Worthy Plan for Public Forests

For decades the U.S. Forest Service has boasted of its 192-million-acre empire as the “Land of Many Uses.” Alas, those uses often amounted to commercial exploitation--including logging, oil and gas development, mining and livestock grazing. Frequently, these were money-losing deals for the American taxpayer and left the forest lands, including critical watersheds and wildlife habitats, degraded and despoiled.

This Wild West approach to the land has no place in a new century with millions of Americans thirsting for outdoor recreation and the solace of unspoiled places.

Now the Clinton administration has taken a historic step to change the emphasis from exploitation of Forest Service lands to saving them in their natural state for the benefit of this and future generations. President Clinton has directed the Forest Service to study appropriate ways to manage the estimated 40 million acres of national forest lands that remain “largely untouched by human intervention,” meaning primarily that they have not yet been sundered by the 383,000 miles of roads and trails that crisscross the rest of the nation’s forests.

It’s not clear what will result when the complex environmental studies are completed sometime next year and the issue is sent back to Clinton for a final decision shortly before he leaves office. But it appears from the president’s directive that he is determined to make forest protection his major environmental legacy, as did Theodore Roosevelt 95 years before him.

The exploiters and their friends in Congress already have declared war on the Clinton plan, but we expect the president to hold firm. As he correctly declared in his directive to Forest Service chief Michael J. Dombeck, this “treasured inheritance” includes vital wildlife havens, the sources of fresh water for countless communities and recreation opportunities for Americans.

These roadless tracts of 5,000 acres or more--most of them in the Rocky Mountains and California’s Sierra Nevada--are found in 35 states. Clinton should also consider special protection for Alaska’s Tongass forest, the site of contentious and damaging timber harvests.

The exploiters with their chain saws and bulldozers have had their way with the public lands far too long. Clinton’s plan would save the best of what is left of the forests for the benefit of all Americans.