Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: More than enough roads

Friday, May 12, 2000 | 9:45 a.m.

Mike O'Callaghan is the Las Vegas Sun executive editor.

MIKE DOMBECK sure lighted a forest fire when announcing plans for his agency to prohibit new roads in 43 million acres of national forest lands. Dombeck, chief of the U.S. Forest Service, put forth the plans and drew fire from land users, abusers and protectors. When it comes to protecting our natural resources, there is yet a plan to make everybody happy because of extremists at both ends of the environmental scale. This latest move to protect one-fifth of our national forest lands is no exception.

The Sierra Club is unhappy because Dombeck's plan doesn't end all logging on national forest land and ban the use of off-road vehicles. We can only hope that all future plans also will make allowances for controlled logging, which is sometimes necessary for healthy forests. The use of off-road vehicles will continue to be debated and is already limited in several forest areas. For example, some forests have banned certain off-road vehicles but do allow the use of snowmobiles. These rules, regulations and exceptions should be determined according to the needs of individual forests and shouldn't be a blanket order coming out of Washington.

The Sierra Club and other environmental protection groups have good reason to be upset that none of the Tongass National Forest in Alaska was declared a roadless area. This, the largest remaining temperate rain forest in the world, is now the target of 400 miles of new roads. There are already 4,650 miles of existing roads on the Tongass and they cost taxpayers $33 million a year in subsidies. More than 10 billion board feet of timber is within reach of the roads already on this jewel of North America. More expensive and damaging roads aren't needed.

So who has built the more than 386,000 miles of roads now on national forests? The lumber companies harvesting timber have built most of them, but the American taxpayer has been paying for their construction and upkeep. Almost $100 million in below-cost timber is sold every year to the road makers. It's impossible to put a value on the damage some of the logging has done to watersheds and fisheries. At this time the Forest Service needs $8.4 billion to fix existing roads. What it doesn't need is the cost of building more roads and keeping them in safe condition when it can't afford present demands.

What this "no new roads" plan for some of our forests means is another attempt to protect what's left of our great and small forests. It doesn't keep us out of these areas, but does limit unnecessary abuse of our forests and the watersheds they protect. Finally, the days of large lumber companies looking at a healthy growth of trees and quickly planning a new road to reach them will come to an end on about 25 percent of our national forest land.

In the long run, this proposed program can be beneficial to wild game, fish, water supplies, outdoors enthusiasts and every American taxpayer. To the Sierra Club and Wilderness Society I say quit whining and demanding a whole loaf or none at all. As for the people who are unhappy about the 3.1 million acres of roadless areas declared for Nevada forests, they can't point to a reasonable need for any new roads in the designated areas.

The Forest Service's plans for no new roads is a long overdue step forward in protecting our remaining forests.