VIDEO outlining the
Roadless Rule & how it diminishes forest health
http://www.takingliberty.us/Narrations/roadless/player.html
FOREST SERVICE ROADLESS BACKGROUND PAPER
May 2005
The Roadless Area
Conservation Rule was published in the Federal Register
on January 12, 2001, as a discretionary rule that
fundamentally changed the Forest Service’s longstanding
approach to management of inventoried roadless areas.
The rule established blanket, nationwide prohibitions
generally limiting, with some exceptions, timber harvest
and road construction and reconstruction within
inventoried roadless areas on national forests and
grasslands across the country.
These nationally applied
prohibitions would have superceded the management
prescriptions for inventoried roadless areas applied
through the development of individual land management
plans, and would not have been revisited through
subsequent plan amendments or revisions. Nor would they
have allowed changes in management direction due to
changes on the landscape caused by natural
occurrences—like catastrophic wildfire.
During the development of
the Roadless Rule in 1999 and 2000, the Governors of
several western states requested cooperating-agency
status to work with the Forest Service in the
development of the Environmental Impact Statement and
the roadless rule. All requests were denied.
Of the 58.5 million acres
of inventoried roadless areas used as the basis for the
roadless rule, about 34.3 million acres were allocated
to management prescriptions in local planning processes
that allowed road construction and reconstruction, and
24.2 million acres were allocated to prescriptions that
prohibited road construction.
Beginning in 2001, the roadless rule has been the subject of nine lawsuits in
Federal district courts in Idaho, Utah, North Dakota,
Wyoming, Alaska, and the District of Columbia.
In June 2003 the
litigation with the State of Alaska was settled. It
resulted in a December 2003 amendment to the roadless
rule that temporarily exempted the Tongass National
Forest from the rule’s prohibitions.
On July 14, 2003, in the
litigation with the State of Wyoming, the U.S. District
Court for the District of Wyoming issued a permanent
injunction and set aside the roadless rule.
The court found that the roadless rule was promulgated in a manner that was
illegal, both procedurally and substantively. The court
ruled against the government on five of six claims under
NEPA, and also found that the roadless rule violated the
Wilderness Act of 1964 because the timber harvest and
road construction prohibitions constitute establishment
of de facto wilderness (only Congress can
designate wilderness areas). This decision has been
appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth
Circuit by intervenors. There continues to be much
uncertainty concerning the implementation of the
roadless rule as legal proceedings are ongoing and the
ultimate outcome is far from certain.
The Forest Service and
USDA are committed to protecting and managing roadless
values and consider inventoried roadless areas an
important component of the National Forest System. The
Department has concluded that revising the rule by
providing this petitioning opportunity is an appropriate
solution to address the challenges of roadless area
management.
Summary: Roadless Rule
Litigation
Active
Cases
Wyoming – July 14, 2003 Order
finding that the Roadless Rule was promulgated in a manner
that was illegal, both procedurally and substantively. The
Court ruled against the government on 5 of 6 claims under
NEPA. The court also found that Rule violated the
Wilderness Act because the timber and roading prohibitions
constitute establishment of de facto wilderness in
violation of the Wilderness Act. As relief, the court
determined that Roadless Rule must be "set aside" and
ordered that the Rule “be permanently enjoined.” The Court
held that claims against the NFMA planning regulations, Road
Management Rule, and the Transportation Policy were not ripe
for judicial review and that other claims had been waived or
need not be addressed. The ruling was appealed.
The above are from the Forest
Service website
Roadless BackGround
Summary: Roadless Litigation
Sequoia Roadless & Wilderness Maps
Excerpt
below of testimony to House:
U. S. House of
Representatives
Committee on Resources
"Funding of Environmental Initiatives and Their Influence
on Federal Land Policies"
Testimony of Eric Williams, May 23, 2000
Roadless Area Conservation Draft
EIS
The rural West sure doesn't pay the
bills … And its industries, ranching, agriculture, timber,
mining and the like are tossed on the scrap heap of our
transfer-payment, federal, tourist-based regional economy.
Hal Rothman, Writers on the Range,
Spring 2000
Most recently, disparaging commentary toward the men and
women who make their living in natural resource businesses
has worked its way into Chapter 3 of the Roadless Area
Conservation Draft EIS. This new document states:
Logging and lumber millwork are not an inter-generational
way of life for all participants in the wood products
industry. In 1991, median tenure of employment in the wood
products industry was 5.3 years (Power 1996). Timber
communities have been noted for their instability for over a
century, due to the migratory nature of the industry
(Kaufman & Kaufman 1990). Timber jobs migrate in response to
the expansion and contraction of the industry in local
areas, with boom and bust cycles caused in large part by
unsustainable harvest levels (Power 1996). Even reasonably
prosperous timber-dependent communities are among the least
prosperous rural communities, having high seasonal
unemployment, high rates of population turnover, high
divorce rates, and poor housing, social services, and
community infrastructures (Drielsma and others, 1990, Power
1996). Moreover, timber industry jobs are dangerous, having
high injury and mortality rates. Many people enter the wood
products industry because it provides opportunities to earn
high wages without having a high level of education. For
these people what is at stake is not a traditional lifestyle
and occupational culture, but rather an accessible route to
a middle-class lifestyle. If equivalent jobs were readily
available, these individuals would be happy to take
advantage of them.
That single paragraph has three references to the works
of Dr. Thomas Power, who is mentioned in more detail above.
As a former miner, it's of little consolation to me (an
overpaid, undereducated social misfit), that the Forest
Service now considers loggers as possessing not only those
non-redeeming values, but also as being culturally ignorant
trailer trash who'll do anything for a buck and a new woman.
There's a reason this sort of language is now appearing
in these documents, which ostensibly are based in science
and fact, not political rhetoric and dogma. It's because of
all the pressure brought to bear by the environmental
industry, being well organized and heavily funded by wealthy
foundations to produce exactly those results.
This well-funded machine has generated (through the
necessary, strategic atmosphere for excluding from normal
moral and ethical consideration) a whole segment of society
- rural resource providers. This atmosphere has been set
with pseudo-scientific reports and non-peer reviewed studies
released to the public through the media and through public
agencies. This atmosphere has allowed agenda-driven
personnel within both federal and state agencies to repeat
the mantra of cultural smearing that we find in many
management plans being implemented and being proposed
throughout the United States.
Read
complete testimony here:
Funding Environmental Initiatives-Testimony
