Copyright 1999 Gannett Company, Inc.
USA TODAY
October 13, 1999, Wednesday, FINAL EDITION
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 5A
LENGTH: 443 words
HEADLINE:
Clinton proposal would preserve stretches of forest
BYLINE: Traci Watson
BODY:
Huge stretches of pristine forest that serve as playgrounds for
humans
and as homes for native species would be protected from
development by a
measure President Clinton plans to announce today.
Environmentalists
say Clinton hopes to preserve any 5,000-acre
parcels of woods that roads
have not already cut through. Roads,
scientists say, degrade wildlife
habitats and create aesthetic
changes that environmentalists find
unappealing. The proposal
would ensure that roughly 40 million acres of the
USA's national
forests -- two-thirds of the remaining roadless
areas -- would
be shielded from road building, at the very least,
and perhaps
from logging and mining.
Protective measures would be
extended to landscapes ranging from
the hardwood forests of North Carolina
to the conifers living
in the rarefied air high atop the Rocky Mountains in
Colorado.
Environmentalists say Clinton intends to order a study of
his
plan's consequences. The study would be followed by a period of
public comment. Those moves are not likely to silence the proposal's
many critics, who say it would hurt both logging and recreation.
Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, an outspoken critic of curbs on logging,
called the move a land-grab in a news release. Republicans, who
generally oppose such limits on use of federal land, complain
that
Clinton is using regulatory power to sidestep a sure defeat
at the hands of
a Republican-controlled Congress.
Those who want to see the national
forests from the seat of a
gas-powered vehicle also are likely to be
unhappy. Four-wheel-drive
trucks, all-terrain vehicles and off-road
motorcycles are popular
ways to tour the forest, and enthusiasts fear they
would be shut
out.
Those opposing the Clinton proposing argue
that the so-called
roadless areas aren't really roadless at all and that the
proposal
is just a first step toward declaring those areas off-limits to
many activities, even mountain biking.
The plan gave
environmentalists their happiest day in a long time.
"If done right, this
could be the boldest conservation act of
the century, because of its sheer
magnitude," says Ken Rait,
director of the Heritage Forests Campaign.
The plan holds the biggest economic consequences for Idaho and
Alaska, says Mike Anderson of the Wilderness Society, an enviromentalist
group. Those states have areas rich in commercially valuable timber.
So
do Oregon, California, Colorado and Montana.
Much of the territory
covered by the announcement, Anderson says,
is "rock and ice," which is the
catch phrase for wilderness
so high and so rugged that not much can thrive
there.
GRAPHIC: GRAPHIC, b/w, Gary Visgaitis, USA
TODAY(Map)
LOAD-DATE: October 13, 1999
