Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, December 20, 1993 TAG: 9404220016
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Which is why the public should take an interest as the National Forest Service begins the long process of revising its 10-year management plan for administering the Jefferson National Forest.
This valuable regional asset - 708,000 acres in Southwest Virginia - has been run with an eye more toward accommodating loggers than maintaining a balanced approach that protects plant and animal life, maintains water quality, preserves the natural beauty of public lands, affords a wealth of recreational opportunities and implements a healthy tree-harvesting policy.
Logging is a significant and appropriate activity in national forests and, carefully managed, is good for them. Reasonable efforts to accommodate the timber interests should be made wherever possible.
But President Clinton is right to want to end such practices as substantially-below-cost sales of publicly owned timber. His recent appointment of Jack Ward Thomas, a wildlife research biologist, as forest service chief should open a new and welcome era of ecosystem management for the nation's forestlands.
This holds particular promise for the Jefferson, which is to come under the supervision of a new regional forester for the Southern Appalachians, to be appointed by Thomas, at the same time it is developing its new management plan.
Proper stewardship of public lands is of great importance to the Roanoke Valley, indeed to all Southwest Virginia, because these lands, with their combination of beauty and accessibility, help make our region uniquely attractive.
It will be important to develop a management plan that recognizes the forests as special places, valuable for their stands of old-growth trees, wildlife habitats and physical beauty as well as for their salable timber. Protecting wilderness, maintaining watershed protection and encouraging recreational use - with more hiking trails and rugged campgrounds - will increase the value of these public lands for hunters and fishermen, hikers and campers, nature photographers and bird watchers.
It will also enhance this region's attractiveness to tourists with dollars to spend, and to business people and others looking for nice places to live and set up shop.
It will be important, too, in the management plan, to abandon some old abuses. The plan should cut down on new logging road construction, an expensive endeavor both in taxpayers' dollars and in damage to the forest.
It should restrict logging mostly to high-quality wood, rather than encourage pulpwood production that could be done easily and profitably on private lands. (Only a small fraction of Wesvaco's and other mills' pulp comes from public lands anyway.) And planners should accommodate more wilderness areas in places too steep and remote for logging.
Such a plan would likely complement this region's vision of its natural assets and economic-development goals. It also would require new perspectives on what the national forestlands should be and how they should be used. The Clinton administration has signaled its desire for such a new vision. The new chief is expected to articulate it. The Jefferson forest plan should exemplify it.
by CNB