As part of a Clinton administration plan to reduce environmental damage in national forests, the U.S. Forest Service on Thursday declared an 18-month halt to the construction of logging roads across 33 million acres of forest land.
The moratorium on roads in areas that currently have none will be in effect while a final policy is worked out. It covers 14 of the 18 national forests in California and roughly one-sixth of the 191 million acres of timberland in the federal forest system, mostly in the West.
Four forests in the northwestern corner of California are among 26 nationwide excluded from the road building ban. Federal officials say that most of those forests are already covered by management plans designed to preserve endangered species. Forest Service officials said there are no immediate plans for new logging operations in regions with no roads in any of the four California forests.
Announcing the plan at a Washington news conference, Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman, whose department includes the Forest Service, described the moratorium "as an official timeout" while the service brings its management more in tune with forest needs and uses.
"There are 383,000 miles of forest roads already in existence, enough to circle the globe many times," Glickman said. "Less than half of them meet minimum environmental and safety standards," he said, estimating the total repair cost at more than $8 billion.
Glickman said that close to 2 million vehicles traverse forest roads every day, "many of them station wagons with families."
Forest Service officials said that the impact on logging operations would be negligible, estimating that the moratorium would reduce the annual amount of timber cut in national forests by only to 2% to 3%.
Industry officials bitterly criticized the ban. In a statement, the American Forest & Paper Assn. described the moratorium as a disaster, contending that it will penalize all users of the roads and not just the timber industry.
"The ban on forest road construction is a red herring devised by those who are determined to shut down access to our forests at any cost," said W. Henson Moore, president of the association.
But the national forests can no longer be regarded mainly as "the nation's wood basket," said Agriculture Undersecretary Jim Lyons. "The forests are a primary source of clean water. They offer refuge for fish and wildlife and they are, increasingly, the nation's playground.
