| News Release-Regional Forester Blasts Roadless Directive
BLUE RIBBON COALITION, INC. NEWS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
POCATELLO, ID -- Just as several Senate and House subcommittees hold hearings critical of President Clinton’s roadless directive, a retired regional forester criticizes the anti-access tenets of the proposal. David Jolly retired in 1995 as the regional forester in Region 1 of the U.S. Forest Service. He sent a February 10 letter to the Chief of the Forest Service, Mike Dombeck. Jolly said he has watched and listened in dismay at some of the things Dombeck and his top people were doing about National Forest management. History has shown that agency stewardship has been superb by any measure. Jolly said, “I find your proposal to restrict access to the remaining inventoried roadless areas disturbing and unnecessary. My reading of your notice of intent to file an environmental impact statement so biased that it appears your decision has already been made.” “Thousands of Forest Service people spent their careers dedicated to protecting the National Forests in the broadest meaning of that word. At the same time they carried out the will of the people, that the lands provide benefits as expressed by Congress,” Jolly continued. “Now it appears you propose to restrict those benefits at a time of increasing need with no real basis for doing it. Your proposal is a signal that you have no confidence that the public in the future will do the right things with their National Forests. This proposal would put a large part of these lands substantially beyond reach of an aging population,” Jolly concluded. According to Don Amador, the western regional representative for the Blue Ribbon Coalition, “Jolly’s decision to speak up against the anti-access Clinton/Gore agenda illustrates the high level of frustration that exists in a large number of career agency professionals.” “In the face of mounting opposition to the roadless directive, I wonder how long the administration will continue to try and foist this land lock-up proposal on the American public. Recent MSNBC on-line polls show that an overwhelming majority feel Clinton’s anti-recreation agenda is going to far,” Amador concludes. Other recreation groups are also expressing their concerns. Carla Boucher, the attorney for United Four Wheel Drive Associations, states, “Frustration regarding the President’s announcement to ‘protect’ roadless areas and the Forest Service issuing the roadless notice of intent has been growing. A very large cross-section of groups have voiced their displeasure with the unfairness of this process from state governments, to motorized recreationists, to conservation groups concerned with the devastating effect of this policy on forest health.” “This policy clearly has nothing to do with concerns for forest health and has everything to do with politics,” Boucher concludes. Adena Cook, the Coalition public lands director, says, “Mr. Jolly’s letter, coming from a career Forest Service officer, demonstrates how wrong-headed the roadless initiative is. He makes the crucial point that the agency has had processes in place that can accommodate every level of protection, appropriately devised and tailored at the local level.” Cook concludes, “There can be no other purpose to this initiative than the totalitarian lock-up of our public lands.” |