Roadless Rule preserves forests

Group wants to rally support to keep commercial logging, highways out of mountains

By MORGAN SIMMONS, simmonsm@knews.com
August 5, 2003

An environmental group stopped in Knoxville Monday to drum up support for a rule that would place 58.2 million acres of national forest lands - including 86,805 acres on the Cherokee National Forest - off-limits to most commercial logging and road building.

Shoren Brown, a spokesman for the Heritage Forests Campaign, said his organization is making the nationwide "whistle stop" tour in response to a Bush administration proposal to exempt Alaska's Tongass National Forest from the federal Roadless Area Conservation Rule. Critics say the administration would also weaken the rule by subjecting it to a state-by-state petitioning process.

"If the Roadless Rule is abolished on the Tongass - the largest intact temperate rainforest in the country - then the door is wide open for its dismantling across the lower 48," Brown said.

In 1999 President Clinton instructed the U.S. Forest Service to propose for public comment regulations that would give long-term protection to inventoried roadless areas in the national forest system.

Roadless areas, by virtue of their outstanding scenic and ecological features, are considered candidates for federal wilderness designation but aren't necessarily off-limits to oil drilling, logging and road building.

Advocates of the Roadless Rule say it protects a small portion of the national forest system - about 15 percent of national forest lands in the Southeast are inventoried as roadless - for the sake of biological diversity, recreation and watershed protection.

The Roadless Rule was adopted in January 2001 following an extensive scoping period that drew more than 1.6 comments - 95 percent of which favored of the rule.

Will Skelton, of Knoxville, is editor of the guidebook "Wilderness Trails of Tennessee's Cherokee National Forest." He has hiked all 18 roadless areas in the Cherokee National Forest. He said he believes these areas deserve special protection based on their scenic qualities.

"These are the most beautiful places remaining in the Southern Appalachians," Skelton said. "It's only reasonable they be preserved."

The 640,000-acre Cherokee National Forest has held a self-imposed moratorium on logging on its inventoried roadless areas since 1998.

Forest spokesman Terry McDonald said the forest's new draft management plan places the areas under a "remote backcountry recreation" management prescription that would preserve their roadless characteristics regardless of the outcome of the Roadless Rule.

"Under our forest plan, these areas would remain protected," McDonald said.

The Cherokee National Forest currently contains 11 wilderness areas totaling 67,000 acres. Under the current draft management plan, that system would grow by 20,500 acres pending congressional approval, with most of the new wilderness areas linking to existing wilderness areas.

The Cherokee National Forest is among five national forests throughout the South that are currently updating their 10- to 15-year land management plans. Public comment on a draft of the Cherokee plan was held from March 22 to July 3. All told, draft plans for the five national forests drew about 12,000 public comments.

A final version of the Cherokee National Forest's land management plan is due out by the end of 2003.

Morgan Simmons may be reached at 865-457-2345.