The Concord Monitor
www.cmonitor.com

Tuesday, November 28, 2000

The Valley News

Call it environmental parochialism. The New Hampshire political establishment, which generally can be counted on to support sensible environmental initiatives, is now opposing one of the more encouraging proposals to come out of the Clinton administration: a ban on new road-building and commercial logging in about 60 million acres of the national forest.

The New Hampshire politicians don't oppose the policy per se, but they do object to having it applied to New Hampshire's White Mountain National Forest. Allowing the federal government to impose such a policy threatens local control, they say, and imperils the good working relationship among the various groups that take an interest in the national forest - loggers and conservationists, among others. Senator Judd Gregg, Gov. Jeanne Shaheen, both chambers of the Legislature and the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests are among those who have questioned or opposed applying the new policy to the White Mountains.

The opponents' numbers are more impressive than their logic. Even in a state that has elevated local control to something of a fetish, it is bizarre to assert that New Hampshire's desires should trump the federal government's in managing a national forest. The White Mountain National Forest belongs to the American people, and the federal government has every right to do what it believes is necessary to protect a national asset.

Should the federal government accommodate local sentiment? It certainly should try. In this particular matter, local sentiment has been overwhelmingly in favor of extending the ban on new roads into the wilderness. Nine public hearings were held in Vermont and New Hampshire, and comments overwhelmingly favored the ban. Even at a hearing in Gorham, a White Mountain town dependent on the timber industry, comments ran 2-1 in favor of the ban.

That hearing took place one week after Gregg proposed an amendment in the Senate that would have exempted the White Mountain National Forest from the new policy. Why the wringing of hands about the loss of local control when the federal government appears to be doing what the people of New Hampshire want?

That local sentiment should strongly favor the additional protection shouldn't be all that surprising. Technically, the new policy places 235,000 acres of the 780,000-acre White Mountain National Forest beyond the reach of commercial logging. In practice, however, the vast majority of that land is already off-limits - either because it had already been designated as a wilderness area or because it encompasses alpine areas that have no timber value.

According to the northeast office of The Wilderness Society, the new policy will affect only about 45,000 acres of the White Mountain National Forest that are now open to logging. Loggers will still have access to about 40 percent of the national forest in New Hampshire. Moreover, the forest accounts for less than 2 percent of the timber harvested in New Hampshire.

In other words, this is no big deal in New Hampshire. Not so elsewhere. The new policy will contribute greatly to protecting what remains of the old-growth forests out West. For New Hampshire to give aid and comfort to opponents of this measure out of a spurious concern about local control is baffling.