Clinton Pushes to Limit New Roads in U.S. Forests

New road construction would be prohibited on more than one-fifth of national forest lands in California and across the country, while difficult decisions about logging and off-road vehicle use would be left to local forest officials under a Clinton administration proposal released Tuesday.

The roadless initiative for 43 million acres of forest has been viewed as part of the president’s push to secure a legacy as an environmentalist, but many environmental groups immediately attacked the proposal as too weak.

Timber industry officials and off-road vehicle enthusiasts, meanwhile, called the limits on access to public lands unfair.

The administration hopes that the policy will be endorsed after two months of public hearings across the nation. National Forest Service officials predicted the plan would appeal to average Americans, who have expressed an interest in greater preservation of the natural environment.

“I don’t see this as a compromise or a modest proposal,” said Jim Lyons, a Department of Agriculture undersecretary who helped drive the proposal. “I see this as epic in terms of the nation’s conservation history.” Lyons said the acreage protected is three times that set aside by President Theodore Roosevelt in one of his boldest actions.

Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck said it is urgent for the plan to be completed before Clinton leaves office.

“Rapid development and shrinking open space make our remaining roadless areas increasingly valuable to many people,” Dombeck said in a statement from Phoenix. “New roads pose the most immediate threat to the many social and ecological values of these areas.”

Forest Service executives Tuesday released a plan that would prevent new road construction on vast sections of the country’s 192 million acres of national forest. The largest tracts of protected land would be in the West, led by Idaho with 9.2 million acres, Montana with 5.8 million acres, California with 5.34 million acres and Colorado with 5.33 million acres.

The administration exempted from the program the Tongass National Forest along Alaska’s south coast. Dombeck said a decision about what to do with roads in the 8.5-million-acre preserve--the nation’s largest forest--will be made in 2004.

The Forest Service said the plan, released along with a draft environmental impact statement, would preserve the habitats of nearly 200 endangered and threatened plants and animals and other dwindling species.

The plan does not include the outright ban on logging championed by some environmentalists. But it does limit roads that logging companies use to reach forest land. Federal officials estimated that the amount of timber available for harvest in national forests could effectively drop by 4.8% over five years.

Access Sought for Off-Road Vehicles

A ban on off-road vehicles was also eschewed by Forest Service officials who promised that motorcycles, cars and other vehicles would continue to have access to much of the 386,000 miles of authorized forest roads.

But access to an additional 60,000 miles of unauthorized roads remains to be determined. Those paths and trails were carved through the forests by off-road users over many years. Forest Chief Dombeck said it will be up to managers in each forest to decide whether vehicles should continue to be allowed in those areas.

Trying to assuage off-roaders who have vehemently opposed restrictions, Dombeck said the paths will not be restricted without exhaustive public hearings.

The Forest Service chief said the many benefits of reducing the number of roads are buttressed by one practical concern. The Forest Service already is short $8.4 billion needed to fix existing roads. It receives only about 20% of what it needs each year to maintain roadways.

“It makes little sense to build new roads while another road system is crumbling behind us,” Dombeck said.

The effect of the proposal in California’s 19 national forests would vary. Even with the protected acreage, more than half of the state’s 20 million acres of national forest land would remain open to a wide variety of uses, including off-road vehicles.

About 68 miles of new road had been on the drawing board over the next five years for California forests that have historically been roadless. Most of those roads were to serve mines and lumber production and would probably be halted under the plan.

The roadless controls also would probably reduce future access to oil, gas, coal, sand, gravel and geothermal power.

“Compared to some other states, the impact in California will be relatively small, because we had already anticipated a change like this and curtailed construction of roads,” said Matt Mathes, the Forest Service’s spokesman for California.

Nearly 60 hearings will be held in the state on the proposal. Details are available at many public libraries and on the Internet at https://www.roadless.fs.fed.us.

After the two-month comment period, the Forest Service will respond in writing to public criticisms. Dombeck and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman are expected to decide by the fall whether to adopt, modify or reject the plan.

Clinton called for the plan last fall, saying that he wanted to protect vast areas not already designated as national parks or wilderness areas. “These areas represent some of the last, best unprotected wild land anywhere in our nation,” Clinton said at the time.

Environmentalists Seek Restrictions

The roadless proposal has become a crucible for widely divergent views, particularly in the West. At one pole, environmentalists see the possibility to set aside huge tracts of land in hopes that a future Congress might grant even greater protection, perhaps with a wilderness designation. At the other pole, some rural residents and off-road enthusiasts say public lands should remain as open and free as possible.

The American Lands Alliance suggested that the Forest Service plan was a betrayal of Clinton’s plan to protect the nation’s rich biological legacy.

The Sierra Club cited two “gaping holes” in the proposal--the failure to end logging and off-road vehicle use and the exemption of the Tongass forest from the plan.

Dombeck and other officials defended the exclusion of the Alaskan forest, saying it was already highly protected by a land management plan adopted a year ago. Conservation must be balanced with federal legislation that says the massive forest should provide a supply of timber that meets market demand, the officials said.

But Matthew Zencey, manager of the Alaska Rainforest Campaign, called the exclusion of the Tongass “a huge disappointment” that could allow more than 400 miles of roads to be built, with attendant logging, over the next five years.

“It’s the largest and wildest national forest in our country,” Zencey said. “If any forest needs the protection, it’s the Tongass. This is like leaving out Yellowstone from a policy to protect national parks.”

Although a range of environmental groups echoed such views, they also said they are hopeful that the final plan will be more restrictive.

“The administration is going to get roundly criticized for going even this far,” said Jay Watson, western regional director of the Wilderness Society. “It might as well go the full distance and then just weather the political storm.”

Timber Industry Also Involved

At the other end of the spectrum, the administration also will be hearing from industry groups such as the California Forestry Assn.

Chris Nance, a vice president with the trade group, said the government is ignoring its own studies, which show that 65 million acres throughout the West are ripe for catastrophic wildfires or insect infestation.

“None of what is proposed today addresses that risk,” Nance said. “Harvesting timber is part of the forest health solution and it’s a necessary part.”

The Forest Service estimated that 948 jobs might be lost nationally in timber and related industries because of the decreased forest access. The bulk of those jobs would be in Idaho, Montana and Utah, with about 27 job losses in California.

Nance called the estimates for California ludicrously low. He said the president’s designation last month of the much smaller Giant Sequoia National Monument would eventually result in the closure of one lumber mill and the loss of 110 jobs.

Off-road vehicle users were not appeased by promises that existing roads and trails will remain open for their use. They noted that some areas of historic off-roading are not recognized by the Forest Service.

“The local forest officer . . . might be biased against off-road vehicle use and against others who have been there for years,” said Don Amador, western representative of the Blue Ribbon Coalition, a recreation group.

Amador scoffed at the suggestion that polls show most Americans want roadless areas protected.

“It’s a sad day when we base land management decisions on polls,” Amador said. “If you went back several centuries, you would find most people said the Earth was flat.”