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For Immediate Release
Forest Service Guts Roadless Area Protections
WASHINGTON -- The Roadless Area Conservation Rule proposal issued today by the U.S. Forest Service caps a surreptitious campaign within the agency to completely undermine the rule, according to Defenders of Wildlife President Rodger Schlickeisen.
"This announcement today is the coming-out party for the ideologues and hard-liners within the Forest Service – no longer can they smile and tell the American people they would honor the overwhelming popular support for the roadless rule, while chipping away at it in the bureaucratic backrooms with every tool in the box," said Schlickeisen. "I can promise them that millions of Americans will say yet again that we want reasonable, balanced protections for the remaining wild places in our national forests, not to hand them over wholesale to timber and mining interests."
Published in today’s Federal Register, the Forest Service’s interim directives alter roadless management by ultimately turning over all roadless area management decisions to the local forest planning process, which generally has favored logging and other development in roadless areas. The policy would also remove any form of protection for uninventoried roadless areas adjacent to inventoried roadless areas and wilderness areas. These "contiguous unroaded areas" often provide important wildlife corridors or serve other ecological values. The interim directives would also significantly weaken requirements for scientific review of road-building plans, and leave environmental and public review of plans to develop many roadless areas at the discretion of regional bureaucrats.
"They know the public disagrees with them, they know scientists disagree with them, so their reaction is to cut everyone but the timber companies out of the discussion," said Schlickeisen.
The public will have 60 days to comment on the Forest Service’s interim directives on the Roadless Area Conservation Rule.
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