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Defenders Magazine
Defenders in Action: Forests for the Roads?
Instead of seeing the forests for the trees, the Bush administration apparently sees the forests for the roads. At least, that's the implication of their May decision to overrule the Clinton-era Roadless Area Conservation Rule-- a policy that put 58.5 million acres, or one-third, of the national forests off-limits to road building and other mechanical activity.
The new White House proposal gives state governors 18 months to petition the federal government to protect roadless national forest areas inside their state's borders. Anti-conservation governors could petition for no protections on roadless areas, thus opening them to logging and mining activities. If a state doesn't petition, individual forest plans would kick in-- potentially exposing millions of acres to development.
"The administration's action gives states inordinate influence over resources that belong to all the nation's citizens," says Mike Leahy, staff attorney for Defenders. "Our dwindling roadless areas are a nationally significant resource, essential for wildlife conservation and warranting of nationwide protections, not piecemeal, partial state-based efforts.'"
Critics of the new plan also point out that road-building in the national forests is a waste of taxpayer dollars. The backlog of maintenance needs on the current road system is estimated to be as much as $10 billion. And the Forest Service is running in the red by turning many of its green forests into brown stumps. In the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, for example, the service spent $49 million in 2004 on logging programs and roads, but made a mere $800,000-- a loss of more than 48 million taxpayer dollars.
These logging subsidies have been called corporate welfare by critics, and have brought together a coalition of people from across the political spectrum to put an end to them. Reps. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio) and Robert Andrews (D-New Jersey) plan to reintroduce legislation to stop the road-building subsidies in the Tongass. The bill received widespread support last year but failed to become law. Defenders will be working on this and another piece of legislation cosponsored by Reps. Jay Inslee (D-Washington) and Sherwood Boehlert (R-New York) that would make the original Clinton-era roadless rule law. Defenders is also part of a coalition exploring legal challenges to the Bush administration's rollback of these protections.
"The original roadless rule protected crucial wildlife habitat, saving animals from the criss-crossing of roads, the whirring of oil rigs and the rumbling of timber trucks," says Leahy. "The only outcome of the Bush plan would be to push more wildlife down the dark road towards extinction."
