Roadless—for now: Bell Mountain, an Inventoried Roadless Area in California's Eldorado National Forest.

(Photo courtesy USDA Forest Service)

The Bush administration is planning to rewrite the rules governing management of the nation’s last remaining tracts of roadless and unprotected wilderness.

Environmental groups expect the administration to announce its changes to the Roadless Area Conservation Rule by the end of January 2004.

The roadless rule was written during the Clinton administration and put in place in January 2001. The rule was developed over three years in more than 600 public meetings, and has received 2.5 million public comments, 95 percent of them supportive.

The roadless rule protects 58.5 million roadless acres of national forest from roadbuilding, logging, mining, and ski resort development. (That protected acreage was lessened recently, however, when the administration decided to exclude Alaska’s Tongass National Forest from the rule’s provisions.)

The existing roadless rule protects the last third of our undeveloped national forest land, areas not formally designated as wilderness. By keeping logging roads out of large portions of the national forests, the rule protects habitat for more than 1,500 species of fish and wildlife, and preserves watersheds, ensuring our supply of clean drinking water. Roadless areas generate approximately $600 million from wilderness recreation every year. Most importantly, the roadless rule keeps wild forestlands intact so that future generations will be able to enjoy them unscarred by logging roads and clearcuts.

There are 4,416,000 roadless acres in California’s national forests. If the roadless rule is weakened, this vast acreage of forest could be opened to logging, mining, gas and oil drilling, and other development.

Stripping away forest defenses

Prompted by the timber industry, Bush appointees have chipped away at the roadless rule since the early days of this administration, proposing revisions to National Forest Management Act regulations that would (among many other damaging effects) weaken protections for roadless areas. The Justice Department has failed to defend the roadless rule in court, and– in line with other administration attempts to stifle public input– is trying to keep citizens from defending it themselves.

After a Wyoming District Court decision against the rule in July 2003, the Justice Department declined to appeal. Then, Department of Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey announced that the administration intends to rewrite the rule entirely, allowing governors to apply for exemptions for federal public lands in their states.

In a preview of what is in store for forests in the rest of the country, the administration’s exemption of Alaska’s vast Tongass National Forest from the roadless rule has opened 300,000 acres of old-growth forest to clear-cutting. An exemption for Chugach National Forest also is being considered. Together, the Tongass and Chugach forests contain one-fourth of all the roadless acres in the United States.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

The Roadless Area Conservation Rule provides essential protections to the remaining wild forests in the United States. Let the Bush administration hear your concerns. Write to the head of the U.S. Forest Service, Chief Dale Bosworth, and let him know that you do not want the protections of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule weakened in any way.

Write to:

Chief Dale Bosworth
USDA Forest Service
P.O. Box 96090
14 Independence Ave. SW
Washington, DC 20079-6090

For a Forest Service map of California's Inventoried Roadless Areas, see:

http://www.roadless.fs.fed.us/states/ca/state3.shtml