NEVADA FOCUS: New national forest proposal takes middle of the road

RENO - The Clinton administration's new plan to protect 58 million acres of roadless areas in national forests won't do everything the backers wanted or the critics feared.

''The agency took a position kind of in the middle of the road,'' said Rick Connell, Forest Service roadless coordinator for the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest in Nevada.

Whether that is a good thing depends on who you ask.

Miners and off-road vehicle enthusiasts are worried they'll be denied access they traditionally had to areas because of subtleties in the proposed policy.

Environmentalists say the effort stops far short of what they thought Clinton originally proposed - protection of the nation's last remaining wild areas without roads.

''It is a product of our political system. It is a compromise,'' said Kevin Hoeke, an attorney for a forest watchdog group in the Sierra Nevada, the American Lands Alliance.

''I don't think the extraction industries are happy with it. On the environmental side, many think the protection can and should be stronger,'' he said from Nevada City, Calif.

''As environmentalists, we don't want to compromise on roadless areas because we are fighting over crumbs. We're talking about the last remaining wilderness.''

Under the latest proposal, new road building would be largely prohibited across 3.4 million acres or about half of the Humboldt-Toiyabe - the largest U.S. national forest outside of Alaska.

All existing roads would remain open and all-terrain vehicles would continue to enjoy access to areas they currently may use.

Commercial logging would be banned inside the roadless areas, but there are exceptions allowing road building and tree cutting to reduce fire threats, improve wildlife habitat and in other special circumstances, mainly involving health and safety.

Exemptions also are allowed for mining companies to build new roads to reach hard-rock mining claims, like gold and silver, but not leasable materials, like oil and gas.

Perhaps most significant, from the view of Forest Service officials, is what the policy does not do - treat roadless areas as federally designated wilderness where there is a strict prohibition on all motorized access and commercial activity.

''Some groups were pushing for that and others were afraid that it was going to happen,'' Connell said.

''It was a big concern among some state officials and others a year ago - that we were just going to close those areas and they would become de facto wilderness,'' he said.

Rural lawmakers and county commissioners said they feared the agency was going to close every existing trail and four-wheel track that was within the various roadless areas but not currently recognized on Forest Service maps.

Under the latest proposal, all existing roads on the national forest will remain open, even primitive roads and four-wheel tracks not marked on Forest Service maps.

''You can still use them and maintain them. You just can't build any new roads,'' Connell said.

''That's not to say that in the future you wouldn't close a road for a variety of reasons. But you'd go through a public process,'' he said.

In fact, Connell said the policy isn't much of a change from the way they've been managing the Humboldt-Toiyabe.

''In reality, we really haven't done a lot of road building for years. We've seen some development for mining and a little bit along the Sierra front related to timber harvesting,'' he said.

''But we've evolved into a timber harvesting strategy in general where we are not building a significant amount of roads.''

Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., is among those keeping a skeptical eye on the plan.

''I want to work with them because it's going to affect 3 million acres in Nevada,'' Gibbons said.

''I am still seriously concerned that access to our national forests will be denied to many citizens who cannot walk through these beautiful forests, such as the elderly and handicapped,'' he said.

''What these sort of regulations do is make a small elite group of people the only beneficiaries of our forests and that is wrong,'' he said.

Carla Boucher, legal counsel for the United Four-Wheel Driver Association and its Nevada chapter in Las Vegas, doesn't buy the Forest Service's claim that off-road access will go unchanged.

If the required maintenance of the roads ever rises to the level of ''reconstruction,'' the road will be abandoned, she said from Washington D.C.

''What they have done is created defacto wilderness,'' she said.

Connell disagrees.

''Reconstruction would be realigning the whole road with bulldozers and heavy construction, improving the road to increase the traffic level,'' Connell said.

''Picking up rocks, moving boulders and cutting vegetation out of the way - which most off-road groups do - is not restricted,'' he said.

And while federal mining laws ensure access to hardrock minerals, mining officials say they fear the policy will make it easier for the Forest Service to deny permits necessary for their roads in national forests.

''When an old two-track road that goes up into the mountains washes out, the claim holder has to go to the Forest Service for a permit to repair the road,'' said Russ Fields, president of the Nevada Mining Association.

''They can be extremely restrictive or fairly reasonable. It is left to the discretion of the authorized officer in the field,'' he said.

''As such, I can't imagine it is going to be the same. I think it is going to be more restrictive,'' he said.

The same agency discretion concerns a loud critic on the other side.

''They still leave it up to local and agency discretion as to when and if temporary roads or even permanent roads can be built,'' said Tim Hermach, executive director of the Native Forest Council in Eugene, Ore.

''Absolutely no environmental degradation has been reduced, let alone eliminated under this plan,'' he said.

''There are no real logging restrictions. Logging is actually planned to increase in the so-called 'protected' areas.

''We have been this road before with this administration and we have learned not to trust a single word they say,'' Hermach said.

''Under this administration, protect can mean cut down.''