Roadless Facts

Roadless Area Conservation Rule Overview

Overview

What are roadless areas ? Roadless areas are special places on the national forests designated by the US Forest Service due to their remote, natural and undisturbed attributes. Generally speaking, the Forest Service considers roadless areas to be those parts of the national forests without roads or with very low road density (less than 1/2 mile road per 1,000 acres). While not officially protected from logging and road building activities, the Forest Service makes an official inventory of these areas from time to time including whenever the individual management plan for each forest is updated.

What is the background on roadless area protection ? Roadless areas were first officially inventoried in the 1970s. In March 1999, the Forest Service issued a temporary moratorium on road building in roadless areas while comprehensive protection for these areas was considered.

After three years of intense study, including over 600 public hearings and 1.6 million public comments with hundreds of eminent scientists and religious leaders favoring protection , the Forest Service adopted the Roadless Area Conservation Rule. The Rule restricts commercial logging and road building, but allows appropriate management activity for fire hazard prevention, existing oil and gas production leases, habitat for imperiled species and public safety. The Rule does not close existing roads or prohibit access for hunting and fishing.

State	Comments on the Policy	% in Support of Policy
Alabama	4,255	95.9
Georgia	14,617	96.5
North Carolina	25,185	97.4
South Carolina	5,692	96.3
Tennessee	8,795	97.7
Virginia	45,513	98.3
TOTAL	104,057	97%

What is happening now ? The roadless rule was signed by the Secretary of Agriculture on January 12, 2001, and was due to go into effect two months later. However, immediately upon taking office, President Bush delayed implementation of the rule and officially repealed it on May 5, 2005.

Roadless Areas in the South

What is happening to the South's forests generally? A recent study by the Forest Service of non-public forestland shows that the South is losing native forests to sprawl development and pine plantations at an alarming rate. In the last decade, the South lost 2.9 million acres to sprawl while another 4.5 million acres of native forest were replaced with fast growing pine plantations. In addition, logging is predicted to increase across the South by 50% by the year 2040 with a loss of as much as 31 million acres of forested land.

What role do the national forests play? There are approximately 4.7 million acres of national forests in the Southern Appalachians -- the largest semi-contiguous bloc of public lands in the East. These national forests supply about 2% of the timber in the six-state southeastern region (AL, GA, NC, SC, TN, VA).

How much of the Southern Appalachian National Forests are in roadless areas? Unfortunately, because our public lands are crisscrossed with logging roads, there are very few roadless areas left in the Southern Appalachians -- only about 15.4% of our national forest, or 726,600 acres, still qualify as roadless, well below the national average of 31%.

Inventoried Roadless Acres In the Southern Appalachian National Forests

National Forest	Roadless Acres	Total Forest Acres	% of Roadless Acres (rounded)
Bankhead ( AL )	0	180,549	0%
Talladega ( AL )	13,000	231,679	5.6%
Cherokee (TN)	85,000	635,000	13.4%
GW/Jefferson (VA and WV)	403,400	1,785,000	22%
Pisgah/Nantahala (NC)	151,000	1,033,999	14.6%
Sumter (SC) Andrew Pickens RD	6,200	84,615	7.3%
Chattahoochee (GA)	68,000	749,550	9.1%
TOTAL	726,600	4,700,392	15.4%

Talking Points on Key Issues

Tourism and Recreation

With more than half the U.S. population living within a day's drive of the Southern Appalachians , our national forests provide unique recreation opportunities for all sorts of forest visitors. As the population grows, our scarce roadless areas play an increasingly important role in providing backcountry experiences for hikers, campers, hunters, anglers, paddlers, birdwatchers and other outdoor enthusiasts.

Over the last 20 years, the nation as a whole has lost 2.8 million acres of roadless areas under localized Forest Service management that considers each forest separately, and that focuses on extractive development such as logging and mining. A permanent, comprehensive protection strategy is needed to shield these citizen-owned lands from future degradation.

Water Quality

National forests are the single largest source of drinking water for Americans. Here in the Southern Appalachians , some 2,200 towns and cities rely on Forest Service lands, including roadless areas, to safeguard the watersheds of their drinking water supplies. Some examples of towns and cities that get their drinking water from roadless areas: Atlanta, GA (Boggs Creek, Turner Creek, Cedar Mountain, Miller Creek roadless areas); Gadsden, AL (Oakey Mountain roadless area); Asheville, NC (South Mills River and Laurel Mountain roadless areas); Clemson, SC (Bee Cove roadless area); Johnson City, TN (Slide Hollow, Stone Mountain, and Big Laurel Branch Addition roadless areas); and Pulaski, VA (Little Walker roadless area).

Many of the native trout streams in our region suffer from excessive sedimentation caused by erosion from road construction and logging. Roadless areas provide crucial protection for watersheds allowing degraded streams to recover while preserving the purity of less disturbed areas.

Ecology and Wildlife

The Southern Appalachians harbor globally significant biological resources, including some of the world's greatest diversities of aquatic species, and more than half of all tree,

fern and flowering plant species found in North American. The Southern Appalachian national forests also support as many as 95 threatened and endangered species, many of which benefit from the havens that remote forest areas provide.

Some wildlife species, like black bear, need large tracts of undisturbed habitat to thrive. Studies show that black bears tend to avoid areas with high road density. Roads are also associated with higher incidents of illegal bear poaching.

Roadless areas provide crucial interior forest habitat for many migratory songbirds such as the Cerulean warbler. Many of these songbirds are experiencing population declines associated with disappearance of large, undisturbed forested tracts.

Economics

Currently, there are 9,500 miles of logging roads dissecting the Southern Appalachian national forests -- double the length of interstate miles in Alabama , Georgia , North Carolina , South Carolina , Tennessee , and Virginia .

The Forest Service estimates that $8.4 billion is needed to address the backlog of maintenance on existing roads. Curbing the agency's ability to build more roads is sound conservation and taxpayer policy.

Recreation generates an estimated $100 billion annually and sustains approximately 330,000 jobs nationally. By comparison, the U.S. Treasury collected only $188 million in timber sale receipts through the Forest Service timber program last year.

In the South, the vast majority of timber (about 98%) is harvested from forests in private ownership. Because only 2% of our timber comes from national forests, and because the Act will only affect a small fraction of those forests (about 15%), no significant impact on regional timber production is expected.

The effect of the roadless protection Act on oil and gas development will be minimal. Less than 1% of domestic oil and gas is produced on national forest lands. Furthermore, the policy exempts development activities, including road construction, on all existing oil and gas leases.

More Facts about Roadless Areas

America 's national forests are already covered with 386,000 miles of roads -- enough to circle the earth 15 times, and nationally there is a backlog of road repairs that amounts to $8.4 billion. (in our region 9,500 logging roads - double that of the interstate in AL, GA, NC, SC, TN and VA)
The vast majority of respondents in the Southern Appalachians-some 97%-were in favor of providing protection for these areas so favored for hunting, fishing, hiking and camping.
Over the past 20 years, the nation as a whole lost 2.8 million acres of roadless areas.
Roadless areas provide crucial protection for trout streams and drinking water sources.
Roadless areas provide crucial interior forest habitat for many migratory songbirds such as the Cerulean warbler. Many of these songbirds are experiencing population declines associated with disappearance of large, undisturbed forested tracts.
Because the vast majority of timber is harvest from private forests (98%) and because the act effects only 15% of our National Forest, no significant impact on regional timber production is expected.

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