is managed," Wormser said.
Unfragmented land is crucial for wildlife in
providing them with large, undisturbed habitats, Wormser said. But by protecting
the 113,000 acres, the Forest Service and timber industry would also benefit by
focusing its timbering on existing roads, making it less costly, she said. The
Whites, like national forests across the country, loses money on timber sales.
And she said conservationists might support remaining timber sales in the
forests, if the roadless areas are protected.
So in calling for less
road construction and more land preservation, the proposal "is not a zero-sum
game," Wormser said.
LOAD-DATE: October 13, 1999
