From today's New York Times:
By DOUGLAS JEHL
ASHINGTON, May 8 -- A draft proposal from the
Clinton administration to
safeguard national forests from development
would bar road building across
nearly one-quarter of those lands but would
not immediately rule out future
logging or off-road vehicle activity.
The proposal, which was outlined today by Forest
Service officials, is intended to flesh out a
pledge that President Clinton has portrayed as a
central part of his legacy. But some
environmentalists said it fell short of their hopes and
warned that it would leave some land
open to exploitation.
The plan was described by Forest Service officials in
advance of an announcement on
Tuesday. It will be reviewed by the administration
after a comment period that is to include
300 public meetings in the next two months, and
advocates on both sides of the issue said
they held out hope that it would be revised.
The agriculture secretary, Dan Glickman, who oversees
the Forest Service, called the draft
plan an important step toward preserving "among the
last and best pristine lands in America."
Mr. Glickman said the draft was "a balanced proposal."
But he added, "It's clear to us that
any good proposal can be improved upon."
The idea of putting so much forest land off limits to
roads has been strongly opposed by
powerful lawmakers from some Western states, who
contend that it would deal a heavy blow
to the timber industry.
But the administration's plan would bypass those
critics by using administrative rule changes
that do not require Congressional approval.
Mr. Clinton first outlined the initiative in a speech
last fall, and it is the subject of intense
debate on Capitol Hill, where Senator Larry E. Craig,
Republican of Idaho, dismissed it today
as an unfair "end run."
The Forest Service proposal, in the form of a draft
environmental impact statement, provides
the first details on the administration's plan. A plan
that the agency named among several
alternatives as its favored approach would immediately
bar road building in virtually all of the
large, unprotected roadless areas in the forest system,
spanning a total of 43 million acres in
39 states.
The 155 national forests and grasslands that would be
affected include Lewis and Clark
National Forest in Montana, Tahoe National Forest in
California, Olympic National Forest in
Washington and White Mountain National Forest in New Hampshire.
But the one forest explicitly exempted from the
proposal is the Tongass National Forest in
Alaska, the nation's largest, where conservation
efforts have been opposed by Alaska's
Congressional delegation.
Under the proposal, no decision about whether to set
aside roadless areas in the Tongass
would be made until at least 2004.
In laying out the administration's approach last
October, near one such forest area in Reddish
Knob, Va., Mr. Clinton vowed "to protect all this
before it's too late."
But in interviews today, environmentalists criticized
the administration's approach. Ken Rait,
director of the Heritage Forests Campaign, a Portland,
Ore., organization that works for forest
protection, said he had hoped the administration would
draft a tougher policy that "completely
safeguards these forests."
"We are hopeful that the final policy will measure up
to the vision that President Clinton laid
out last October," Mr. Rait said.
About 34 million acres, or 18 percent, of national
forest land has been set aside by Congress
as wilderness areas, which are off limits to
development and on which roads, logging and
off-road vehicles are banned. About 50 percent of
national forest land is open to logging or
was long ago crisscrossed with roads.
The administration's plan would cover most of the rest,
which is listed by the Forest Service
as roadless areas but where road construction has never
been totally ruled out. Congressional
approval would have been required to formally designate
any of the land as wilderness, and
the opposition from the Western lawmakers has prompted
the administration's effort to act on
its own.
The announcement of the plan comes less than two weeks
after the National Park Service
imposed a ban on recreational use of snowmobiles at
nearly all national parks, monuments
and recreational areas.
The officials who outlined the draft proposal spoke on
the condition of anonymity, saying
they did not want to upstage Tuesday's announcements in
Washington and Phoenix by Mr.
Glickman and Mike Dombeck, the Forest Service chief.
The Forest Service weighed several alternatives to
protect the roadless areas, administration
officials said. The officials said at least one of
those plans would have gone further by ruling
out logging. The recommended ban on road building alone
was based on the belief that "road
construction represents the single greatest threat to
the social and ecological values of
roadless areas," a Forest Service official said.
The official said the road ban would have a broad
effect because it would make logging and
other activities extremely difficult. One official
estimated that the approach would reduce
future logging by 70 percent in what are now roadless areas.
But environmentalists said that unless logging and
off-road vehicle traffic were explicitly
prohibited in the final plan, helicopter logging and
other activities could spoil land.
A top timber industry official said today that the
industry expected some form of the broader
protection to be put in place.
"We're not resigned to it getting through without a
fight, but I think the odds are that it will
get through," said the official, W. Henson Moore,
president of the American Forest & Paper
Association and a former congressman from Louisiana.
--
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Rex L. Bavousett
Photographer
University of Iowa
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