National Forest

WARM SPRINGS, Va. - Only two persistent sounds echoed in this quiet mountain valley on a recent day - bird song and a steady scraping noise. Over by a line of tents, where it smelled like wet grass and peanut butter sandwiches, a crew of muddy-kneed scrapers gathered and saved every speck of dirt from the open pits they dug. They were archaeologists, some professional and some novice, excavating the evidence of Virginia's pre-European history - arrowheads,...

ORKNEY SPRINGS, Va. - I saw it as I sat on a flat area of my roof, looking out across our valley, and though I was alone, I gave out an audible, involuntary "Wow!" Our place - on the far side of Virginia's Shenandoah Valley - sits just below the top of a ridge looking west across a trough of forested land leading up to the next ridge, which is high enough to be called Great North Mountain, though it runs mostly north and south. The land on the mountain is national forest, and some time in the 1980s, patches of those woods were harvested for lumber.

FLAT ROCK, N.C. - More than a dozen environmental groups and attorney Robert Kennedy Jr. have launched a conservation proposal, called the great Forest, for the southern Appalachian Mountains that would protect large tracts from developers and loggers, creating a wildlife corridor from Alabama to Virginia. Of the nearly 6 million acres of national forest in the swath, the Southern Appalachian Forest Coalition proposes protecting nearly half - or 2.8 million acres - from future logging and road-building.

WASHINGTON - A coalition of environmental and conservation groups charged yesterday that President Bush's energy plan will imperil not only the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska but 15 other publicly owned scenic areas from the California coast to the Finger Lakes of New York. Speaking at a rally on the Capitol lawn, group leaders charged that the Bush plan would destroy wilderness areas while granting more than $27 billion in subsidies, tax savings, royalty exemptions and other benefits to the oil, coal and nuclear energy industries at a time of high profits.

BANGSRI, Indonesia - The last of central Java's great teakwood forests ends up in places like this, a place filled with the whine of buzz saws and the burr of electric sanders, a place like Abdul Jambari's garden-furniture workshop. "This is for export," Jambari says, stroking the finely polished arm of an auburn-grained folding chair. "It's the best teak, what we call class A." And because his order book is full, a month or two from now, for about $100, Jambari's chair will sit on a patio or deck somewhere in the United States or Europe.

THE BUSH administration must feel like Br'er Rabbit now that a federal judge says it can't ban logging in roadless areas of national forests. This judicial ruling allows the administration to pretend it supports the roadless policy devised by President Clinton, even though it intends to significantly change that sweeping forest protection order. Sounds like the cunning Br'er Rabbit pleading with Br'er Fox not to throw him in the brier patch, even though that was his real objective. In fact, President Bush tacitly encouraged the judge to block the rule, which prevents commercial activity on 58 million acres of wilderness area.

KETCHIKAN, Alaska - Giant, centuries-old spruce and hemlock line the misty waterways of the Inside Passage. Heard from a boat gliding through the deep blue waters, the whispering of the endless stands of dark green trees, the squawking of birds, the occasional splash of an orca conspire to create a mystical aura here in the Tongass National Forest, the largest intact temperate rain forest in the world, and one of the last. Then, just before the tiny port city, the forest breaks and a hulking brown, treeless hillside comes into view, the aftermath of clear-cut logging.

BOTH MANAGED and wild areas have their place in our National Forest System, a public treasure embracing 192 million acres and 156 separate units. Over half of that vast acreage has been logged and developed for public use; less than a fifth is set aside as preserved wilderness. Now the nation is asked to decide how to shape the future of the remaining quarter of this priceless patrimony. In the boldest conservation step of his tenure, President Clinton proposes to ban road building on these lands, largely protecting them from extensive logging and intensive use. That is a worthy goal for the greatest public good.

This is an excerpt of a Boston Globe editorial published Thursday.THE CLINTON administration can improve its already strong environmental record if it presses ahead with restrictions on road construction in 33 million national forest acres that are open to logging and mining. It has already placed an 18-month moratorium on road building, but conservationists are concerned that the prohibition will be eased after an in-house study of the issue.The road ban effectively blocks logging and mining operations and preserves the natural character of the forests.