December 23, 2004 (Washington, DC) – Wolverines depend on vast expanses of wilderness in northern Montana’s Kootenai National Forest. Under new rules adopted by the U.S. Forest Service, those wolverines may be in trouble. No longer will the federal agency have to study the likely impact on a forest’s fish and wildlife when considering whether to allow commercial logging, snowmobiling, oil drilling, or mining.
“The wildlife viability requirement was put in place 20 years ago by the Reagan administration, but now that habitat protection is gone,” says Mike Anderson, a veteran Wilderness Society analyst in Seattle who authored a critique of the new rules. “These regulations also discard policies adopted in 2000 to strengthen protection for watersheds, wildlife, and recreation,” he explains. “The views of scientists have taken a backseat to the views of the commodity lobbies.”
The Bush administration maintains that the new rules will streamline the planning process that all national forests must pursue in order to make sure that these lands are being managed in a balanced way. “They streamlined it by eliminating all the environmental safeguards,” says Anderson.
“Another problem with these rules is that they reduce citizens’ input,” notes Michael Francis, who directs our national forest program. “These forests belong to the American people, so they ought to have a say in how these lands are managed.”
A forest plan generally covers 15 to 20 years and then is revised. The first generation of these plans is now being replaced, gradually, by new ones. Some are finished, others are in the works, and the rest have yet to reach the drawing board. The forest supervisors overseeing the middle group, totaling 22, can choose to follow the more protective rules or move to the new ones.
The forest planning rule revisions are part of a broad attack on all 155 national forests. Earlier, the administration proposed to eliminate the Roadless Rule, adopted in 2001 to prevent most commercial logging and road building in 58.5 million acres of unprotected roadless forest in 38 states. Ironically, the high cost of logging in most of these areas and the low prices paid by logging companies mean that U.S. taxpayers must subsidize it.
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