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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

U.S. Forest Service Shifts from Loggers to Bikers

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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises

http://forests.org/

5/14/98

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by EE

The following article details the significant shift in U.S. National

Forest management, from purely timber production to provision of more

diverse forest benefits. Timber production has dropped over the

decade from 11 to 3.8 million billion board feet per year. Several

interesting facets of the management shift are emphasized, including

the controversial 18-month moratorium on new logging roads into some

pristine roadless areas. However, the transition may be only

partially complete, as U.S. environmentalists demand zero-cut.

g.b.

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Title: Mountain bikers over corporate loggers, Forest Service shifts

emphasis to recreation

Source: U.S. News

Status: Copyright, contact source for permission to reprint

Date: 5/18/98

Byline: CHBY MICHAEL SATCHELL

The United States Forest Service used to be the agency

environmentalists loved to hate. For years, greens excoriated the USFS

as an operation in cahoots with timber barons and their congressional

cronies, selling off the nation's natural resources well below cost,

robbing taxpayers of billions of dollars in lost revenues, and

generally thinking of the nation's forests in terms of board feet of

lumber instead of living trees.

Abruptly, however, environmentalists are reconsidering their view of

the agency that administers 155 national forests covering about

370,000 square miles--a full 10 percent of the U.S. landmass. Under

new chief Michael Dombeck, the Forest Service has embarked on a series

of reforms that environmentalists have demanded for decades, shifting

away from pro-logging policies and toward more watershed restoration,

wildlife conservation, improved forest roads, and better recreational

opportunities. "Timber drove our budgets, our incentive and reward

systems, and much of our ecosystem agenda. But times are changing, and

a single interest can't have it all," says Dombeck, whose aggressive

redirection of the agency has provoked the ire of the timber industry

and its congressional allies. "We're simply taking a more balanced

view of the public's demands."

Fun in the sun. One factor driving the Forest Service's change of

direction is an increased demand for outdoor recreation. Little

noticed by the media, national forests have become enormously popular

for camping, mountain biking, off-road driving, and other activities:

People made 860 million visits to national forests last year, more

than three times as many as they did to national parks.

This increase in forest recreational use has had dramatic implications

for the Forest Service. About 75 percent of agency jobs are now

related to recreation, compared with a scant 3 percent for logging.

Over the past decade, timber harvests have dropped from more than 11

billion board feet to an expected 3.8 billion this year. Federal trees

once supplied a quarter of the nation's softwood lumber; today, they

make up less than 4 percent.

Last January, Dombeck launched his most controversial initiative, an

18-month moratorium on timber companies bulldozing new roads in

about 35 million acres of virgin forest, much of it critical wildlife

habitat. (The agency already has a $10 billion repair-and-maintenance

backlog on more than 400,000 miles of existing forest roads--enough to

circumnavigate the Earth 16 times.) Roads can do enormous damage to

forest environments, causing landslides, erosion, and runoff of silt

and logging debris into streams. That runoff, in turn, degrades water

quality and ruins spawning habitat for fish such as salmon and trout.

In northern Idaho, downpours in forests with many roads have washed

millions of tons of poisonous mine wastes into Lake Coeur d'Alene and

regional rivers.

The road-building moratorium, which will likely result in the loss of

several hundred timber industry jobs, has drawn protests from logging

communities and from the Republicans who control the House and Senate

committees that oversee the Forest Service. Alaska Sen. Frank

Murkowski, who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources

Committee, accuses Dombeck of being "more concerned with political

correctness" than the loss of timber jobs. Rep. Don Young, who chairs

the House Resources Committee, threatens to cut the Forest Service

budget "until they squeal," and calls the road moratorium a sinister

ploy by environmentalists. "They want you off the land," he told a

receptive Idaho House of Representatives recently. "They want to put

you into the cities . . . collect people in large areas so they can

control them."

Although Young is well known for his rhetorical bluster, the long-term

goal of many environmental groups is nearly as radical: an end to

commercial logging in national forests. The issue is high on the

agendas of green groups, and bills have been introduced in the House

and Senate to halt timber harvesting on federal lands. A decade ago,

such a suggestion would have been dismissed as a tree hugger's

fantasy, and even today it remains a distant possibility. But the

government is gradually moving in the direction of stronger

restrictions on the industrial use of public lands, from livestock

grazing to energy exploration. If the trend continues, the next decade

could, in fact, see chain saws banished from the national forests.

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