Clinton Urged to Ban Some Logging
12/10/97
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Headline: Clinton Urged to Ban Some Logging
Source: The Associated Press
Date: 12/10/97
Author: Scott Sonner
Copyright: The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - Environmentalists urged President Clinton on Wednesday to
bar logging and road building on all pristine tracts larger than 1,000 acres
in national forests.
Despite the administration's earlier pledges to avoid logging in roadless
areas, at least 50 logging projects are in the works in untouched stands of
national forests with no roads, the Western Ancient Forest Campaign said in a
new report.
Ten proposed timber sales are in Oregon, seven in Colorado and five in Idaho.
Others are at various stages in Alaska, Arizona, California, Georgia, Montana,
Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont and Washington state.
The environmentalists called on Clinton to declare a moratorium on such
logging at least until the Forest Service can complete an inventory and adopt
a plan for managing them.
``There are few places that have not been paved over or bulldozed for roads.
We are losing these places even before we can inventory them,'' Dominick
DellaSala, the World Wildlife Fund's director of U.S. forest conservation
programs, told a news conference.
Clinton said last month he was anxious to establish a new policy on logging
roads and roadless areas: ``These last remaining wild areas are precious to
millions of Americans and key to protecting clean water and abundant wildlife
habitat and providing recreation opportunities.''
The national forests have 378,000 miles of logging roads - eight times more
than the U.S. interstate system.
The Forest Service in the 1970s began identifying roadless areas larger than
5,000 acres. A small portion have been protected but the vast majority remain
unprotected, said Steve Holmer of the Western Ancient Forest Campaign.
Roadless areas are critical for grizzly bears, lynx, salmon, trout and other
species that require large tracts of undisturbed habitat, the activists said.
Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck had no immediate comment Wednesday.
But he told The Associated Press earlier that the agency will propose a new
policy before spring for roadless areas as well as construction and
maintenance of existing logging roads.
The Forest Service estimated in 1979 that it had about 80 million acres in
roadless conditions. Environmentalists believe at least 1 million of those
acres are being lost each year.
An Agriculture Department spokesman said at least two of the timber sales on
the list of 50 have been put on hold and are being canceled - the Slide Hollow
timber sale on the Cherokee National Forest in Tennessee and the Long Draw
timber sale on the Okanogan National Forest in Washington state.
Copyright 1997: The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news
report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed
without prior written authority of The Associated Press.