Logging Moratorium Urged for Forest Lands
12/13/97
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Headline: Logging Moratorium Urged for Forest Lands
Source: Richmond Times
Date: 12/13/97
Author: Rex Bowman, Times-Dispatch Staff Writer
Copyright 1997: Richmond Newspapers Inc.
Logging moratorium urged for forest lands
750,000 acres of southern Appalachians involved
ROANOKE - A group of House of Representatives members
from the South has joined senators from the region in
calling for a moratorium on logging in 750,000 acres of
national forest lands in the southern Appalachian
Mountains.
The representatives, including Democrat James P. Moran
of Northern Virginia, contend that building roads in
the areas to further logging operations would prevent
Congress from designating them as "wilderness," a
designation that affords maximum environmental
protection.
The representatives have asked Secretary of Agriculture
Dan Glickman, who oversees the U.S. Forest Service, to
impose the moratorium. Such an action would temporarily
halt road-building and logging in all "roadless areas"
in the eight national forests in the southern
Appalachians. Roughly 750,000 of the 4.6 million acres
in the forests are designated roadless.
"These areas are especially important for their scenic
value," Moran said. "The forest service must ensure
that destructive activities like road-building and
logging are prohibited in these areas so that many more
generations have the opportunity to experience the
beauty of these lands."
A forest service official in Roanoke, however, said
Wednesday that a moratorium is unnecessary. Before the
forest service sells logging rights to any timber
company, the sale is subject to public scrutiny and
comment, said Ken Landgraf, planning staff officer for
the George Washington and Jefferson national forests.
"People who have specific concerns about specific sites
already have the opportunity to bring them up," he
said. "A moratorium would just throw all the sites
together, but there could be different circumstances
for each site."
Also, Landgraf said, roadless areas don't lose the
"roadless" designation as long as roads built in them
are not too long.
"A lot of people think that roadless areas are
thousands of acres without a single road, but they're
not," Landgraf said. "If that were the case, I could
see their point."
The representatives asking for the moratorium are all
Democrats. They are: Moran, Bob Clement of Tennessee,
Eva Clayton of North Carolina, and John Lewis and
Cynthia McKinney of Georgia. Last month a bipartisan
group of senators endorsed the idea of a moratorium.
They are: Republican John Warner and Democrat Charles
S. Robb of Virginia, Republican Strom Thurmond and
Democrat Ernest Hollings of South Carolina and Democrat
Max Cleland of Georgia.
The members of Congress, as well as a consortium of
environmental groups, want the moratorium to last until
the forest service completes its review of how it
manages the southern Appalachian national forests.
Forest service officials in Virginia, Alabama, Georgia,
South Carolina and Tennessee began separate reviews of
their management plans several years ago but
temporarily halted work when the regional office in
Atlanta decided to consider all of the states under one
giant review. The preliminary results of that review,
which could include recommendations on which lands
should be designated wilderness, aren't due until
December 1999.
In the meantime, environmentalists fear, lands that
should be designated wilderness could be criss-crossed
with roads and logging operations.
"We are seeing recreation in the entire southern
Appalachian area skyrocketing, but we're seeing the
resources to provide for that recreation dwindle," said
Blaine Phillips, staff attorney for the Southern
Environmental Law Center in Charlottesville. "If
roadless areas are no longer roadless, they can't
qualify for the wilderness protection designation."
To qualify for roadless designation, an area must have
no more than a half-mile of road per 1,000 acres. So, a
5,000-acre tract with a half-mile of road could add
another two miles of road to accommodate logging
companies and still be called roadless, Landgraf said.
If current forest service plans allow logging in some
of the roadless areas, he said, the forest service will
continue to follow those plans. "We're a little bit
concerned about the precedent a moratorium would set,"
Landgraf said, "which would be allowing you to set
aside a part of the management plan."