A new proposal to keep millions of acres of national forests free from roads has provoked a national debate. Who is involved in the argument and how has each side justified itself?

Geoff Thompson, a Western State College student in Gunnison, Colorado, punched buttons on his Global Positioning System device, grasped for his camera and notebook, and dug into his backpack for his topographical map.

With a black marker, he quickly scribbled a sign that said "GR-5, 167.5" (abbreviations for Ghost Road 5, and its location in the forest), and then dated it. He placed the sign in the middle of the dirt road, snapped a photo, and filled out a data sheet.

This scenario has occurred more than 500 times during the past 5 summers in the Gunnison National Forest in southwestern Colorado. High Country Citizens' Alliance (HCCA), located in Crested Butte, Colorado, has sponsored the work of summer interns like Thompson, many of whom are college and high school students during the rest of the year.

Each day is nearly the same. Up at 7 a.m., on the roads by 8, and exhausted by 11 a.m., interns walk, bike, and drive miles through the Gunnison National Forest, looking for unclassified roads. They find as many as 10 a day.

These so-called ghost roads have been created by logging companies or recreational users of motorcycles, snowmobiles, and all terrain vehicles. They exist unknown to the National Forest Service not just in Colorado, but across the 192 million acres of public national forest lands.

HCCA hopes to use the information gathered over the past summers to show local Forest Service administrators that there is a much higher density of roads than the Forest Service ever intended. To help its argument, HCCA has entered data on all the roads into a computer mapping program. With the click of a mouse on the Gunnison National Forest map, viewers can scan through every photo and data sheet of each unclassified road.

"Organizations and agencies documenting the existence of ghost roads are also involved in a national race against time," writes Marnie Criley, of the Wildlands Center for Preventing Roads organization. "The more ecologically destructive ghost roads we can map and get the Forest Service to close, the better for our wildlands and wildlife."

Last October, President Clinton vowed to protect 43 million acres, or about one quarter of national woodlands and 2% of the nation's entire land. His proposal affects a large, undeveloped area of the Gunnison National Forest. It also covers 3.5 million acres in Washington and Oregon, 9 million acres in Idaho, almost 6 million acres in Montana, and more than 4 million in California and the rest of Colorado.

Under the plan, roadless areas must exceed 5,000 acres, the minimum criteria for wilderness consideration under the Wilderness Act of 1964. HCCA hopes to use its new road inventories to clarify which areas still remain roadless in the Gunnison National Forest.

The final decision on protecting roadless lands rests with the U.S. Forest Service. President Clinton's proposal, though, has prompted a flurry of attention by advocacy groups who regard it as the greatest land protection proposal since Theodore Roosevelt held office almost a century ago.

Like other environmental advocacy groups across the country, HCCA lauds the roadless proposal as a step in the right direction. However, members would prefer that the Forest Service ban all logging, extend the roadless protection to tracts of 1,000 acres or more, and include 8.5 million acres of the Tongass National Forest in Alaska.

Opponents of the roadless proposal have been equally vocal. "This is to us the single largest threat in many, many years to continued access to public land, and we're taking the threat very seriously," says Edward Moreland, the Washington, D.C., representative for the American Motorcyclist Association.

Moreland's views reflect the fears of those who say that their recreational use of motorcycles, dirt bikes, snowmobiles, and all terrain vehicles is part of enjoying their natural surroundings. Industries, including timber, mining, and ranching, have stressed the importance of roads to their financial survival.

This past July, 100 residents of the local Gunnison community gathered at the Gunnison Multipurpose Building for an informational meeting about President Clinton's Roadless Initiative.

Meetings like these, in which affected citizens learn about the proposal and voice their opinions, have taken place all across the United States. The Forest Service is in the process of reviewing all the public comments at these meetings.

At the door, citizens leafed through papers and looked at maps lining the walls. The HCCA's Sandy Shea walked through the rows of plastic chairs, placing a paper on each seat with his organization's views on the initiative. "Just a little propaganda before the meeting," he joked.

After a quick presentation from the local Forest Service staff, the floor opened for public comment. One by one, citizens approached the podium and spoke to the audience and into a videotape that was sent to the Forest Service headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Almost 80 people spoke for three minutes each. A scientist from the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Gothic, Colorado, vouched for the damage roads could cause to wildlife and wildlands. A local professor feared that the Forest Service was acting too quickly. Others fired back that they had not acted quickly enough.

A local motorcyclist actually supported the Roadless Initiative, claiming that there are already plenty of roads on which to ride. Rod Nash, who is the author of Wilderness and the American Mind and who lives in Gunnison county, argued that the initiative was another step in the way Americans think about wilderness, or uncultivated lands. He noted that the English or Germans would love to have the choice to save roadless lands in their respective countries.

Learn More

• Preserving forests is a worldwide concern. Check out the recent Riverdeep Today article, "Saving a Part of Brazil" .
  
  

More Links

• Get more information on the U.S. Forest Service's Roadless Initiative.
  
  
• Learn more about the positions of the Blue Ribbon Coalition, a group of organizations that oppose this initiative.
  
  
• The Wildlands Center for Preventing Roads has played an active role in the current debate.
  
  

Related Resources

• Get Beyond the Beauty Strip : Saving What's Left of Our Forests.

Seth Warren. who wrote this article, is a senior at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire. For the past two summers, he worked as an HCCA volunteer in Gunnison National Forest.