Copyright 2000 Journal Sentinel Inc.
Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel
December 10, 2000 Sunday ALL EDITIONS
SECTION: TRAVEL; Pg. 03H
LENGTH: 1308 words
HEADLINE:
Rule for forests goes beyond 'no new roads'
BYLINE: JO
SANDIN of the Journal Sentinel staff
BODY:
Roadless
does not mean you can't get there from here in the nation's forest.
That's what Mike Dombeck, the Wisconsin man who is chief of the U.S.
Forest Service, wants everybody to understand about the new Roadless
Area Conservation Rule.
Hiking, birding, canoeing,
cross-country skiing, snowmobiling and even the use of off-road vehicles will
continue everywhere in the forests they are now permitted after Dec. 18, when a
final pronouncement on the rule is expected.
"This does not block any
existing access," he says. "Not a single mile of trail is being closed." More
than 380,000 miles of road -- enough to circle the planet 16 times -- already
intersect national forests. Paved or gravel roads for passenger cars number
80,000 miles, longer than the Interstate system. And in Wisconsin, 79% of our
matchless Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest is no more than a quarter-mile
away from existing roads.
In fact, Dombeck says, the Forest Service
doesn't have enough money to keep up with necessary repairs on roads they do
have. In fact, it has an $8 billion backlog.
"How can
you justify building more roads," asked Dombeck, "when you can't take care of
the ones you have?"
Yet controversy continues to follow the proposed
rule on every turn along the route to a decision from Interior Secretary Dan
Glickman and, ultimately, from President Clinton.
The plan to keep 58.5
million acres of national forest (69,000 acres in Wisconsin) just as they are --
roadless -- has been characterized in all these ways:
-- A masterstroke
of environmental defense.
-- A firestorm waiting to happen.
-- A
last chance for 400-year-old trees.
-- An unparalleled opportunity for
recreation.
-- Another blow to the logging industry.
--
Permission to clear cut the Tongass National Forest in Alaska (which will be
included in the 58.5 million-acre total but only in 2004).
Logging
interests say it goes too far. Some conservationists still say it doesn't go far
enough.
"Unfortunately," says Nathaniel Lawrence of the Natural
Resources Defense Council, "the timber industry is gearing up right now to clear
cut more Tongass roadless areas, so America's last great rain forest can't wait
four or five more years for protection."
On the other hand, Hugh Iltis,
biology professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin- Madison and longtime
environmental activist, says of the rule, "I think it's the best thing that has
happened in a very long time. If nothing else is ever said about President
Clinton, monuments will be built to him because of the roadless initiative."
Problems foreseen
Bill Banzhaf, executive vice president of the
Society of American Foresters, not surprisingly, sees things differently,
saying, "The banning of commercial timber harvest in roadless areas of national
forests is not good for the forests."
Jeff Edgens, assistant professor
of forestry at the University of Kentucky, insists that roadless areas are
invitations to deadly, costly forest fires.
Some of the criticisms sound
to Dombeck a lot like knee-jerk reactions.
"The reality of it is this is
not a timber issue," he says.
Nor is it a fire issue. "Frankly, it's
mostly humans who cause fires," he says. "Even naturally caused fires are
usually in already roaded areas."
Instead, it is a conservation issue.
Development consumes 7,000 acres of farm, woods and grassland across the
United States each day, Dombeck says, and road building is the single human
activity that dramatically changes the character and dynamic of the land it
crosses.
Quality of life issue
"I grew up 25 miles from a town
of 1,500 people," says Dombeck. "That's what Hayward was then. That's where I
learned to appreciate nature and the out of doors."
Those lessons from
childhood convince him that "we may be in a high-tech world, but the basic
wealth and quality of life still emanates from the land."
Dombeck, who
cherishes the memory of the last smallmouth bass he pulled out of Chequamegon
Bay, thinks there is something definitively American about the preservation of
the nation's wild lands.
Other cultures, he says, have built their
monuments -- Greek temples, Roman roads, Egyptian pyramids, Chinese walls.
In arriving at the proposed rule, he says, forest officials were doing
more than rising to President Clinton's ringing challenge in October 1999 "to
protect these priceless, back-country places." Nor were they just reacting to
the unprecedented 1.6-million-plus letters, cards and e-mails the Forest Service
received from citizens, overwhelmingly in favor of preserving roadless areas.
They looked at the United States and asked themselves where it might be
possible to preserve wild places where the trees were tall and the water clean
and there was room to roam, he says.
"Where do we still have options for
large unfragmented plots?" was the question.
Keeping the wild lands
Public lands, which belong to all the people, was the answer.
"
Private lands are being put off limits to the American public at a rapid rate, "
he says. "It's hard nowadays to find a place where you can hunt, fish, camp or
hike without worrying about no trespassing signs. Also, the very piece of the
landscape that we're losing in our development is the sort of non- regulated
wild land where you can experience solitude, walk for a long ways without
crossing a road."
At present the roadless plan is the preferred
alternative from a number of management strategies evaluated in the Interior
department's final environmental statement.
Dombeck, who spent his
childhood in Sawyer County, took time last month to explain just what the new
policy would and would not mean:
-- At first, it would apply only to
49.2 million acres, about one-fourth of 192 million acres of national forest. In
2004, when the Tongass National Forest is included, the total inventoried
roadless area will be 58.5 million acres, less than one-third of federal forest.
-- In Wisconsin, the rule would apply to 69,000 of the 1.52 million
acres in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest.
-- It will ban most
road construction and maintenance in that acreage. There are exceptions for
catastrophe, environmental cleanup, legal or treaty rights, irreparable resource
damage, hazardous road conditions, or federal highway projects.
-- It
will allow trees to be cut only for personal-use firewood and Christmas tree
cutting, trail construction and maintenance and fire line and boundary clearing
and hazardous tree removal.
-- It will allow some "harvest for
stewardship purposes," including improved habitat for endangered or sensitive
species, reduced risk of uncharacteristic wildfires and restoration of an
ecological structure.
Paul Strong, public information officer for the
Chequamegon- Nicolet, says individual forest plans are to be drawn up in
consultation with members of the public and forest scientists to ensure that the
woods are used in such a way as to remain viable forests.
Sustainability
is the big goal -- ecological, economic and social -- he says.
"And we
won't have the second and third if we don't have the first," says Strong. "We've
learned that we can't dip into the principal of our natural resources if they
are going to sustain our use."
Whether off-road vehicles are welcome in
roadless areas will be a local decision.
"It's a matter of providing an
appropriate mix of uses," he says, "in response to the huge range of competing
values."
So if you have a favorite forest path, but pine whispers, bird
calls and wind song, it's still available to you.
And it's still just as
far as it ever was from the road.
FAST FACTS ON ROADLESS INITIATIVE
Acres affected: 58.5 million
Percent of U.S. landbase: 2%
Percent of Forest Service landbase: 31%
Number of public
meetings: More than 600
Number of responses received: More than 1.6
million
LOAD-DATE: December 12, 2000
