Forest Service Roadless Area Conservation FEIS Evaluation

The Forest Service published a Notice of Intent to initiate a rulemaking on roadless area conservation on October 19, 1999. The public provided over 517,000 comments on the scope of the initiative. On May 10, 2000, the Forest Service released a proposed rule and draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) on which the public provide over 1.1 million responses.

The Final EIS (FEIS) was published on the Forest Service website on November 13, 2000. The Final Rule is expected to be issued in the middle of December, but no sooner than December 13, 2000.

Carla Boucher, attorney for the United Four Wheel Drive Association, reviewd the reviewed the FEIS and found there are several areas where the FEIS has improved.

• The Forest Service has amended the definitions for "road", "classified road", and "unclassified road" in response to public comments.
• The alternatives that would have set up procedures for land managers to use in finding additional areas (called "unroaded areas") through project or forest planning has been eliminated. The Forest Service has moved this portion of the rule over to the planning rule.
• The Forest Service has finally put it in writing that it considers all "System" roads to be "Classified" roads.

The evaluation found that there are still some areas of concern.

• The FEIS has changed the scope of the rule. Instead of prohibiting road construction in just "unroaded" portions of Roadless Areas, it has broadened the prohibitions to all Roadless Areas, those WITH roads as well as those without.
• The prohibitions in the FEIS apply to a larger reported figure of acres for Roadless Areas. There are 7 million more acres in the FEIS than there were in the DEIS. 2.8 million acres are the increase from the change discussed in above, and 4.2 million acres were found when the FEIS maps were updated based on figures from each national forest
• The Final Rule will still only add "protections" to 1/100th of one percent of all Roadless Areas. The Forest Service has spent $9.4 million so far developing this policy. If the agency would NOT have developed this policy, 99.99% of all Roadless Areas would have been unentered by new roads anyway. And, American taxpayers could have saved $9.4 million.
• An additional 95,000 acres of Roadless Areas will be subject to catastrophic wildfire under the FEIS. When these areas catch on fire, the agency will spend an estimated $52.4 million on fire fighting. If the rule was NOT implemented these 95,000 acres could receive timber-related fuels treatment and therefore reduce or eliminate the risk of catastrophic fire. If the rule was NOT implemented the Forest Service could use this $52.4 million to maintain 675 miles of Level 2, high-clearance-vehicle recreation roads for 839 years. That's right - if the Forest Service allowed just 675 miles of roads to be built over five years for timber-related fuels treatment of these 95,000 acres, they could then maintain those same roads for 839 years for the same cost it be to fight fires in these areas.

Please help spread the word about the improvements and shortcomings of this rule with your local media. For an complete text of Carla Boucher's evaluation, CLICK HERE or visit the United Four Wheel Drive Association website.