Clinton's Forest Lockup Plan
Not Selling Well With Locals

LEWISTON, Idaho — The U.S. Forest Service can spend years to complete studies it doesn't want to conduct, but the agency says it will put an environmental impact statement on the fast track to carry out President Clinton's proposal to lock away 40 million acres of roadless areas.

Clinton last week directed the agency to study a permanent halt to road building in those regions. The agency plans to complete the sweeping study in little more than a year.

Clinton wants to place 40 million acres of remote, federal forest land off-limits to all productive use by prohibiting road building.

A road-building moratorium that went into effect earlier this year already had halted new road building and logging projects in most roadless forest areas. The first step in Clinton's plan will be to decide whether to make that moratorium on road-building permanent.

Then the Forest Service will decide what activities will ``help meet or do not harm important social or ecological attributes,'' agency documents say.

Such studies often move at glacial speed and some observers are wondering if the agency can get it done before Clinton leaves office at the end of next year.

Forest Service spokesman Joe Walsh said the agency can act quickly when it wants to, especially under marching orders from the White House.

``We're confident this is not a problem,'' he said.

He predicted that a draft of the study will be completed by spring and be finished by late fall.

Federal studies, particularly environmental impact statements, frequently undergo lengthy delays.

The Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project, which covers 75 million acres in the Northwest, began in 1994. It was expected to produce a draft in a year and be complete in another 18 months. The project is ongoing five years later.

A supplemental draft of the project won't be released until early next year, project spokesman Andy Brunelle said.

``That is an example of things taking longer than thought,'' he said.

However, the Northwest Forest Plan initiated by Clinton that drastically reduced logging in the name of protecting spotted owl habitat, was completed in a relatively short timeframe.

Brunelle said the roadless study should be less complex than the Columbia Basin project since it involves only roadless areas on national forest land.

Potlatch Corp. spokesman Frank Carroll, a former Forest Service employee, does not agree.

``Over the last several decades, the Forest Service and government in general have developed a process that takes intensive public involvement,'' he said. ``This is the type of announcement we would expect at the beginning of a presidency.''

Carroll believes heads will roll if a Republican is elected president.

``If a new administration is elected, all he is doing is sealing the fate of upper management,'' he said of Clinton. ``They're going to be out painting firewood signs at the district level.''

That's because Clinton's scheme is not nearly as popular with the public as the administration portrays it to be. A recent poll found roughly two-thirds of respondents disagree with the idea and the anti-productive-enterprise agenda behind it.

It also has its vehement detractors in Congress.

Among them is Republican U.S. Sen. Larry Craig, who has been a critic of the president for seven years. Craig is not about to walk away from the forest fight.

Clinton's scheme might not have a big effect in some urban states, but nearly 9.5 million acres of Idaho forest would become off-limits for loggers, miners and road-builders.

``Over 200 years ago we decided that the king would not rule. We decided that the king's lands would be everyone's lands,'' Craig said. ``Today, we have an attitude in this administration that not only does King William want to reign, but he appears at this moment to be setting up a monarchy for Prince Albert'' Gore.

Craig, chairman of two subcommittees with jurisdiction over the Forest Service, argued that sustainable forestry requires access to thin trees and plant a mix of species thbat can reduce fire hazards.

University of Montana economist Charles Keegan estimated that some 2700 jobs in Craig's home state of Idaho rely on national forest timber sales. While a small fraction of the state's 628,000 jobs, most are in rural communities like Cascade that depend on the industry.

Wyoming Gov. Jim Geringer and that state's congressional delegates also blasted Clinton's plan as harmful to towns dependent on the timber industry and a setback to efforts to involve local communities in forest management decisions.

Wyoming has an estimated 2.6 million acres of forest that could be placed off limits to logging and other development under Clinton's plan.

Geringer said the plan is probably a political ploy to help Vice President Al Gore win votes and accused the president of ignoring efforts to increase local control over public land.

He said the president is sidestepping a federal law that requires congressional approval of wilderness areas.

Clinton's plan would create ``de facto wilderness areas'' by requiring the Forest Service to look for future areas where road restrictions should be considered, he said.

``Clinton is not taking into account the desire of the people for access to their own forests and is ignoring the fact that his announcement will severely affect local communities and their economies,'' Geringer said.

U.S. Rep. Barbara Cubin, R-Wyo., said the plan will leave ``nothing but ghost towns'' in many western states.

``Such an ill-advised and unpopular decree could only be carried out through an executive order because it surely would not survive in Congress,'' she said.

U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., said the plan could eliminate logging and restrict fishing, hunting and other recreation that requires motorized travel through the forest.

He and other senators are exploring ways to keep decisions about forest management in the hands of Congress, he said.

Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., said roads should be prevented in some places but Clinton's unilateral policy endangers all the work to provide for access, recreation, timber and grazing on forest land.

``It's a bad public process, and I think it's bad public policy in terms of access, recreation and the economy,'' Thomas said.

With his reputation for honesty hanging like an albatross around his neck, Clinton asked the public to believe that his sweeping plan to place 40 million acres of federal forest land off-limits to productive use would not harm the timber industry.

The remote, largely pristine parcels of land he has targeted preserve represent a mere fraction of federally owned forest, he said. Vast reaches of other federal timberland are already available for logging and other development, he contended, though his administration has actively sought to interfere with their use as well.

``It is very important to point out that we are not trying to turn our national forests into museums,'' Clinton said as he detailed a plan environmentalists call progressive and the timber industry has called reckless.

Clinton used the opportunity to take a few familiar swipes at congressional Republicans, several of whom have already denounced the forest plan, for what he described as shortsighted views on the environment.

``Once again, the leaders of the Republican majority are polluting our spending bills with special interest riders that would promote overcutting in our forests, allow mining companies to dump more toxic waste on public land and give a huge windfall to companies producing oil on federal lands,'' Clinton said.

He also threatened to veto the Interior Department spending bill, which controls funding for a host of environmental and preservation projects, if Republicans do not amend it to suit him.

``The president's trying to be Teddy Roosevelt,'' snapped Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., in whose district Clinton will make his announcement. He said Clinton is trying to please environmentally conscious voters at the expense of preserving healthy forests.

``Issuing decrees from a mountaintop is not the way democracy is supposed to work,'' countered Goodlatte, whose western Virginia district includes the majestic view of the Allegheny Mountains Clinton acclaimed as he detailed the forest program.

``With the stroke of a pen,'' Goodlatte said, Clinton will ``circumvent the people's representatives in Congress, who he knows would never support such a proposal in the legislative process.''

The forest protection plan requires no congressional action, relying on regulations to be issued by the U.S. Forest Service after a detailed environmental review and public comments.

The White House hopes the forest plan will afford Clinton a permanent environmental legacy. Earlier this year, Clinton proposed a $1 billion ``land legacy'' initiative to purchase open spaces, but that has been largely thwarted by Republicans in Congress, who refused to fund it.