Groups Urge Broad Forest Protection
12/28/97
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Headline: Groups Urge Broad Forest Protection
Source: The Associated Press
Date: 12/28/97
Author: Deborah Baker
SANTA FE - Some grassroots environmental groups say the Clinton
administration is playing politics with the issue of protecting roadless
lands in national forests.
Twenty groups, more than half from the West, sent a letter to
President Clinton this week urging him to broaden protection for forests
beyond "a new remaining roadless areas."
"These are people saying we need fundamental reforms," said Sam
Hitt, president of Forest Guardians, who wrote the letter. "These political
solutions that nibble around the edges are not working."
President Clinton last month said he wants a new management policy
for roadless areas in national forests.
Hitt said that amounted to "throwing bones to some of the big
national environmental groups" that are cozy with administration and the
Democratic Party.
Some smaller, grassroots groups maintain there's no need to debate
the future of roadless areas; they simply ought to be fully protected.
And they fear that focusing the debate on roadless areas would
result in opening other wild lands to development.
The vast majority of ecosystems in trouble are outside roadless
areas and would not be affected by a new policy, the letter said.
The real need "is to protect America's rich and varied biological
diversity, not simply the few remaining roadless areas that have been
traditionally valued for their scenic beauty," the letter said.
Most roadless acres are in the northern Rockies; Idaho with 9
million acres, has the most of any state in the lower 48 states, Hitt said.
And while some roadless areas - such as the Gila Wilderness in
southwestern New Mexico - are protected by designation as wilderness areas,
the vast majority remain unprotected.
Hitt said the local and regional groups that sent the letter - from
Oregon, Washington, California, Montana, New Mexico and other states - are
part of a fast-growing "zero cut" coalition that opposes logging in
national forests.
They support a bill in Congress - endorsed by 68 environmental
groups - to halt commercial logging on national forests that is sponsored
by Rep. James Leach, R-Iowa, chairman of the House Banking Committee, and
Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D. Ga.
Tim Hermach, founder and director the Native Forest Council in
Eugene, Ore., which supports the bill, says industry has defined the debate
thus far over logging in national forests.
Disputes over where, or how much, logging should occur "misses the
entire question of whether cutting is good for the American public, or
costly and perhaps irretrievably harmful," he said.
For the first time, the Forest Service admitted recently that its
commercial logging operations lost money last year - $15 million, not
counting the $240 million that went to counties where federal forests are.
Counties get 25 percent of the money private industry pays for
government-owned timber.
The agency has said it will propose a new policy before spring for
roadless areas as well as for construction and maintenance of existing
logging roads.
There are 380,000 miles of Forest Service logging roads - eight
times the size of the U.S. interstate system.