NEWS
For Immediate Release

May 9, 2000

Contact: Stefany Bales
(208) 667-4641

Foresters Say Roadless Plan Won’t Protect Forests

COEUR D’ALENE, ID – Forestry professionals are concerned that the Forest Service is about to do the absolutely wrong thing to protect Idaho’s roadless forests. Jim Riley, Executive Director of the Intermountain Forest Association, said the Forest Service’s plan to prohibit road access to manage and care for Idaho’s roadless forests, released today, is nothing more than a continuation of the Clinton Administration’s politization of federal land management. This is all about political science, not forest science.

"The Forest Service is clearly trying to diffuse the intense conflict they have created with this roadless initiative by hiding the ball," Riley said. "Although the draft plan says that helicopter logging will be allowed in roadless forests, we have no illusions about whether or not the will exists to actively care for these forest lands. Talk is cheap – and this Administration’s Forest Service has been long on talk and short on real action to restore unhealthy forests," Riley said.

The best available science tells us that there is a very real and serious forest health crisis in our national forests, particularly in the West where the bulk of the roadless acres are, Riley added.

"It’s astonishing that an administration which allegedly embraces science, would ignore the fact that our national forests are experiencing the worst forest health crisis in history with 65 million acres, or one-third of our national forests, at risk to catastrophic wildfire, insect infestation and disease. Yet, rather than embracing a professional and scientific approach to manage those lands, the Clinton/Gore Forest Service has issued a plan to prevent the care and management of as much as 60 million acres," Riley said.

"Eliminating road access - the most efficient and effective tool foresters have to treat the serious forest health problems that exist in our forests - is unprofessional and irresponsible," he said.

Leaving these forests uncared for in favor of letting nature take its course means the Forest Service is willing to accept the environmental consequences of huge, unusually severe fires not unlike the one burning right now in the Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico – a "protected" and unmanaged area – which is raging out of control. "If this is the Administration’s idea of forest protection, we’re all in big trouble," he said.

"In the spirit of keeping our public forestlands healthy and open to everyone – including foresters and other land management professionals, we would like to see the Forest Service go back to the drawing board and put together a description of the most environmentally sensitive, cost effective multiple-use road access to each roadless area under review by this policy," Riley said.

From that information, he said, the Forest Service should then develop and evaluate one or more alternatives which would allow road access and the full range of multiple-uses of some or all of the roadless areas.

The Intermountain Forest Association represents the interests of forest products businesses and forestland owners in Idaho and western Montana.