The Outdoor Industry Association issued the following statement in response to Secretary of Agriculture Ann Venemans announcement of a new Roadless Rule which would abandon national protections for the nations last wild forests. The new rule would require states to petition the federal government to protect Roadless Areas from commercial logging and mining.
“This opt-in approach to roadless management provides no guarantees of real, long-term protections for roadless areas,” said Frank Hugelmeyer, president of Outdoor Industry Association. “The future of recreation destinations essential to the health of the outdoor recreation industry is at stake.”
Under the new Roadless Rule Governors would have 18 months to issue a petition on behalf of roadless areas in their state. Interim national protections for roadless lands would end after that 18-month petition period. According to Hugelmeyer, “We are concerned that 18 months from now, many wild recreation destinations will have lost protection. That causes us great concern.”
The “state petition” process that the Forest Service will propose would
require a two-step process for permanent protection of roadless areas on
the national forests. First, a state governor would have to prepare an
administrative petition “to adjust management direction” for roadless areas
in their state. The Forest Service could simply reject this petition
out-of-hand. Second, if the petition were agreed to, the Secretary of
Agriculture would establish a formal rulemaking process on a state-by-state
basis to consider permanent protection of the roadless areas in question.
This administrative rulemaking is time-consuming and the administration
could simply decide not to grant protection.
The proposed rule would replace the Roadless Rule, leaving all 58 million
acres of inventoried roadless areas in the United States open to road
building, logging, and resource development. Until a state governor
petitions for protection, management of inventoried roadless areas would be
based on the individual forest management plans, which often require no
special protections.
Already, 440,000 miles of roads are carved into America's National Forests.
The wildly popular Roadless Rule helped protect our remaining wild forests
and the clean water, wildlife habitat and outstanding backcountry
recreation opportunities from more taxpayer-subsidized commercial logging.
The Roadless Rule was developed over three years of public hearings and
scientific analysis.
OIA member businesses have been involved in the roadless debate since the beginning because they understand how important roadless protection is to the outdoor recreation industry. Over 100 of these businesses recently wrote to Under Secretary of Agriculture Mark Rey urging him to adopt a national framework for roadless protection. And more than 4,000 outdoor retail stores across the country are currently displaying OIAs “Protect Today, Play Tomorrow” campaign posters and postcards that support full roadless protection.
“Roadless lands have tremendous value as wild backcountry destinations and as economic drivers for communities across America,” said Hugelmeyer. “Because of outdoor recreations enormous economic benefits, policymakers must recognize the economic value of outdoor recreation as a top priority, not a secondary consideration, when it comes to making decisions about our public lands. Roadless areas deserve meaningful, permanent protections and should be managed at the federal level for the benefit of all Americans.”
“The Bush administration's announcement today will immediately imperil wild
forests across the country, leaving them vulnerable to commercial timber
sales and road building,” said Carl Pope, Sierra Club Executive Director.
“These wild forests are special places of national significance and need a
national policy to ensure their proper management.”
This month, the Forest Service released its final plan for the
Threemile timber sale in the Tongass which would log more than 300 acres of
pristine coastal rainforest and would build eight miles of new roads,
almost all of which will occur in the extraordinary Rocky Pass and Camden
roadless areas on north Kuiu Island. The next roadless area timber sale in
the Tongass is the Gravina Island timber sale, expected to be finalized in
August, 2004.
In Oregon, the administration is planning one of the largest timber sales
in modern history in the Klamath-Siskiyou region of southern Oregon, site
of the 2002 Biscuit fire. Under the guise of 'preventing forest fires', it
amounts to the single largest timber sale in modern history and is
projected to cost taxpayers at least $5.8 million. This timber sale – and
others across Oregon – threatens thousands of acres of roadless and old
growth wild forests.
“The original policy was designed to protect America's last remaining wild
forests, increasingly scarce unspoiled places that provide some of the
highest quality fish and wildlife habitat, backcountry recreation and clean
water supplies in the country,” said Pope.
