ACTION
ALERT
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WORLDWIDE
FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS
Clinton
Readies Significant Forest Protection Initiative
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Forest
Networking a Project of forests.org
http://forests.org/ -- Forest
Conservation Archives
http://forests.org/web/ -- Discuss Forest
Conservation
10/8/99
OVERVIEW
& COMMENTARY
The
Clinton administration, determined to establish a significant
conservation
legacy, is set to announce that 40 million acres of
national
forest land will be protected from commercial development on
the
basis of their roadless character.
There is nothing like an U.S.
President
concerned about his legacy to go for the long ball. This
would
be the largest land preservation act in U.S. history and may
prove
critical to maintaining large blocks of American forest
habitats
to serve as biological benchmarks, while conserving both
species
and ecosystem functions.
This is
a highly political issue. It is
essential that each of us
express
our opinions to ensure that this is not somehow derailed
prior
to its announcement. Please email
President Clinton at
president@whitehouse.gov,
and/or call the White House comment line at
(202)
456-1111 and request politely that the Forest Protection
Initiative
proceed, that it include strict restrictions on permitted
land,
and that it include the Tongass National Forest. You may also
note
that in addition to ensuring a much-improved environmental
legacy
for Clinton, this policy action will significantly contribute
to the
quality of life in America in the next centuries.
The
forest conservation movement is on the ascendancy and is a force
to be
reckoned with. We have the ability to
end the age of
deforestation
(20% of the World's old growth remains, 4% in the
U.S.),
and move into the age of forest sustainability and
restoration. This next week will prove important in
determining how
far
along the road to rewilding we are.
g.b.
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RELAYED
TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: Clinton Readies Forest Protection
Initiative
Directive Would Shield 40 Million
Acres
Source: Washington Post
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for
permission to reprint
Date: October 8, 1999
Byline: By Tom Kenworthy
Staff writer Charles Babington
contributed to this report.
The
Clinton administration, determined to establish a significant
conservation
legacy, will announce next week an initiative to protect
as much
as 40 million acres of national forest land from commercial
development.
The
move will take the form of a directive from President Clinton to
the
U.S. Forest Service to prepare an environmental analysis of how
to best
conserve the agency's inventory of "roadless" or undeveloped
areas
in scores of national forests across 35 states, according to
sources
inside and outside the administration. Much of the acreage is
in the
West, concentrated in the Rocky Mountain states and
California.
The
scale of the proposal would make it one of the most significant
land
preservation undertakings in U.S. history, extending protection
to an
area equal in size to Virginia and West Virginia combined.
By
comparison, the nation's total inventory of congressionally
designated
wilderness parcels set aside over the past 35 years since
passage
of the Wilderness Act is a little more than 100 million
acres.
The entire national forest system comprises 192 million acres.
"If
done right, this would be a legacy to rival Teddy Roosevelt's,"
said
Nathaniel Lawrence, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources
Defense
Council.
"This
could be truly historic," agreed Ken Rait, director of an
environmental
consortium known as the Heritage Forests Campaign.
"America's
open spaces and wild places are shrinking day by day and
this
would be an incredible and historic move to save these places
for
future generations."
Forest
protection advocates believe preservation can be accomplished
administratively
without congressional approval, just as the Clinton
administration
devised an overall resource protection plan for
national
forests in the Pacific Northwest to protect endangered
species.
"They
are doing through a regulatory process what they can't do
legislatively,"
said Michael Klein, a spokesman for the American
Forest
and Paper Association. "They don't have the votes, so they are
doing
an end-run around Congress to jam this elitist policy down the
throats
of the American people." The administration plan would
involve
preparation of an environmental impact statement with
different
land management options, selection of a "preferred
alternative"
and then issuance of a final record of decision. The
result
would be subject to legal challenge, and could be overturned
by
Congress.
"If
the Clinton administration is seeking a legacy with this
announcement,
it will be a legacy on the cheap because they haven't
done
the heavy lifting to find a balance between competing views on
resource
management," said Sen. Frank H. Murkowski (R-Alaska).
It is
not clear what specific activities would be permitted on the
lands
in question. But it is likely the administration will aim to
give
the Forest Service's roadless areas significant protection as
wild
lands. That designation would not prohibit as many kinds
of
activities as would designating the forests wilderness areas in
which
logging, mining, construction of structures and all motorized
equipment
are banned.
"The
obvious things to focus on are the most harmful activities:
road-building,
logging, mining and off-road vehicles," said Lawrence.
"How
much of that they bite off is an open question."
A White
House official said yesterday that the timing for announcing
the
proposal and some of the substantive details are still under
discussion.
"There are several options under consideration," said the
official.
"There have been no final decisions." The Forest Service,
under
chief Michael P. Dombeck, has been moving toward broad
prohibitions
on road construction and logging in areas that are still
roadless.
In March, the Forest Service imposed an 18-month moratorium
on road
construction across 33 million acres of forest while the
agency
develops new policies on managing its vast network of roads,
which
totals 380,000 miles -- eight times the length of the
interstate
highway system. And last February, in a speech in
Missoula,
Mont., Dombeck said, "It is my expectation that in the
future
we will rarely build new roads into roadless areas, and if we
do, it
will be in order to accomplish broader ecological objectives."
The
significance of the pending White House announcement -- which
could
be made by Clinton next Wednesday during a visit to the George
Washington
National Forest in Virginia, a senior White House official
said --
is that it puts the president's imprimatur on the development
of a
conservation policy for roadless areas and sets that policy
review
in motion.
Keeping
wild forest parcels free of roads is considered by many
conservationists
to be the key to protecting them. Transportation
corridors
disrupt wildlife, facilitate logging and other commercial
activities,
and degrade pristine areas through erosion and other
effects.
Roadless areas also tend to be important refuges for
imperiled
animals such as grizzly bears.
But the
nation's remaining roadless areas also contain some of the
Forest
Service's most commercially valuable timber stands. Any
attempt
by the White House to take administrative action to close
millions
of Forest Service acres to the timber industry will be
strongly
opposed by the industry and its congressional allies.
Western
Republicans from states, such as Idaho and Montana, that have
not yet
resolved their Forest Service wilderness area selections
might
also view the action as the creation of de facto wilderness and
a
usurpation of congressional authority.
The
political sensitivity of the issue is evident as senior
administration
officials continue to debate how broad a net they
should
cast. A key unresolved question, for example, is whether to
include
the Tongass National Forest in Alaska in the environmental
review.
At 17
million acres, the Tongass is the nation's largest national
forest,
and in many ways its most controversial. The environmental
community
believes that excluding it from the roadless areas review
would
undermine the credibility of the entire proposal. But including
it
would likely infuriate Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), the chairman
of the
Senate Appropriations Committee.
At the
same time, excluding it could hand former New Jersey senator
Bill
Bradley an environmental issue to use against Vice President
Gore as
they compete for the Democratic presidential nomination,
because
Bradley has a record of advocacy on behalf of the Tongass and
has
recently been endorsed by one national environmental group.
Asked
whether the Tongass will be included in the White House
initiative,
a senior White House official said yesterday: "There's a
whole
range of options there that we haven't worked out."
"These
guys are getting cold feet on the Tongass," said Matt Zencey,
who
heads up a pro-Tongass advocacy group, the Alaska Rainforest
Campaign.
"It's another example of where people have had high
expectations
for Gore and he doesn't meet them. It allows
Bradley
to run to his left on the environment."
The
Tongass was left out of the 18-month road moratorium, as were
about
two dozen other forests that also have recently updated their
long-term
management plans or are covered by the Clinton
administration's
Pacific Northwest forest plan. It is expected that
the
Pacific Northwest forests would be included in a proposed
scientific
review.
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