Roadless move leads to expected reactions

With a new policy that gives states input on designating federal roadless areas, Gov. Brian Schweitzer is bound to be bombarded by divergent views if he decides to pursue a petition for roadless lands in Montana.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture rolled out its new roadless policy Thursday afternoon, and within hours Schweitzer's office was fielding calls.

The new rule gives governors 18 months to petition the Secretary of Agriculture to develop regulations for managing roadless areas that are tailored for each state.

"We haven't been able to delve into that policy and what it means yet," said Mike Volesky, Schweitzer's natural resources policy adviser. "I know we have 18 months, so that was good news to me."

Governors have the option of not pursuing a petition, but if that happens roadless area designations will be carried out through the forest plan revision process already under way on several national forests in Montana.

"If we entertain some sort of process, or delve into this at all, I'm sure we'll hear from all kinds of folks," Volesky predicted.

The rule was harshly criticized by conservation organizations that say it came about at the behest of the timber industry and will have dire consequences for roadless areas.

"The Bush Administration has put subsidizing timber companies ahead of clean drinking water and wildlife habitat," said Michael Garrity, executive director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies.

Garrity pointed out that petitions to the Department of Agriculture are nonbinding and the Forest Service is free to accept, reject or modify them.

"The Forest Service has over $10 billion backlog in road maintenance on its over 400,000 miles of roads," Garrity said. "Instead of building more roads for timber corporations, we believe the Forest Service should take [care] of the 400,000 miles of roads they already have. The Forest Service can create more jobs restoring our nation's watersheds than they can building new logging roads into them."

But Julia Altemus, the Montana Logging Association's resource specialist, dismissed predictions of disaster for the state's roadless areas.

"The sky is not falling," she said. "It's not going to happen."

Roads won't be built into roadless areas for many of the reasons cited by conservation groups, she said. There's already a huge maintenance backlog for existing roads, and most national forests in Montana are engaged in removing or closing roads for wildlife security, she said.

More common for today's timber projects are temporary roads that are closed and reclaimed when the project is complete, Altemus said.

The Flathead National Forest has for the last 10 years been closing or removing roads to meet forest plan standards for grizzly bear habitat security. The Flathead's most recent timber projects - salvaging wood from areas burned by wildfires in 2003 - avoided any harvest in inventoried roadless areas.

"We are glad to see the public discussion of roadless areas will be at the state and local level where informed recommendations can be prepared," said Altemus, who described the Clinton administration's roadless policy as a "one-size-fits-all" management strategy for forests with widely varying conditions.

John Gatchell, spokesman for the Montana Wilderness Association, is critical of a policy that removes protections for national forest lands precisely because it defies trends on forest landscapes - huge maintenance backlogs, tight forest budgets and increasing road closures.

"This makes absolutely no sense unless you're sitting in Washington, D.C., and you are serving big interests," Gatchell said. "The existing roads they have in some places are falling off the mountainsides and into streams … I don't know one [Forest Service] line officer that thinks this makes one lick of sense."

While Altemus argues that the new policy clears the way for careful evaluation of lands that should and should not be considered roadless in Montana, Gatchell contends the new rule will be redundant, repeating a process that was carried out for the Clinton roadless rule.

Garrity and other supporters of the Clinton rule cite the huge public process that preceded it - 600 public hearings and a record 2.5 million comments in support of that plan.

But Altemus and others dismiss those numbers, saying they resulted from a mass mail campaign pursued by conservation groups.

Critics of the Clinton policy put a roadless poll question on the 2000 ballot in Northwest Montana counties. Voters rejected the Clinton plan by a 4-to-1 margin.

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at jmann@dailyinterlake.com