ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, November 16, 1996 TAG: 9611180035
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
When the U.S. Forest Service wrote the Jefferson National Forest's management plan in the mid-80s, the debate over clear-cutting - the practice of leveling all the trees across several acres - generated enough heat to make Smoky Bear uneasy.
Today, as the Forest Service prepares to revise the Jefferson plan, timber-cutting remains a pithy issue, one that often pits conservationists against loggers and businesses that use timber as a raw material.
Hunters, hikers, campers, conservationists, lumbermen, fishermen and others have until Dec. 9 to get their ideas to the Forest Service about how the Jefferson should be managed over the next 10 to 15 years or longer.
The Forest Service began asking the public in 1993 how the plan should be revised. But work on the revision was soon put on hold because the agency decided to examine conditions on all 4.6 million acres of national forests in the southern Appalachians.
Some forest activists want the Forest Service to consider all the Southern forests - many of which are now revising their management plans - and the Shenandoah and Great Smoky Mountain national parks as a single biological region.
Relationships between the Jefferson and other Southern forests should be an important consideration in the new Jefferson plan, said Jim Loesel, a Roanoke activist with the Citizens Task Force on National Forest Management.
The Forest Service and other federal and state agencies completed their five-volume Southern Appalachian Assessment in July. Since the study's release, the Forest Service has turned its attention again to revising the Jefferson plan.
Nancy Ross, leader of the revision team, said roughly 250 people or groups have contacted the agency about the plan. The two hottest issues have been roadless areas and old-growth forest, she said.
Roadless areas are important to those who want Congress to designate more of the forest as wilderness, which means banning logging and other activities. Preservation of old-growth forest is a concern for those who would like to see the emphasis shifted from deer to bear as a primary wildlife species and others who are interested in habitat for certain migratory songbirds.
The Jefferson National Forest, which is jointly administered with the George Washington National Forest, contains about 690,000 acres in Virginia with 20,000 acres more in Kentucky and West Virginia. The forest extends 218 miles from the James River in Botetourt Country to the Kentucky line in Lee County. It contains the Mount Rogers National Recreation Area, 11 wilderness areas, eight fishing lakes, 311 miles of the Appalachian Trail and 400 miles of trout streams.
A 1976 law requires each national forest to prepare a management plan at least every 15 years. The plans must consider the use of the forest in a variety of ways involving: wildlife, timber, recreation, water and minerals.
The Forest Service hopes to have the revised plan for the Jefferson completed by late 1998. But the agency finds itself in the not unusual position of trying to balance the differing concerns of a variety of interest groups.
Loesel, for instance, said he believes the amount of timbering on the Jefferson is still too high and that too many timber sales still don't pay the Forest Service as much as they cost to conduct.
The Southern Appalachian Forest Coalition, an organization of conservation groups involved in forest plan revisions across the South, is encouraging the Forest Service to look at the Southern Appalachians as a single biological region.
The coalition, said David Carr of the Southern Environmental Law Center in Charlottesville, wants the government to stress recreation, scenery and wildlife in the revised forest plans rather than timber production and the building of new roads. The coalition, he said, would also like to see more of the wild areas of the Jefferson and those areas with old trees protected.
But the Appalachian Forest Management Group, a timber industry organization based in Alleghany County, told the government that it would prefer balance in the revised plan, said Bill Leichter, a member of the group and retired ranger on the George Washington National Forest.
The group, Leichter said, doesn't want to see a large majority of the Jefferson put off limits to logging as was the case in a new plan for the George Washington National Forest, where 70 percent of the land, 700,000 acres, was declared unsuitable for logging. A timber harvest is needed to reinvigorate an aging forest and to provide habitat for certain species of wildlife such as deer and ruffed grouse, he said.
No more forest land should be put into wilderness designation, Leichter said. Putting an area in wilderness can keep the Forest Service from doing what's needed to protect the forest's health and that of wildlife, he said.
The group is also concerned that the Forest Service isn't getting enough money to maintain its existing recreation areas, he said. No money, he said, should be spent on new areas until the current ones are maintained.
The new plan should be flexible and keep all sorts of management options open to the Forest Service, so the agency can deal with any unanticipated situations in the years ahead, Leichter said.
A team of Forest Service specialists working on the revision will meet Monday to discuss management ideas. The session will be held at 9 a.m. at the agency's office on Valleypointe Parkway off Peters Creek Road, and the public is welcome.
LENGTH: Medium: 97 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: Map by staff.by CNB