Roadless-areas

May 2007 – In January, six Congressmen began drumming up support for original co-sponsors of a bi-partisan conservation measure – the National Forest Roadless Area Conservation Act of 2007.  It will codify the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule into law, and eliminate state petitions affecting the roadless rule, which made roadless areas vulnerable to local-only politics.  

Now, you can advocate for this protection in a number of ways:

• Contact your Congressmen and encourage them to become original sponsors of the National Forest Roadless Area Conservation Act of 2007. 
• Contact your Congressmen and Senators in support of a new Virginia wilderness bill, the Ridges and Valleys Act of 2007, which will protect over 55,000 acres of Virginia 's Jefferson National Forest and will create seven new Wilderness Areas, two new National Scenic Areas, and expand six existing Wilderness Areas in southwest Virginia.
• Support the ATC with a contribution. 

Fifty-eight point five million acres of forests and grasslands were classified as Inventoried Roadless Areas based on the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule that formalized them. It was a result of more than two decades of debate and over a million people, including ATC members, voicing support for this federal rule. 

In 2004, the administration introduced a rule to increase access to roadless forest lands principally for resource extraction purposes such as logging, gas and oil exploration, and mining.  In response, again, more than a million organizations and people, including the ATC and its members, expressed their support for the Forest Service continuing its 1998 suspension of road construction, and the 2001 roadless rule. 

In November 2004, ATC opposed the proposed 2004 rule stating in part that "ATC believes the proposed rule, if adopted, would adversely affect the management of inventoried roadless areas along or near the Appalachian Trail, other trail systems, and the resource values associated with millions of acres contained within roadless areas in the National Forest System, including many thousands of acres in the eastern United States.” ATC took particular exception to the proposal’s “state petitioning process for inventoried roadless area management” which effectively deferred federal, multi-state (indeed national) resource issues for state and local reviews only.

In September 2006, US Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Laporte, of the U.S. District Court in northern California, ruled that the administration had overlooked both the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Endangered Species Act when it repealed the 2001 rule. The court reinstated the earlier rule, and the Forest Service has subsequently issued an agency-wide directive prohibiting activities in contravention of the 2001 rule.

More information: http://roadless.fs.fed.us/