Vermont: White Mountain NF roadless clearcutting appeal to be different under Obama?

RICHMOND – In the final weeks of the Bush administration, the U.S.
Forest Service slipped in one more plan to clearcut in a roadless area
on the White Mountain National Forest. Six weeks later, on the morning
of Inauguration Day but before the Bush administration left office,
conservationists filed what they hope will be their last appeal of a
logging project located in a roadless area on any national forest in
the country.

The Center for Biological Diversity and the Vermont and
New Hampshire Chapters of the Sierra Club submitted their appeal to
the U.S. Forest Service, opposing the fourth roadless area logging
project to be proposed on the White Mountain National Forest in the
span of eighteen months. The Kanc 7 Project, which would rebuild roads
and clearcut a portion of the Sandwich 4 roadless area, is located
between the Sandwich Range Wilderness and the Kancamagus National
Scenic Byway, west of Conway, New Hampshire. Earlier this month, the
conservation groups appealed the Mill Brook Project, which targets the
Kilkenny roadless area, in the northern section of the national
forest. “The Bush administration tried, and failed, for eight years to
kill protections for roadless areas on our national forests,” said
Mollie Matteson, conservation advocate with the Center for Biological
Diversity.

“The American people would not allow it. They recognized
the importance of safeguarding these special places on national
forests as final bastions of natural beauty, wildlife habitat, and
healthy watersheds. ” Said Matteson: “But unfortunately, a few
national forests saw the anti-environmental policies of the Bush
administration as good cover for invading roadless areas. The White
Mountain National Forest was one of these. They hoped they’d get away
with flouting the Roadless Rule.”
http://yubanet.com/usa/Conservationists-Look-to-Obama-Administration-to-Stop-Destructive-Logging-on-Protected-Public-Lands.php