The Nugget Newspaper - News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon

The Sisters region won't feel much effect from a sweeping Clinton administration plan to end road construction in large areas of the West.

Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck unveiled last week the policy that would effectively end road construction on 43 million acres of Forest Service lands -- nearly a quarter of the 192 million-acre National Forest system.

Sisters District Ranger Bill Anthony said the proposal would have no visible impact in the Sisters area.

"I don't see any change locally that will affect current public use of these areas," Anthony said. "We won't be closing any roads in them because they are currently mostly roadless."

In the 1.6-million acre Deschutes National Forest, about 135,000 acres are "inventoried" as roadless.

In a prepared news release, Dombeck stated that "Rapid development and shrinking open space make our remaining roadless areas increasingly valuable to many people."

Dombeck went on to say that the "proposal seeks to balance local needs with maintaining the values of our remaining roadless areas. At the same time, roadless areas would remain open for public use, access and recreation."

"Balance" seems to be the key philosophy of the policy.

In fact, the balance achieved by the announcement is such that road advocates and anti-road activists both dislike the new policy (see related story, page 47).

At present, there are 85,039 acres of designated wilderness in the Sisters Ranger District. Anthony pointed out that "Only roadless areas outside of congressionally designated wilderness are affected."

Of the nearly 400,000 acres of forest land in the Sisters Ranger District, only 28,557 fall under the auspices of the new policy.

The Sisters area parcels include Bearwallow, east of Broken Top (7,320 acres); multiple small parcels adjacent to the Three Sisters Wilderness (7,779 acres); similar tracts adjacent to the Mt. Jefferson Wilderness (2,303 acres); and the Metolius Breaks, in the "Horn" of the Metolius River at the northern tip of the forest (11,155 acres).

"Much of these inventoried roadless areas are within key watersheds identified in the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan, the Metolius Wild and Scenic River Plan, or Research Natural Areas," said Anthony.

"Those existing plans already place restrictions on road development in these areas."

Anthony says the Forest Service doesn't even have the funds to maintain current roads, let alone build new ones.

Anthony explained that the new policy has two components: development of a long term conservation policy for the approximately 50 million acres of inventoried roadless areas; and establishing a public process to address the management of remaining smaller roadless areas.

The wording of the second component is extremely important to forest managers, because it stops short of creating inflexible rules that would stifle "common sense" management at the local level.

As a result, the public and trained foresters will have the latitude to make management decisions that suit individual forests.