Roadless Plan Bold And Right For Our Region

I have lived in Bonners Ferry in the North Idaho forest for 25 years. I worked in the timber industry for 11 years, most of them in a Louisiana-Pacific Corp. sawmill near here.

I am also a founder and an active member of a local conservation group.

From my view, roadless area protection is good for the forest and good for Idaho communities. The proposal to end road building on national forest roadless lands is a plan with vision and boldness.

The remaining roadless lands don’t have roads because it is difficult and very expensive to build roads into these areas. The easiest places to log already have roads. The Forest Service has built nearly 400,000 miles of roads in national forests, which is more than the entire interstate road system.

The Idaho Panhandle National Forest in my part of the state has 8,000 miles of roads. The Forest Service doesn’t have the time or the money to even maintain existing roads.

In addition to ending road building in our roadless areas, we need to improve maintenance of the deteriorating road system and obliterate roads whose usefulness is past. The Forest Service also needs to design timber sales, where it is appropriate, in the already roaded areas - not in roadless areas.

My hometown is an example of a small town supposedly only in existence because of timber harvest from the national forest. Local politicians want us to believe the myth that if this proposal to stop road building in roadless lands goes into effect that Bonners Ferry will become a ghost town. This ludicrous ghost town idea gets trotted out over and over, every time a new plan is proposed to manage our forests for ecological sustainability. Let’s look at the reality.

In the early 1980s, I was one of 90 sawmill workers who lost their jobs overnight because of a permanent mill closure in Bonners Ferry. At the time, the timber company made it very clear that the closure was a result of corporate downsizing and had nothing to do with the availability of timber from the national forest.

According to our local politicians, Bonners Ferry should have just disappeared. But it didn’t happen. Our community continued to grow in spite of losing those mill jobs and it is still growing. In fact, I look around the area and see it’s booming.

This growth is not occurring because of the availability of timber jobs. Most of my fellow mill workers who lost their jobs that day long ago are still living here. We are doing other things with our lives and living where we want to be.

The timber industry is a small part of our local economy. I emphasize the words “small part.” I live here - as I believe most residents do - because of clean air, clean water and closeness to wild lands and wild animals.

I live here because of the beauty of the place - not to work in the timber industry. The future of my community and others like it is not logging. The best investment in our future is to protect the land, the waters and the wildlife.

We are the ancestors of future generations. What kind of planet do I want to help bequeath to those who follow? That is the question that is at the heart of the value system that I attempt to live by. I believe that there is much greater value in ending road building in all remaining roadless lands than in opening them up with roads. That is why I wholeheartedly support the proposal.