Roadless area conservation
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Roadless area conservation is a conservation-related term in which most road construction is prohibited on designated areas of public land such as national parks and national forests. Laws that support roadless area conservation are often called roadless rules.
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[edit] Concept
Access roads provide convenient access for industry, as well as for a variety of recreational activities like sightseeing, fishing, hunting, and off-roading. However, all activities that interrupt an ecosystem necessarily have an impact, including erosion, pollution, species loss[1], or even loss of aesthetic appeal.
[edit] Opposition
Roadless area conservation is not without criticism, especially from mining and lumber industry officials, as well as from politicians, Libertarian and Federalist political groups, sportsmen, and ORV enthusiasts.
[edit] Political conflict in the U.S.
On January 12, 2001, after nearly three years of analysis the U.S. Forest Service adopted the Roadless Area Conservation Rule to conserve 58.5 million pristine acres of National Forests and Grasslands from most logging and road construction.[2] When he entered office, current U.S. President George W. Bush modified these regulations to allow a more autonomous approach, where state governments would be permitted to designate their own roadless areas.
On September 20, 2006, U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Laporte ruled against the Bush Administration plan to reverse the Clinton-era regulations, and said that the Bush administration's plan "established a new regime in which management of roadless areas within the national forests would, for the first time, vary not just forest by forest but state by state. This new approach raises a substantial question about the rule's potential effect on the environment."[3]
On November 29, 2006, Judge Laporte issued an order to ban road construction on 327 oil and gas leases issued by the Bush administration since January 2001, most in Colorado, Utah and North Dakota- areas that were already protected before the Bush Administration's reversal of the 2001 law.[4]
[edit] External links
- Alaska's Denali National Park is prized for its expansive roadless area; there is only one 90-mile access road into the park, and only official vehicles are permitted after 30 miles[5].
The following is from The Wilderness Society
- The U.S. National Forest System is comprised of over 192 million acres in 42 states. Roadless areas make up 58.5 million acres of National Forest lands in 38 states and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.
- The Roadless Rule has garnered widespread support since 2001, receiving more public comments than any federal rule in history.
- America’s National Forests are currently covered with 386,000 miles of roads - enough to encircle the earth 15 times - and a $4.5 billion maintenance backlog exists on National Forest roads according to the Forest Service’s own estimates (USFS Budget Justification 2006).
- Roadless forests safeguard clean water from watersheds nationwide, the source of drinking water for millions of Americans. More than half of roadless areas intersect watersheds that provide drinking water to local communities.
- Roadless forests preserve critical habitat for fish and wildlife, including more than 1,600 threatened, endangered or sensitive plant and animal species.
- More than 100 scientists wrote a letter to former U.S. President Bill Clinton in 2004 extolling the high quality of watersheds, fisheries, and wildlife habitat provided by roadless forests. Also in 2004, more than 100 economists told the George W. Bush Administration that designating roadless areas is an economically sound policy that saves taxpayers millions of dollars.
- Exceptions were made to the Roadless Area Conservation Rule to allow road building to fight fire, protect property and provide access to state and private lands (Sec. 294.12 (b) of the 2001 Rule).
[edit] In literature
A notable American proponent of roadless wilderness areas was writer Edward Abbey in his book Desert Solitaire. In his essay Industrial Tourism and the National Parks, Abbey describes road-construction as "unnecessary or destructive development" and the loss of wilderness as a consequences of what he called industrial tourism: where once-secluded natural areas become popularized and degraded.
