Copyright 2000 Times Mirror Company
Los Angeles
Times
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May 31, 2000, Wednesday, Home Edition
SECTION: Part A; Part 1; Page 5; National Desk
LENGTH: 794 words
HEADLINE:
GORE VOWS TO GO EXTRA MILE ON ROAD BAN;
POLITICS: GOING BEYOND CLINTON
PROPOSAL TO PROTECT NATIONAL FORESTS, VICE PRESIDENT WOULD ALSO CURB LOGGING AND
FURTHER PROTECT ALASKA'S TONGASS.
BYLINE: MICHAEL
FINNEGAN, TIMES STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:
MILWAUKEE
BODY:
In a move to boost his image as a
champion of environmental protection, Al Gore on Tuesday promised a broad
expansion of the Clinton administration's plan to curb road construction and
logging in national forests.
The vice president also softened his
attacks on his rival for the presidency, Texas Gov. George W. Bush. After weeks
of relentless assaults on Bush, Gore is focusing instead on his personal
biography and his positions on such key issues as the environment.
"If I
am entrusted with the presidency, it will be a national priority to preserve
these roadless areas as they are--no ifs, ands or buts about
it," Gore told a group of environmental advocates at a campaign stop on Lake
Michigan. President Clinton has made preservation of the nation's wilderness a
priority as he seeks to define his legacy. He has proposed banning road
construction in about one-quarter of the national forests, the 43 million acres
where no roads have been built.
But environmentalists have criticized
the plan because it would not prohibit logging. They've also complained that it
would not apply to the largest national forest, the Tongass in Alaska.
Gore, however, proposed a ban on logging in the forests covered by
Clinton's plan, along with full protection of the Tongass from both
road-building and logging.
"Our Forest Service must seek long-term
preservation, not commercial development," Gore said. "And if you elect me
president and stick with me, it always will. I guarantee it."
Gore's
announcement is sure to displease the timber industry, which has already
characterized Clinton's proposals as too restrictive.
Gore's pledge to
expand forest protection came after the League of Conservation Voters, one of
the nation's biggest environmental groups, endorsed him for president at a war
memorial here.
Deb Callahan, the league's president, called Gore's
promise to protect the Tongass "music to our ears."
"It's one of the
great wild areas of this continent, and it's been a big battle to protect it,"
she said.
More than 4,000 miles of roads already wind through the
Tongass, the nation's only temperate rain forest. Under a program promoted by
Alaska's congressional delegation, U.S. taxpayers subsidize logging in the
forest. Over the next four years, 400 miles of federal logging roads are
scheduled to be built through the Tongass.
After praising Gore's efforts
to fight pollution, Callahan unleashed a blistering attack on the environmental
record of Bush.
"Under a Bush administration, we could have oil and
mining tycoons running the Department of Interior, and we could see chemical
company executives running the Environmental Protection Agency ," said Callahan,
who worked on Gore's 1988 presidential campaign.
Bush spokesman Dan
Bartlett said Gore was "relying on his old tactics of a negative campaign. This
time, he's hiding behind surrogates that are former Gore staffers."
In
recent weeks, Gore has slammed Bush's record on the environment. But in an
interview in his limousine on the way to the Milwaukee airport, he declined to
discuss Bush's record, referring instead to Callahan's remarks.
Instead,
he turned to his own record, saying he wants the American people to get to know
him better.
"Even people who know me as vice president don't really know
who I am, what I'm proposing, what I'm about, what my positions and experiences
are," Gore said in the interview. "That's true of most all candidates who run
for president--nothing unusual about me."
In his speech, Gore recalled
that his mother delivered "shocking news" about pollution to him and his sister
after reading Rachel Carson's landmark "Silent Spring," which exposed the
dangers of pesticides.
He also said his father taught him about soil
erosion on the family's farm in Carthage, Tenn.
Gore's campaign stop in
Milwaukee came as the Sierra Club is running television commercials attacking
Bush's environmental record in Wisconsin and three other swing states in the
presidential campaign, Michigan, Ohio and Missouri.
Gore has had to walk
a fine line on the environment, trying to appeal to a traditional Democratic
constituency on the issue while trying to avoid being painted as anti-business.
In the Democratic primaries, the Friends of the Earth political
committee embarrassed the vice president by endorsing his Democratic rival, Bill
Bradley. The group faulted Gore for doing too little to protect the ozone layer
of the atmosphere, saying he had done "poorly on his signature issue."
The League of Conservation Voters describes itself as the political arm
of the environmental movement. It has 60,000 members but claims to be the voice
for 9 million members of conservation and environmental groups nationwide.
LOAD-DATE: May 31, 2000 
