Spring Equinox 2005, Volume 10 #1

Roads can greatly impact wildlife. Roads have been shown to directly or indirectly lead to habitat loss and fragmentation, poaching, over-trapping, snag reduction, negative edge effects (including increased noxious weed infiltration), movement barriers, displacement or avoidance, harassment or disturbance at specific use sites, and chronic negative interactions with humans (Wisdom et al. 2000). While hundreds of articles have documented how roads influence wildlife, no significant study has examined if and how road removal reverses these impacts.

New forest regulations from the Bush administration eliminate protections for wildlife, minimize accountability to science, and take public opinion out of public-land planning. Conservationists argue that the new regulations, mostly finalized on Jan. 5, 2005, contradict the very law they are intended to implement, the National Forest Management Act of 1976 (NFMA). And in late February, conserva­tion groups sued the Forest Service (FS) over the new regulations.