Reduction in Forest Roads Proposed

Federal officials Thursday proposed rules that would make it tougher to build roads in national forests and also lead to the closure of some existing roads.

There are more than 380,000 miles of roads winding through national forest lands, the vast majority of them in California and the West. The network is eight times longer than the federal interstate highway system.

The U.S. Forest Service says that it has only 20% of the maintenance money it needs and that many of the roads are crumbling, causing erosion and other environmental damage.

Under such circumstances, “You put the shovel down and stop digging the hole deeper and really focus on priorities and needs,” Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck said at a Salt Lake City news conference.

The rules, open to public comment for the next two months, follow a 1999 Clinton administration moratorium on building roads on 50 million acres of roadless national forest land. A decision on how much of those wild lands should remain roadless is expected later this year.

The issue of building and maintaining roads in America’s 155 national forests has become a highly volatile one, with timber and some recreation interests loudly complaining that they are being run off federal wild land.

The new rules and other regulations adopted by the Clinton administration are “shutting the public out of its lands,” said Derek Jumper, spokesman for the American Forest and Paper Assn.

“This is not about health, about science or the proper management of our forests,” Jumper said. “It’s about a president desperately trying to build a legacy for himself in the last nine months of his presidency.”

Environmentalists say the forest service’s changing philosophy is long overdue.

“It’s clear to me that there will always be a place for roads on the national forests,” said Wilderness Society Regional Director Jay Watson. “But it’s high time the forest service put the brakes on what has long been a runaway road program.

“Building new roads will have to go through a much more rigorous test and that’s a welcome change,” he said.

The road regulations, proposed Thursday by Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman, would emphasize the maintenance and reconstruction of existing roads rather than the building of new ones.

Decisions about which roads should be maintained or closed would be based on a scientific analysis and, Dombeck said, community input.

Although he gave no numbers, Dombeck said the new policy would result in “probably fewer roads.” Some closed roadways would be converted to hiking or biking trails.

He denied that the roads proposal would much effect timber cutting in the national forests, which has declined substantially in the past decade.

Until a “science-based road analysis” is incorporated into individual forest plans, the rules say that “proposals for new road construction or reconstruction must demonstrate a compelling need,” such as public safety, protection or restoration of forest resources, and access provided by law or treaty.

The call for both scientific and public input on road maintenance and closure may be difficult to reconcile.

One only need look to northern Nevada, where the closing of a forest road to protect a trout stream resulted in a still simmering local revolt. The community wants the dirt road reopened and has threatened to rebuild it with shovels if necessary.