Timber companies likely to fight roadless plan in court
Copyright 2000 Associated Press
December 26, 2000
COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho - On Idaho's Panhandle National Forest, an area known for its extensive web of logging roads, about 800,000 untrammeled acres still could be set aside under the Clinton administration's roadless initiative.
But area timber companies are not giving up, and will likely turn to the courts for relief.
The president's proposal would ban road-building on about 8 million acres in Idaho, 58.5 million nationwide.
That is bad news for timber companies who have been beset by low lumber prices and environmental lawsuits blocking timber sales.
"To allow a policy like this to go unchallenged would be a travesty," said Shawn Keough, executive director of Associated Logging Contractors.
It is not enough to leave the forests alone, Keough said. The fires that ravaged the West this summer are evidence forests are in disrepair.
Panhandle Forest Supervisor Dave Wright said the Forest Service shares the blame for the fire problem. It employed an aggressive firefighting policy that has allowed fuels to build up over the past century.
"But that is no excuse for letting them go up in a major conflagration like we had last summer. You are never going to stop fires, but we sure as hell can do more to keep some of the forest from going up in smoke," he said.
Environmentalists praise the roadless plan as a change in public attitude about forests once managed largely for board feet.
"There has been a lack of balance in our opinion in terms of the management of public lands," said Larry McLaud, a Moscow-based spokesman for the Idaho Conservation League.
Wright sat through most of the Panhandle public hearings and said he was struck by how few people were willing to seek out middle ground.
"I think what is most unfortunate about how this went down is it ended up being an all-or-nothing decision, so we get this whole polarization in terms of the public thought and opinion that you either protect all of it or you don't protect any of it," he said.
But the timber industry, the Forest Service and environmentalists agree the new roadless rule will be challenged.
"No question about it," McLaud said. "There will be legal challenges, and it is really hard to say how that will play out given the uncertainty of what those challenges will be and who will hear the challenges."