 Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck announced a proposal that would prohibit roadbuilding on 43 million acres of national forest system lands. |
USDA Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck recently outlined his agency's proposal to end road construction in nearly one quarter of the 192 million-acre national forest system. The proposal addresses more than 54 million acres of inventoried roadless areas and additional unroaded areas on national forests and grasslands.
After six months of study mandated by President Clinton in October 1999, the Forest Service's draft environmental impact statement recommends how roadless areas in the national forests United States should be managed in the future. The proposed rule would generally prohibit new road construction or reconstruction in the unroaded portions of inventoried roadless areas in 43 million acres of national forest system lands.
"Rapid development and shrinking open space make our remaining roadless areas increasingly valuable to many people," said Dombeck. "New roads pose the most immediate threat to the many social and ecological values of these areas."
President Bill Clinton called the roadless area plan "an important step toward my goal of lasting protection for these priceless lands."
"These pristine areas are some of the last wild places in America, and I am firmly committed to preserving them for future generations. I commend the Forest Service for its extraordinary effort in developing this proposal and providing the American people with every opportunity to help shape it," Clinton said.
The preferred alternative identified in the proposal will continue to allow roadbuilding, timber harvesting, mining, oil and gas development, grazing, and off-road vehicle use in national forest roadless areas under 5,000 acres. It would leave it up to local land managers to decide whether roads should be banned in smaller forest parcels of 5,000 acres or less.
The proposal does not include any immediate plan for the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, the nation's largest national forest. The favored alternative delays any management plan for the Tongass until 2004, allowing timber harvesting and road building to continue in the area until that time. According to the Forest Service, if it is determined that inventoried roadless areas on the Tongass merit protection by applying the road building prohibition, a forest plan amendment or revision will be initiated.
The environmental community is largely critical of the proposal because it excludes the Tongass National Forest and does not apply to unroaded areas of less than 5,000 acres. The forest products industry, labor unions, and forestry organizations say the proposal will seriously jeopardize forest health.
"The roadless area environmental impact statement sounds the death knell of the health of our national forests and signals an attack on rural America," says W. Henson Moore, president and CEO of the American Forest and Paper Association. "It's ironic that an age defined by science should witness a government's willingness to ignore it."
According to AF&PA, the Forest Service has already identified 65 million acres of national forestlands at catastrophic risk of wildfire, insect infestation, and diseases. The association contends that rather than initiating scientific approaches to managing at-risk forestlands, the Forest Service's new proposal will limit land managers' access and ability to reduce the risk for those 65 million acres.
Labor unions and others were concerned about how the proposal would affect local communities.
"Ultimately, this proposal will impact thousands of rural communities and working families across America and deny access to our national forests," said Mike Draper, regional vice-president of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America.
The plan reduces by at least 700 million board feet the amount of timber harvested from the areas, the US Agriculture Department said. Jim Lyons, USDA undersecretary for natural resources and the environment, said the proposal would also cut the amount of timber produced from the forests included in the plan.
"We estimated that about 1.1 billion board feet were scheduled for harvest over the next five years, but with a roadbuilding ban on inventoried roadless areas, that would affect all of that volume except for about 300 million board feet," Lyons said.
William Meadows, president of The Wilderness Society, is also disappointed with the Forest Service's draft proposal, but for different reasons.
"The final policy needs to remove key deficiencies that exist in the current draft," says Meadows. "It must provide for the prohibition of all logging in the national forest roadless areas and encompass Alaska's Tongass National Forest, the nation's largest temperate rainforest, in its protection."
The plan requires no congressional action, relying on regulations to be issued by the Forest Service after an environmental review and public comment period. The Forest Service has scheduled more than 300 meetings throughout the country. Every national forest and grassland will host two types of meetings. Information meetings are scheduled to start in late May and are designed for people to review the proposal and ask questions.
Public comment forums in late June will provide an opportunity for people to verbally express their opinions for the record. The 60-day comment period will conclude July 17. A final rule is expected by the end of the year.
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