ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, January 5, 1996 TAG: 9601050016
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LIZA FIELD
God has cared for these trees. He has saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, floods; but he cannot save them from fools.
- John Muir, 1865
IT WAS disappointing to hear that Forest Service Chief Jack Ward Thomas decided to reject an appeal to revise the 1993 plan for Virginia's George Washington National Forest.
The Southern Environmental Law Center filed the appeal two years ago on behalf of The Wilderness Society, Sierra Club, Audubon Society and Preserve Appalachian Wilderness; as well as such regional groups as Virginia Wilderness Committee, Virginians for Wilderness, and the Cowpasture River Preservation Association.
These groups protested the plan to continue allowing rampant subsidized clearcutting of the George Washington at a continued cost of millions to American taxpayers - and an inestimable cost to Appalachian wildlife and future human generations.
They also called for more wilderness protection. Only 3 percent of the million-acre forest is designated wilderness. The new plan recommends reducing that fragment even further, to 1 percent, though one-quarter of its acreage is eligible for this protection.
These figures are ludicrous and mind-boggling, when one considers the following:
The few existing wilderness areas in the forest already suffer from overuse. It is the closest national forest to Tidewater, Richmond, Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia, whose inhabitants are increasingly desperate for a bit of fresh air, scenery, solitude and silence. As these cities (and Roanoke, Charlottesville, Lynchburg, etc.) continue to grow, wilderness will be in even greater demand.
The rate of extinction of wild species is mind-boggling. Out of an estimated 10 million species, we are eliminating about 10,000 per year - 30 per day. This horrific fact alone should give us sufficient pause from habitat destruction, to consider the value of our forestry practices.
The George Washington National Forest contains critical habitat for black bear, song birds and other threatened and endangered wildlife. Forest Service Chief Thomas, however, has called for rampant logging and road-building, which have proved detrimental to wildlife populations. He also has agreed to an uninformed plan to open up the pristine, majestic Bath and Highland County areas to oil and gas leasing, not only destructive of wild species, but of the rare beauty of these areas.
In '96 and '97, our national woodlands will be imperiled as never before. This summer, timber lobbyists and their representatives succeeded in winning a free-for-all in public lands clearcutting for the next two years. Far more public lands will be at the disposal of Big Timber, with far fewer laws safeguarding mountainsides, streams and wildlife.
Then, there's money. Says Virginian Jim Loesel, from the Citizens Task Force on National Forest Management, ``It is unbelievable that the chief would uphold a plan the agency itself estimates will lose $7 million in taxpayers' dollars for below-cost timber sales and additional logging roads.''
And the roads themselves? Loesel says the Forest Service hasn't had the funds to maintain the roads it already has built, causing erosion and sediment buildup in trout streams. Other naturalists have noted that these roads are also notorious ``poacher'' routes; hunters who refuse to go afoot drive deep into the forests, where they are known to use illegal blinders and to shoot anything from black bear and wildcats to woodpeckers and owls.
Our national forests have suffered long enough from the trysts of government with private industry. Even well-meaning Forest Service employees find themselves ruled by the Big Timber interests who shape their policies.
But someone within the system needs to dare to speak out, particularly since wildlife cannot speak for itself, and private citizens seem to have no say in the management process.
Our forests, after all, are not an inert resource to be exploited. They are living, breathing places whose well-being, like that of our great-grandchildren, is not our right to damage, but our duty to protect.
I understand the political pressure that seems to have pushed Thomas over the edge of reason. But his refusal to consider an appeal by highly respected, vastly representative citizens' groups - and his decision to uphold a plan shaped mainly by the timber industry - make me wonder to whom these lands belong anyhow? Are they the private property of the Forest Service officials we have hired to protect them? Do they belong to the private industries whose one interest in them is profit?
Attorney David Carr reports that as a last resort before a possible lawsuit, the Southern Environmental Law Center has asked the Secretary of Agriculture to review and correct the Forest Service plan.
Let us hope that such a revision takes place: one in which life is valued over the greed of a few special interests. After all, as Muir understood, a good plan for Gold's wild creatures is a good plan for the body, heart and spirit of man.
Liza Field lives in Wytheville.
LENGTH: Medium: 99 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: Nancy Ohanian/Los Angeles Timesby CNB