Rhetoric over roadless plan overblown

Do not fear, the Bush roadless plan will not result in environmental destruction in the country's most remote and unroaded hinterlands.

The roadless policy, which allows governors to petition the federal government with specific recommendations for roadless area designations and management, was rolled out last week and was met with howls of protest from groups predicting certain environmental pillage in America's unroaded national forests at the behest of corporate timber, mining and drilling interests.

Is it possible the policy could cause unfettered bulldozing in remote stands of old growth? Well, sure it's possible, if some crackpot governor demands that it be so and the Forest Service succumbs to his wishes.

But is it likely? As a practical matter, rampant road building is not about to transpire on national forest lands in Western Montana, and particularly not on the Flathead National Forest.

For the last decade, the Forest Service has retreated from road building and has entered the business of closing roads or reclaiming them, and in many cases it is doing so under the direction of court orders or U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service directives aimed at improving habitat security for certain wildlife, such as the grizzly bear.

There have been other reasons for closing and reclaiming roads, starting with a very obvious need to direct limited funds toward maintaining priority forest roads. The agency's maintenance backlog for its road network is estimated to be in the neighborhood of $10 billion.

Most forests, the Flathead included, have forest plan policies that are geared toward protecting remaining old-growth stands and other resources that are no longer abundant. They have watershed standards, stream protection requirements and voluminous permitting processes standing in the way of big forest development projects.

Last we looked, mine proposals are pretty scarce in Western Montana. When they do come up, it's pretty much guaranteed they'll take more than a decade to work their way through public opposition, government permitting, appeals and lawsuits before having a chance to open and survive in volatile world markets.

Timber interests have been whittled away to a handful of companies in the western part of the state. Rarely is there a proposal to enter inventoried roadless areas for timber harvests. Even in the case of sales involving the removal of burned timber on the Flathead Forest, roadless areas were avoided altogether.

The Bush roadless approach simply won't cause the environmental havoc that critics say it will, and we're inclined to support it in hopes it will be more thoughtful than the Clinton roadless plan, a "legacy" policy that was patched together in the waning days of Clinton's presidency.

True enough, the Clinton plan was heartily backed by a public relations campaign, well organized by conservation groups across the country. But in Western Montana counties, a huge majority of voters rejected the Clinton plan through a poll question that appeared on ballots across the region.

The Bush plan provides potential to better map and inventory true roadless areas in Montana, through the input of Gov. Schweitzer.

If the governor petitions the Forest Service, Montana could end up with tailor-made roadless protections, rather than a one-size-fits all plan from Washington, D.C.