Although touted as an effort to prevent forest fires, the salvage timber provision reportedly was worded to industry specifications and ended up applying not only to diseased and fallen trees but to scores of healthy trees as well, including those in old-growth forests. All these roads have brought substantial damage to the environment, critics say. Roads disturb wildlife. In the Green Mountain National Forest in Vermont, for example, the Forest Service proposes to build a logging road near a feeding area for black bears. The bears will be driven away, some biologists warn, when the road opens the remote area to people and their noisy all-terrain vehicles and other machinery.
Roads can also cause floods, environmentalists charge.
In the Coeur d'Alene National Forest in Idaho, where one square mile of forest can be interlaced by 20 miles of roads, logging roads have been blamed for helping to provoke landslides and floods. Even the Forest Service concedes that its vast network of roads has become a major headache for the agency.