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Logging and Roadbuilding Barely 18 percent of America's publicly owned forest land is permanently protected as wilderness. More than half, 52 percent, has been hammered by decades of timber cutting, logging-road construction and other industrial uses. The remaining 30 percent remains wild but unprotected. The U.S. Forest Service allows the timber industry to use this public resource for private profit. The Forest Service uses tax dollars to subsidize the building of industry logging roads and other logging expenses. Between 1992 and 1997, the agency's timber program lost taxpayers $2 billion. The environmental losses are incalculable. Clearcutting and the more than 440,000 miles of roads that crisscross our National Forests have left stumps where healthy forests once thrived, and increased soil erosion, water pollution and flooding. They have destroyed and fragmented habitat, dooming plant and animal life that needs intact wilderness to survive. Oil and Gas Development Most of our public lands are open to oil and gas leasing and the destructive activities associated with exploration and development. Activities like pipeline, road and well pad construction destroy wildlife habitat, create air and water pollution and forever compromise the wild character of the landscape. Unfortunately, the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management are continuing to issue new leases in areas that are critically important wildlife habitat. For example, in the Greater Yellowstone area - an ecosystem that is crucial to the survival of the grizzly bear - more than 200 oil and gas wells have already been drilled. And the Forest Service is currently planning to lease up to 5.7 million additional acres - nearly one quarter of the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem. In the Beaverhead National Forest, which is part of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, more than 99 percent of the legally available lands have been opened to oil and gas development. And on the east side of the ecosystem, 100 percent of the legally available lands in the BLM's Grass Creek Resource Area have been leased to oil developers. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, one of America's premier wild natural treasures, is threatened by oil industry efforts to gain access to drill in the last stretch of Alaska's north slope that is not already open to oil and gas development. Mining Mining on public lands is governed by an 1872 law designed to encourage the development of western lands. Mining companies can stake claims anywhere on federal public land unless the land has been formally withdrawn from mining. Mining operations disturb soils, denude the area of plant life and in other ways destroy wildlife habitat. These operations consume vast quantities of water - frequently in short supply in the West - and can result in severe water pollution that can poison an area for generations. There are an estimated 557,650 abandoned hardrock mining sites in the United States, 16,000 of which continue to seriously degrade water quality. Mining companies use deadly cyanide to extract gold from ore. Mining effluents have contaminated more than 12,000 miles of rivers and streams and 180,000 acres of lakes in the U.S., and there are at least 50 billion tons of untreated mining wastes across public and private lands. Sixty of the toxic dumps on the federal Superfund list were caused by mining operations. To add insult to injury, taxpayers subsidize this environmentally devastating industry because multinational mining companies take billions of dollars worth of valuable minerals from our publicly owned lands without paying any royalties to the Federal Treasury. Overgrazing Most western lands are leased to private ranchers for grazing by cattle or sheep, dubbed "hoofed locusts" by John Muir. Grazing fees are so low that the BLM does not even make enough revenue to monitor the damage, let alone restore the land. Damage from overgrazing includes soil compaction, soil erosion, eradication of plant species, competition with wildlife and siltation and pollution of streams and ponds. The BLM reports that public rangeland on the whole is in unsatisfactory condition. The damage is worst in riparian streamside areas where livestock tend to congregate. In fact, 66 percent of riparian range habitat has been found to be at risk. Sprawl and Development Americans gobble up 1 million acres of farmland a year. This runaway, unchecked growth creates demand for expensive and environmentally destructive new roads, and water, gas and sewage lines. In addition to eroding the green and open space essential to communities, sprawl is putting intense pressure on "protected" areas. As development accelerates, parks and wildernesses that were once surrounded by large areas of undeveloped land are now surrounded by highways, tract homes and strip malls. This development disturbs the peaceful qualities of these parks and can affect the quality of a protected area's air, water and wildlife habitat. In addition, there is added pressure to open historically protected lands to development. For example, in 1998, Congress removed land from the Petroglyphs National Monument near Albuquerque, N.M., to allow the construction of a six-lane commuter highway across public land considered sacred by Native Americans. For more on sprawl, see the Sierra Club's Sprawl Reports. Pollution Air and water pollution affect many national and neighborhood wild places. Some of the problems were inherited from long-gone industries that left toxic sediments buried in river and lake bottoms. The chemical cocktails at the bottom of the Hudson River and the Great Lakes, for example, have poisoned fish and made them dangerous for human consumption. Today, air pollution created by Midwest smokestack industries plagues National Parks and Forests in the east. Vista-robbing haze from power plants also threatens the view in places like the Grand Canyon. Airborne mercury pollutes both the air and ultimately the water where it settles. Lead, cyanide and other toxins leaching from hard-rock mining operations threaten the health of western communities. And waste from factory hog and chicken farms is polluting water and posing a public-health threat in areas of the southeast and southwest. Off-Road Vehicles (ORVs) ORVs break up the fragile layer of topsoil and expose it to rapid erosion. They also compact soil so it is less able to support plant life or absorb rain or snowmelt. This leads to further erosion, siltation of streams and lakes, loss of plants and the disappearance of animals that depend on those plants or clean water. In especially fragile areas - deserts, alpine tundra and bog areas - damage to the soil and plant communities can be permanent. In addition, ORV use destroys food and habitat for wildlife, crushes underground burrows and disturbs nesting and breeding animals with the machines' loud motors. ORV use has increased dramatically in recent years. Between 1991 and 1996, sales doubled from 150,000 units to over 300,000 units per year. As new technologies increase the ability of these vehicles to reach remote areas, the damage to our wild places is becoming a very serious threat. More on ORVs. Photo courtesy Tom Till Back to SPARE Report Main Up to Top HOME | Email Signup | About Us | Contact Us | Terms of Use | © 2008 Sierra Club |
