back to AFA's Take Action page
TALKING POINTS
11th Hour Clinton Administration Forest Activity: Roadless Area and Transportation Policy/Roads Decisions
At a time when the National Forest System is facing the worst forest health crisis in it’s history, we find it amazing the Administration would move forward with these two proposals which so greatly threaten the long term health of the forest.
More than 67 million acres of the National Forest System are at what the Forest Service classifies as "high risk" to catastrophic fire, insect infestation and disease. The Roadless proposal condemns those at-risk areas to rot and burn by pretending they do not exist and do not need treatment.
While there are surely special places contained within the newly designated roadless areas worthy of this new wilderness status, this one-size fits all, Washington, DC approach spells disaster for the forests and the rural communities nestled there.
Last year, more than 7 million acres of public land burned to the ground in the worst fire season in 90 years. This policy all but guarantees a repeat. Will President Clinton, and the radical environmentalists who dictated this policy, hold their heads up high next year or the year after when the forests they claim to love so dearly rot and burn around them? This is quite a legacy-a disastrous one.
The basis for this decision is purely political. It cannot-and has not-stood up to the rigors of scientific peer review. The Administration is political statements; not sound land management policy decisions.
The Transportation Policy, along with the Roadless Area decision provides a nice one-two punch from the Administration. They are building a wall around 60 million acres with the Roadless, and then, with the Transportation policy, making it all but impossible for local land managers to do their jobs. They have made the road building and maintenance procedures so intentionally onerous so as to effectively make the remaining national forests subject to similar extreme restrictions.
This double-barreled farewell from this beleaguered Administration, if allowed to stand unchanged, will go down in history as one of the most devastating and ill-conceived environmental policy decisions ever made.
President’s Roadless Area and Transportation Policy/Roads Decisions
Forest Products Industry Concerns
On January 5, President Clinton’s Decision on National Forest Roadless Areas overrides local level land use decisions on nearly 60 million acres of national forests lands in the United States. The Forest Service, under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), bases the Record of Decision on a flawed process and analysis. The final rule also takes away most local decision-making discretion by stating, "The prohibitions and restrictions established in this subpart are not subject to reconsideration, revision, or rescission in subsequent project decisions or land and resource management plan amendments or revisions undertaken pursuant to 36 CFR part 219." The forest products industry believes that the decision process was so flawed that it fully expects to pursue litigation.
Concurrently, the Forest Service issued new regulations on their transportation/roads management policy that creates a one-two punch for management and stewardship of the entire national forest system, not just the roadless areas. The Forest Service released on January 4 final revisions to the transportation regulations, a revision to the forest planning manual, and revisions to the Forest Service manual on road and trail management and planning. The combination of the changes will make it extremely difficult, if not impossible for local level forest managers to reconstruct or construct roads for resource management. This may have serious implications to the ability to accomplish long-term wildfire risk reduction on the 39 million acres of high risk for wildfire and 28 million acres of high risk for insects and disease.
Restrictions impact millions more acres than announced by the President. These new regulations create whole new categories of lands with restrictions regarding roads and trails. There are "inventoried roadless areas," "contiguous unroaded areas," "identified unroaded areas," and "other unroaded areas," which have special application of restrictions and processes. Many of these areas are yet unmapped and unidentified, creating chaos for planning and land use decisions. The contiguous unroaded areas are those areas 1000 acres or more contiguous to inventoried roadless areas, wilderness areas, or other unroaded areas that will be treated the same way as inventoried roadless areas under the transportation policy. The Forest Service moved the decisions regarding these unroaded areas from the roadless area regulations to the transportation policy regulations and manuals, but with the same effect of restricting uses and roads in these areas.
Concerns about access to private property inholdings were ignored in the final decision. The Forest Service received a number of concerns about how the transportation and roadless area regulations would impact access to private lands within national forest boundaries. In the final transportation rule, forest industry’s concerns about the requirements for environmental impact statements for even short segments of roads in inventoried roadless areas and unroaded areas were not even acknowledged, and the requirements remain unchanged in the final rule. There will be a significant increase in both the time and the cost to acquire access to private inholdings.
New policies override legislatively mandated, local-level forest plans. There is no question that special places on the National Forest exist and protection of those places and their values would be appropriate. It was not appropriate or legal, in one sweeping Washington D.C.-based decision, to override 25 years of local level planning and land use decisions. The industry will continue to work at local levels to protect special places, find solutions to conflicts over forest management, and to enhance land management practices.
This decision disregards the forest health crisis currently existing on 67 million acres of national forest lands and potentially endangers these lands, as well as adjacent private lands, by potentially restricting needed treatments to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires. During the 2000 wildfire season, more acres burned in roadless areas than roaded areas in the intermountain west. This decision threatens the Forest Service’s ability to meet its basic land stewardship responsibilities.
The decision significantly reduces the ability of the agency to tailor resource management decisions to the needs of specific sites and their conditions. It is a one-size-fits-all approach to lands that vary dramatically from northern subalpine firs to southern pines.
This decision will negatively impact wildlife and their habitat as noted by five State Wildlife Resource agencies in their comments on the proposal. The decision limits local level managers from efficiently or cost-effectively doing vegetation management needed to maintain wildlife habitat.
This decision disregards rural communities around the country by closing off lands and potentially closing existing roads for access for fire protection and resource management. It will negatively impact the public that uses national forest lands, whether for hunting, fishing or scenic viewing. In addition, there could be negative impacts to wildlife, forests, and wildfire research. The impacts on local communities and regions will be far more severe than projected in the environmental analysis because the Forest Service used a misleading and inaccurate baseline. The documents fail to describe any specific programs that it would pursue to mitigate these adverse impacts.