(Excerpted from news reports)

Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman on May 9 proposed banning new road building on more than 43 million acres of roadless areas in America's national forests. The proposal, which follows an extensive public input process, would also require local U.S. Forest Service managers to consider additional protections for roadless areas in the future. In October, President Clinton directed Secretary Glickman to formulate a plan to protect roadless areas.

Roadless areas on national forests represent some of the last large expanses of pristine wildlands in the United States. They are critical to preserving wildlife and clean drinking water supplies, and provide unparalleled recreational opportunities for hikers, campers, hunters, and others. Today’s proposal would protect roadless areas and ensure continued public access to them.

"This proposal would safeguard some of America’s last and best pristine land," said Secretary Glickman. "As we lose more and more open space to sprawl and development, Americans increasingly turn to our national forests to experience and enjoy our shared natural landscape. Preventing roadbuilding in these areas is an essential step toward preserving and protecting these wildlands for the future."

The ban on road building would apply to unroaded lands that the Forest Service has already inventoried and identified as roadless areas. These are typically large parcels of land that do not contain roads because of their rugged terrain or environmental sensitivity. The proposal would also require the Forest Service to consider additional protections for these areas and other smaller areas in the future through existing local forest planning procedures.

On the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, where a newly adopted management plan restricts or prohibits road construction on much of the land, today’s proposal would postpone a decision on additional protection for roadless areas until 2004.

While a ban on new road building would significantly reduce future timber harvests in roadless areas, the impact on the nation’s overall timber supply would be negligible. National forests provide approximately 5 percent of the nation’s timber, and, under current plans, only 5 percent of projected timber harvests on national forests would come from roadless areas.

Today’s proposal is contained in a draft environmental impact statement that also analyzes a range of alternative actions -- from no additional protection to a complete ban on road building and timber harvest in all inventoried roadless areas on all national forests.

Secretary Glickman’s announcement continues an open and public process. Already, the Forest Service has conducted more than 180 public meetings and collected 365,000 public comments on this issue. Public comments on today’s proposal will be accepted until July 17, 2000. A final rule is expected by the end of the year.

"Forest Service employees and I are committed to continue working with the public and listening to their input on this historic proposal,'" said Glickman. "Public comments in the coming weeks will be absolutely critical as we craft a final policy that balances national and local interests and adequately protects roadless areas for present and future generations."

The Forest Service will conduct an aggressive public outreach campaign on the roadless proposal. There will be at least two public meetings on every national forest one to explain the proposal and other policy alternatives that under consideration and one to solicit additional comments from interested citizens. In addition, the proposal and related public documents will be accessible at every Forest Service office and most municipal and county libraries.

The public can also access materials relating to the roadless proposal, including maps, on the web at <http://roadless.fs.fed.us>.

Environmentalists were sorely disappointed in the Clinton administration plan, finally released on May 9, to ban road building in the national forests. What they had considered to be Clinton’s attempt to try and square himself with the environmental community -- a ban on logging, mining and off road vehicle use in those areas designated as roadless – went by the board. They saw this as just another betrayal of the Clinton administration by caving in to special interests.

Clinton’s retreat prompted key environmental groups to publicly oppose the long-awaited Forest Service proposal.

"The choice the Forest Service made is incorrect, and one all of us are disappointed in," said Bill Meadows, director of the Wilderness Society.

"The Forest Service appears to have headed down the wrong path with this proposal," said Ken Rait, director of the Heritage Forests Campaign, a broad coalition of local, state and national environmental groups pushing the forest protection initiative. "The American people support the vision that President Clinton articulated in October. What the Forest Service has delivered is a proposal with log truck-sized loopholes. It allows the logging of America’s last wild roadless forests and fails to provide any protection whatsoever to the nation’s largest wild forest and last temperate rain forest, the Tongass National Forest in Alaska. There is no environmental support for this,"

The proposal would eliminate any new road construction through national forests, but would leave decisions involving logging, mining and the use of off-road vehicles to local forest rangers.

Worse yet, the Secretary of Agriculture, Dan Glickman, who released the plan, said that the plan was all that Clinton intended it to be, seeming to deny the reality of earlier communications. To backwater and then cover it up with what was seen as a misstatement of fact was too much to endure for many persons concerned about the future of our national forests.

Over the next 60 days, the Forest Service will be taking public input on this draft policy and holding about 400 public hearings throughout the country.

"It’s time for the American people to turn up the heat until the Forest Service sees the light and protects our forests." Rait noted that more than 750,000 citizen comments -- the vast majority of them in favor of ending all logging in roadless forest areas -- have flooded the administration over the past year. Public opinion polls across the country have shown overwhelming support for protecting roadless forests and ending logging in these last wild places. (For poll results see on the web http://www.ourforest.org/info/policy/pollresults.)

"The U.S. Forest Service needs to begin managing these areas according to the will of the vast majority of Americans," said Rait. "President Clinton must renew his commitment to wild forest protection and get the Forest Service on the right path if he hopes to rescue his conservation legacy and our wild forests."