roadless initiative
In 1978, the United States Forest Service (USFS) began the management of roadless areas, i.e., all areas greater than 5,000 acres and without constructed roads, in a study called Roadless Area Review and Evaluation II (RARE II). The purpose of this study was to determine the suitability of these roadless areas for inclusion in the National Wilderness Preservation System. On October 13, 1999, twenty-one years later, President Clinton directed the Forest Service to provide long-term protection to inventoried roadless areas, as well as smaller roadless areas not yet inventoried. President Clinton's primary motives in initiating this direction were to reduce the $8.4 billion backlog of road maintenance costs as well as provide a definitive statement on how inventoried roadless areas would be managed in the future. The USFS developed a plan for future management of all roadless areas known as the Final Roadless Area Conservation Rule (Roadless Rule) and released it on January 5, 2001. The Roadless Rule, scheduled to become federal policy on May 12, 2001, will have significant environmental, economical, and social impacts on 58 million acres of public land.
6 million board feet of timber annually (USDA FEIS B-5). Many tree species, such as lodgepole pine and aspen, require a major stand-removing disturbance for natural regeneration to take place (Smith 329). Prohibition of road construction and logging will help attain this goal. Colorado and Utah are just small examples of the total 30 billion tons of coal on National Forest lands (USDA FEIS 3-316). National Summary-Forest Management Program Annual Report Fiscal Year 1997. Bonnicksen, "the loss of nature's clearcuts threatens the health and productivity of America's forests. In addition to the introduction of sediments, road construction and timber harvest can have negative effects on water temperature. These two activities can cause fragmentation, the division of large tracts of land into smaller tracts of land (USDA FEIS G-5). While fire is the most common tool, all of these factors can produce the same results of removing mature trees and replacing the stand with young seedlings.
Common topics in this essay:
Roadless Rule,
USDA FEIS,
Forest Service,
Private Forests,
Doctor Bonnicksen,
Forest Foundation,
Hoover Wills,
United Treasury,
Annual Report,
Verry PhD,
roadless rule,
forest service,
usda feis,
road construction,
timber harvest,
water quality,
national forest,
road construction timber,
forest health,
construction timber,
national forests,
construction timber harvest,
usda forest service,
temperate forest foundation,
decline forest health,
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Acceptance Essays
