New plan for Alaska forest draws mixed reviews
Date: 20-May-02
Country: USA
Author: Yereth Rosen
The plan recommends that Congress designate as wilderness 1.4 million acres of the 5.5 million-acre Chugach, the second-largest U.S. national forest. The Chugach sprawls over mountains, glaciers, islands and tidal regions of Alaska's Kenai Peninsula and Prince William Sound area.
Environmentalists were unhappy that key areas of interest - like the Copper River Delta, a world-famous gathering site for migrating seabirds - were omitted from the wilderness recommendation. And they criticized the decision to reduce the wilderness area from the 1.6 million acres proposed by the Reagan administration in 1984.
"All the wilderness that the Bush administration is recommending right now is inaccessible, rocks and glacial areas," said Michelle Wilson, Chugach program coordinator for the Alaska Center for the Environment.
"The Copper River Delta is, arguably, the most ecologically valuable area of the Forest Service in any part of the country. It's beautiful, to boot," said Tony Turrini, director of the National Wildlife Federation's Alaska office.
But business advocates cheered the Forest Service's new Chugach plan.
"This plan is a fair compromise that should satisfy any reasonable environmentalist while fully protecting the ability of Alaskans to responsibly develop natural resources in southcentral Alaska," Republican senator and gubernatorial candidate Frank Murkowski said in a statement.
Ultimately, the question of designated wilderness in the Chugach will be decided by Congress. Until Congress acts, the areas that have been studied for wilderness designation will continue to be managed as wilderness.
The Forest Service's Chugach plan did not propose any specific commercial timber sales.
Released at the same time as the Chugach plan was a separate study calling for no new habitat protections in roadless areas of southeast Alaska's Tongass National Forest, the largest U.S. national forest.
The Tongass document was a draft environmental review mandated by a federal court ruling earlier this year. U.S. District Court Judge James Singleton had barred further timber sales in roadless areas until the Forest Service conducted a study of Tongass wilderness and the impacts of logging there.
