Brief by Central Staff
Public Lands – July 2005 – Colorado Central Magazine
The Bush Administration has started to reverse a Clinton Administration order that prohibited road construction in 58.5 million acres of roadless National Forest, but don’t expect any immediate construction.
The change affects about 4.4 million acres in Colorado. We couldn’t find detailed information about Central Colorado, but a general map showed some affected land in the Arkansas Hills, Wet Mountains, and Sawatch Range.
The land is not official Wilderness – that requires an act of Congress. It’s land that might qualify for wilderness designation at some point, for it has no roads or structures. In early 2001, during the last days of his term, President Bill Clinton ordered the Forest Service to close it to road-building, mining, and logging.
The Bush edict, issued in May, gives state governors 18 months to request preservation of any of these roadless areas. Without that gubernatorial request, the land will be managed according to the plan for the national forest it’s in, and that could result in roads, mines, and logging.
Colorado Gov. Bill Owens, along with the state legislature, will name a 13-member task force which will hold hearings in affected areas, then make recommendations to the governor, who will then submit a roadless plan to the Forest Service.
This gives state governments more to say about federal land in their boundaries. Will it mean a lot of machinery in the wilderness?
Tom Troxel doesn’t think so. He works for a forest-industry lobby group, the Intermountain Forest Association, and he points out that many roadless areas are roadless because they offer no profitable opportunities for logging. “I don’t think there are bulldozers warming up at the boundaries of roadless areas,” he said. “I don’t expect that you’re going to see widespread logging and road-building.”
Critics point not only to habitat fragmentation and weed propagation, but to a maintenance backlog on existing Forest Service roads, with estimates running about $8 to $10 billion. “It makes little sense to build new roads when the Forest Service cannot take care of its existing road network,” said Chris Wood, vice-president for conservation for Trout Unlimited, which sees more road construction as a threat to fish.
No one has commented from the American auto industry. Both Ford and General Motors are in financial trouble, largely because their most profitable products are Sports Utility Vehicles, and with high fuel prices, Americans are no longer buying as many spewts as in the past. But if all the forest roads are in such bad shape that they require a four-wheel-drive, there’s still a big need for spewts. Ford and GM will thrive, and who knows how many countries we’ll have to invade to insure a supply of gasoline.
