-Caveat Lector-
Los Angeles Times
November 14, 2000, Tuesday, Home Edition
CLINTON ASKS FOR 'LANDMARK' CONSERVATION OF FORESTS
BYLINE: KIM MURPHY, TIMES STAFF WRITER
In one of the most sweeping wilderness protection measures of the
last century, the Clinton administration on Monday proposed
setting aside 58 1/2 million acres of roadless national
forest--banning commercial logging and new road-building in much
of the nation's remote back country.
In an expansion of the U.S. Forest Service's original proposal,
the plan calls for imposing new logging restrictions throughout
the national forest system.
"There are certainly landmark events in the history of
conservation--this clearly is one of those," said Deputy
Agriculture Secretary Jim Lyons, who oversees the Forest Service.
About 14.7 million roadless acres of Alaska's Tongass National
Forest are included in the plan, as are more than 4.4 million
acres in California--mostly in the northern Coastal Range and
along the eastern flank of the Sierra Nevada--9.3 million acres
in Idaho and 6.4 million acres in Montana. A final decision on
the proposed policy is due within a month.
The Tongass, America's largest national forest and its last
significant old-growth temperate rain forest, would not be
protected until after 2004, however, in a bid to help
southeastern Alaska's reeling timber industry.
Timber Officials Warn of Fires and Insects
Officials for the timber industry said they also hoped that the
Forest Service's policy would be eased by a possible Republican
administration. Under the current prescription, commercial
logging in the nation's roadless forests would be cut by nearly
85%, to about 32 million board-feet a year.
Industry spokesmen predicted that wilderness areas would fall
victim to unchecked wildfires and insect infestations unless
roads can be built to battle them. They also said the nation
would see its reliance on foreign forests, which has doubled over
the last eight years from 20% to 40% as a source of American wood
products, grow even more.
"They're absolutely condemning the national forests to rot and
burn," said Michael Klein of the American Forest and Paper Assn.
"This year, we had the worst wildfire season in 90 years--more
than 7 million acres burned. That's 47,000 acres a day during
fire season. And I think that's going to look like a picnic
compared to next year, now that they've codified benign neglect."
But Forest Service chief Michael Dombeck said the agency now
would be able to set aside the gridlock over forest policy and
concentrate on fire hazard reduction, especially in areas where
wilderness backs up against communities. And he said spending
money to maintain existing roads will provide better recreational
access to national forests than would building new roads.
Conservationists long have maintained that road-building is the
single most devastating threat to wilderness areas: Roads break
up the large swaths of habitat crucial to the survival of many
wildlife species. They set off patterns of soil erosion that
choke wild trout and salmon streams. And they open pristine wild
lands to the potentially damaging incursion of high-impact
visitors.
Proposal Bans All Commercial Harvests
The Forest Service's original proposal would have allowed some
commercial timber harvesting to continue in the national forests,
as long as no new roads were built to accommodate it. But the
alternative unveiled Monday bans all commercial harvests and
restricts logging to "stewardship" purposes. These stewardship
harvests would be allowed to improve habitat for endangered
species, to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires or to
"restore ecological structure."
That is in keeping with Vice President Al Gore's pledge during
the presidential campaign to allow no commercial logging in
roadless areas.
But environmental groups worry that a Republican administration
could allow widespread timber harvests under the stewardship
exemption. "I can imagine a scenario in which a hostile
administration opens up a loophole large enough to drive a
logging truck through," said Ken Rait, spokesman for the Heritage
Forests Campaign in Oregon.
Conservationists say they will seek to have that exemption
tightened and to have the four-year delay in protecting the
Tongass moved up before the Agriculture Department, overseer of
the Forest Service, issues its final rules.
Industry officials are equally worried that if George W. Bush
wins the presidency, it will prompt the Clinton administration to
tighten the rules even further. Already, conservatives in Western
states are chafing under President Clinton's recent designation
of 11 national monuments totaling more than 4.6 million acres.
"What we see in this final proposal is a virtual wilderness
designation on almost a third of our national forest . . . as
this president scrambles to create a legacy," said Chris West of
the American Forest Resource Council, an Oregon-based consortium
of timber companies west of the Great Lakes.
Southeastern Alaska's majestic stands of old-growth spruce, cedar
and hemlock have yielded up to half of all the timber cut from
roadless areas in the U.S. in recent years.
And the state's Republican congressional delegation has battled
fiercely to maintain a supply of federal timber to be harvested
by the region's struggling industry. Two mills that relied on
Tongass wood recently have closed.
Environmentalists throughout the country have fought to save
what's left of the Tongass, whose 43 million acres already are
laced with more than 4,000 miles of logging roads. An earlier
draft of the roadless area policy would have exempted the Tongass
entirely.
"It's definitely a marked improvement," Matt Zencey of the Alaska
Rainforest Campaign said of the four-year protection delay. "But
there's still no good reason to discriminate against the nation's
largest national forest that most needs protection for its
roadless areas."
Alaska conservationists fear that up to half a billion board-feet
could be cut from the Tongass before 2004 under the current
forest management plan.
But industry officials, who insist a reliable harvest is the only
way to maintain a viable year-round economy in southeastern
Alaska, say they would likely be able to cut only about 320
million board-feet.
Most of the Tongass roadless areas already were set aside under
the forest's own management plan, and the 400,000 acres that were
not "were critical to the timber program that's left," said Jack
Phelps of the Alaska Forest Assn. "For them to come back now and
include those areas . . . that's a big hit for us."
The Forest Service plan calls for a variety of measures to help
the region ease away from timber-dependent jobs.
18 National Forests in California Covered
In California, the 4.4 million acres to be protected cover 18
national forests.
The California areas include the San Joaquin roadless area east
of Mammoth--long eyed for expansion of a major ski area--along
with several roadless regions next to the Trinity Alps and Marble
Mountains wilderness areas in Northern California and two popular
roadless areas, the North Fork Stanislaus and Eagle, near
Yosemite National Park.
"My belief is that our priorities have never been clearer,"
Dombeck said. "I was out for a walk last night, and I was
thinking to myself, what is it, about 240,000 miles to the moon?
We've got 380,000 miles of roads in the national forest system.
If seems like that's almost enough."
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Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF:
*Michael Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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