Forest Service To Log 105 Roadless Areas

The Forest Service has plans to develop more than 250,000 acres of roadless Idaho forest into the next century, under more than 100 logging projects, the Idaho Conservation League reports.

The 105 projects will add 262 miles of roads to a national forest road network already estimated at up to 50,000 miles in Idaho alone. The report takes in from 1997 to 2001.

“The Forest Service talks about ecosystem management and forest health but it continues to log and to build roads in the remaining healthy, intact forests,” said John McCarthy, league conservation director.

Key roadless lands on the docket include the Deadwood River on the Boise National Forest, French Creek on the Payette, Cove Mallard on the Nez Perce, and Mallard Larkins on the Clearwater.

“Second growth and secondary harvest from existing roads should be providing logs for Idaho forest products, but past logging practices failed to lead to sustainable harvest,” McCarthy said.

The report is down from 142 projects over seven years, 1994 to 2000, in the last league study.

“I was surprised so many projects are being continued after all the attention to roadless lands in the last five years,” said Vern Buchta, a league volunteer who compiled the report from Forest Service documents.

Half of the Idaho roadless tracts have high ecological integrity, compared with only 21 percent of the nonwilderness, national forest lands, according to the government’s Interior Columbia Ecosystem Management Study.

A July report by the Wilderness Society found 1 million acres of Idaho roadless land were developed in the last decade, leaving 8.4 million acres.