| Press Release |
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| November 12, 2004 |
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Governor Opposes Proposed Revision to Roadless Rule
(Salem, Ore.) Governor Ted Kulongoski today sent a letter to the USDA Forest Service opposing the Bush administration’s proposed revision to the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule.
On July 12, 2004, the Forest Service published a proposed rule that would repeal the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule and replace it with a new rule requiring governors to petition the Agriculture Department and Forest Service in order to retain roadless protections on national forests in their states. The public comment deadline on the proposed rule is November 15, 2004.
“While the federal forests belong to all Americans, the State of Oregon would like a larger role in national forest planning for the 16 million acres of national forest land located within our borders,” the governor wrote. “Greater state involvement in forest planning, including federal forest land use allocation, can help federal land managers to better understand the potential environmental, economic, and community effects of proposed management actions.”
“Because of the current unsatisfactory implementation of federal forest land use allocation, including roadless areas, I continue to believe that commercial entry into the IRA’s (Inventoried Roadless Areas) will break up the integrity of the forest ecosystem of large contiguous roadless areas, which in turn, will lead to severe environmental damage to these sensitive areas,” the governor continued.
The governor further argued that changes to federal forest management should be handled by the U.S. Congress, in partnership with the states, rather than by what he called “piecemeal administrative rulemaking susceptible to changes in White House Administrations.”
“There is no guarantee that the Secretary of Agriculture will accept any state petition,” the governor wrote. “It is inconsistent to shift the difficult work of roadless area designation from the Forest Service to states when the states do not have the authority to see that decisions are implemented. Asking Oregon to create yet another planning process for federal lands without any real management responsibility or budget control is simply an unproductive use of the state’s time, energy and resources.”
Governor Kulongoski concluded: “If the federal government is unable or unwilling to address a comprehensive resolution of the management of all federally managed forest lands in Oregon, Oregon is opposed to the proposed revision to the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule.”
Oregon has 1,965,000 acres of inventoried roadless lands on public lands in Oregon that are entrusted to the stewardship of the U.S. Forest Service.
Read the full text of the governor’s letter.
Media Contact:
Marian Hammond, 503-378-6169
Anna Richter Taylor, 503-378-6496
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