10/19/00 -- Forget About Building the Road to Nowhere

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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

Forget About Building the Road to Nowhere

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Forest Networking a Project of Forests.org

http://forests.org/ -- Forest Conservation Archives & Portal

10/19/00

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY

Does every spot on the Planet need a road to, and through it? How

many roads? Road density is a major indicator of ecosystem health.

President Clinton's soon to be announced plan to offer some

protection to many of the United States' remaining roadless areas,

some 43 million acres, is a start at ensuring large wilderness areas,

and their constituent species and ecosystem functions, are not lost

forever. This assumes the measure is not watered down to allow

logging, recreational vehicles and other ecologically diminishing

land uses. As we enter the age of ecological restoration, removing

existing unnecessary and ecologically destructive roads is the next

logical step. Global planetary sustainability will require

preservation and restoration of massive intact and operable natural

ecosystems-free of roads and other human intrusions.

g.b.

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Title: Forget about building the road to nowhere

Date: October 16, 2000

Byline: By Michael Soule', opinion piece

The Clinton administration has proposed a new policy for our public

lands. The policy, to be issued sometime in the next month, would

protect the remaining large roadless areas in national forests, some

of the last islands of wildernesslike parcels (about 43 million

acres), and save taxpayers millions of dollars. But is it good public

policy to prohibit road building on these remnants of our frontier?

In the United States, about 94 percent of our total land has already

been domesticated by a dense network of roads and highways. These

roads connect cities, subdivisions, airports, mines, tree

plantations, farms, country homes, theme parks, and recreational

destinations. Even many national parks - once viewed as refuges - are

internally fragmented by roads. And road creation continues at an

ever-growing pace on our public lands.

It is undeniable that many roads benefit the economy. But what's the

downside? Does a civilized nation need vehicular access to every

remote peak, every clear stream?

Consider the effects of roads on wildlife. While roadkills are the

most visible and poignant, the most significant impacts are less

obvious. The negative effects of roads are particularly felt by

sensitive species in the backcountry. Biologists have discovered that

where there is more than three-quarters of a mile of road for every

square mile of habitat, animals such as native fishes and grizzly

bears are unlikely to survive. The average road density on currently

logged federal forests is about two miles of road per square mile of

forest.

In addition, old and abandoned logging roads make it easy for

poachers to supply the black market demand for animal body parts used

in traditional Chinese medicine, resulting in the illegal killing of

thousands of bears and other animals. The same forest roads provide

ample access to all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) that too often create

new, illegal tracks through sensitive habitats like streams,

wetlands, and birthing grounds for deer and elk. ATVs and other noisy

off-road vehicles also spread the seeds of harmful plants.

Road building in our national forests is also costly in economic

terms. Logging roads are heavily subsidized. The Forest Service's own

accounting system confirms that the timber from US forests is sold at

a loss because logging roads are built at government expense to

encourage corporate logging. Taxpayers pay for the difference, while

logging companies keep the profits.

Politicians argue in Congress that road-building projects create

jobs. But do the benefits of these pork-barrel projects outweigh

their high cost to taxpayers? The prohibition of all logging in the

roadless areas identified in President Clinton's proposal would cut

only 820 timber-related jobs in the entire US, including Alaska. And

the impact on total US timber supply would be less than one-half of 1

percent.

In spite of these facts, the US Forest Service is trying to use the

"jobs" ploy to convince the president to exempt the Tongass National

Forest in Alaska from the proposed roadless policy. The Forest

Service plans to sell 540 million board feet of timber in Tongass

roadless areas in the next five years - bestowing a taxpayer subsidy

of $1 billion to the logging companies. Logging industry lobbyists

argue that 300 timber jobs would be lost in southeast Alaska without

this excessive welfare.

The Forest Service is also trying to keep the proposed roadless lands

open to logging, mining, oil and gas development, using helicopters

instead of surface vehicles. This violates the spirit of the roadless

proposal and would destroy the ecological, wildlife, spiritual, and

recreational values of these lands for generations.

The point is this: Whether you are a conservationist worried about

saving the last vestiges of wild nature, a fiscal conservative

concerned about wasting taxpayer dollars, a bird-watcher or hunter

disturbed by the disappearance of wild places, or an animal lover

horrified by the highway carnage, the administration's "roadless area

initiative" (absent the US Forest Service's amendments) is a good

thing - for recreation, for nature, for our descendants, and for the

future of the republic.

*Dr. Michael Soule', is professor emeritus of environmental studies

at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and science director of

the Wildlands Project.

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