Logging Road Work May Be Suspended Plan Would Halt Construction In Many Back Country Areas

The Clinton administration plans to suspend construction of logging roads in the back country of most national forests, a major environmental step that would effectively preclude logging on some of the nation’s most rugged and pristine public land.

The road-building moratorium described by administration officials would be a partial victory for environmental advocates, who have long complained of the lasting damage done by bulldozers carving up old growth forests.

Road building on millions of acres of forests could be affected, mostly in the Western states but also in Eastern forests, where there are fewer large roadless tracts. Many of these areas contain virgin stands of timber, prime wildlife habitat and pristine streams.

Although some environmental advocates do not think the plan goes far enough, the proposal represents an opportunity for Vice President Al Gore to enhance his standing in one of his core constituencies.

“The vice president is the one who has been pushing for this,” an administration official said. “He feels strongly that after a century of federal forest management, it is time to give stronger weight to forest values like clean water, recreation and wildlife.”

Michael Francis, a logging specialist at the Wilderness Society, said: “This is a significant move by the Forest Service, an agency that has been Darth Vader to the forest. It is poised to make one of the most significant directional changes in its 100-year history.”

During the proposed moratorium, the Forest Service would convene a panel of scientists and draft new rules on road building that could fundamentally affect the way big publicly owned forests are managed, a senior administration official said.

The proposed suspension would be subject to public comment for 30 days before taking effect, and could last for a year or more.

The timber industry and its allies in Congress may challenge the proposal on the ground that it alters forest management plans without a full public process. Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, accused administration officials of “trying to figure out a procedural way to skate around the law.”

The roads, built with government subsidies by the companies that buy and cut timber on public land, often fragment important wildlife habitat and can cause landslides, erosion and damage to forest streams.

Without the roads, much of the logging in remote parts of federal forests would be impossible.

The new policy would apply mainly to roadless areas of at least 5,000 acres, as well as to some smaller areas that are adjacent to national parks or other protected land, said an environmentalist who has been following the administration’s deliberations.

To avoid starting a new round of timber wars with powerful logging proponents in Congress, and further litigation with the timber industry, the administration is considering exempting two huge timber zones from the road-building moratorium. They are the forests in the Pacific Northwest where a conflict over the habitat of the spotted owl, an endangered species, raged for several years, and the Tongass National Forest in southeastern Alaska.

For both of those forest zones, the administration has already devised new plans that it said contained environmental protections.