Small Tree Farmers Oppose Roadless Changes, Huddle W. Environmentalists

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"Now that the Bush administration is planning to open roadless forests to commercial logging, more tree farmers are joining Hinson by reaching out to environmental groups to keep a glut of timber off the market.

Small farmers who have benefited from timber restrictions banning logging in the vast federal lands in the West do not stand to be awarded the massive contracts the timber, oil and gas goliaths will pursue. Instead, they fear the entry of more lumber in the logging market. "It's bad for the environment and bad for the pocketbooks of the tree farmer," said Mark Woodall, who grows about 6,000 acres of trees near LaGrange in west Georgia.

The White House is rewriting a restriction ordered in the Clinton administration's final days that essentially protected almost 60 million acres of federal forestland from logging, mining and oil and gas development by prohibiting road construction. The change, announced in July, would give governors the difficult decision in early 2006 of whether to petition the federal government to permit new roads in their forests or keep them untouched.

Although the decision affects more than 30 percent of national forests, the more than 700,000 acres spanning Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia are a relatively small portion compared with the huge tracts of pristine forest in the West."

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50683-2004Aug31.html