Help Protect Our Nation's Roadless Areas
12/29/97
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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Headline: Help Protect Our Nation's Roadless Areas
Source: FSEEE
PO Box 11615
Eugene OR 97440
E-mail: listmom@afseee.org
phone: 541/484-2692
FAX: 541/484-3004
Date: 12/29/97
From: FSEEE E-Activist [SMTP:listmom@afseee.org]
Sent: Monday, December 29, 1997 5:20 AM
To: listmom@afseee.org
Subject: FSEEE E-Activist vol. no. 17
THE FSEEE E-ACTIVIST
Volume 2, No. 17
News Journal for FSEEE Members Covering National Forest Issues
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START THE NEW YEAR RIGHT - PROTECT OUR NATION'S ROADLESS AREAS
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December 29, 1997
INTRODUCTION
The Clinton administration is considering an administrative order that
would end logging in national forest roadless areas. Inside sources
tell us that the Forest Service may issue a new roadless area policy early in
1998.
However, the Clinton administration is getting heavy pressure from the
timber industry (and from elected officials beholden to timber
interests) to seriously weaken the expected new policy. As a result, the
administration may exempt America's premier national forest, the
17-million-acre Tongass National Forest in Alaska, from any new policy
protecting roadless areas. The administration may also exempt remaining
unroaded areas in the Pacific Northwest, particularly the forests west
of the Cascade crest.
The Clinton administration needs to hear from each and every one of us
who care deeply about protecting the remaining unroaded rain forests and
towering old-growth forests of Alaska and the Pacific Northwest.
BACKGROUND
One of the major legislative battles of 1997 centered on public
subsidies to timber companies for the construction of logging roads in national
forests. The long-standing policy of the federal government has been
that this is an appropriate subsidy. For years, purchasers of national
forest timber have cashed in so-called "purchaser road credits" directly
toward the price of publicly-owned timber.
This system has been justified year after year in Congress with the
questionable logic that the American people consider the vast network
of logging roads on national forest lands to be a public asset.
This year, concerned citizens across the country almost succeeded in
convincing a deeply divided Congress to put a stop to the road building
subsidy. But in the end, both houses of Congress voted - by a razor
thin margin - to keep the subsidy.
When President Clinton reluctantly signed into law the bill authorizing
the road building subsidy for another year, he promised strong
administrative action to negate much of the subsidy's effect.
On November 14, Clinton told the American public that the Forest
Service would develop "a scientifically based policy" for managing roadless
areas in our national forests. He said, "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.
These unspoiled places must be managed through science, not politics."
Clinton entrusted Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman and Forest
Service Chief Mike Dombeck with the development of this science-based policy.
Word from the administration is that the new roadless area policy may be
approved as soon as January 1998.
On December 12, conservation biologists Reed Noss, Michael Soule and
167 other leading scientists nationwide, called on the president to protect
all remaining roadless areas 1,000 acres or larger in size. They cited
numerous scientific studies describing "the extensive environmental
damage caused by roads, road construction, and other development." These
eminent scientists stated, "Protection of roadless areas alone will not secure
the conservation of biodiversity on the nation's federal lands, but we
believe it would be a major step forward."
Despite the growing consensus in the scientific community about the
value of protecting remaining roadless areas, the Forest Service is
considering a new roadless area protection policy that would exempt Alaska's
Tongass National Forest and the westside national forests of northern
California, Oregon, and Washington (managed under the President's Northwest
Forest Plan). There is no scientific or biological justification for these
exemptions.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
Send New Year's greeting cards to the President, to Secretary of
Agriculture Dan Glickman, and to Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck. Ask
them to start the New Year off right by protecting all remaining
roadless areas in the nation's 156 national forests. Please make clear that
logging in ALL roadless areas 1,000 acres or larger in size must end, with no
exemptions for the Tongass National Forest or the forests managed under
the President's Northwest Forest Plan.
Here's where to send your New Year's cards and letters:
The Honorable Bill Clinton
President of the United States
The White House
Washington DC 20500
ph: 202/456-1111
FAX: 202/456-2461
email: President@whitehouse.gov
The Honorable Dan Glickman
Secretary of Agriculture
14th Street and Independence Avenue SW
Washington DC 20250
ph: 202/720-3631
email: agsec@usda.gov
Chief Michael Dombeck
U.S. Forest Service
PO Box 96090
Washington DC 20090-6090
ph: 202/205-1661
FAX: 202/205-1765
email: /s=m.dombeck/ou1=w01c@mhs-fswa.attmail.com
While we have provided the email addresses for these key people, FSEEE
urges you to mail a personal letter or card if possible. Personal
letters that arrive in the mail have been shown to have a much greater impact
on policy-makers than electronic communications.
Please send copies of your cards and letters to:
FSEEE
PO Box 11615
Eugene OR 97440
E-mail: listmom@afseee.org
phone: 541/484-2692
FAX: 541/484-3004
Remember to share this action alert with your friends and colleagues.
Thanks for your help. Have a happy new year!