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50 businesses endorse environmental agenda for Wasatch-Cache National Forest By
Jim Steitz
Fifty Cache County businesses have endorsed an environmentally focused management plan for the Wasatch-Cache National Forest, in a petition to the Forest Service collected by volunteers for USU's Ecological Coalition of Students. The specific recommendations included in the petition are to: • Recommend the Mount Naomi roadless area for Wilderness designation. • Not allow commercial logging in the Wasatch-Cache. • Protect all roadless areas from roadbuilding or resource extraction. • Schedule the swift creation of a management and monitoring plan for the Mount Naomi Wilderness. • Invest in trail and campground maintenance, and restore old, eroding roads to a natural condition. The petition will be passed to the Forest Service, as well as the Logan City Council. The Wasatch-Cache National Forest is revising its long-term management plan. The final draft is expected later in 2002. "My business deals very much with students, and many of them came here because of what our natural environment has to offer," said Scott Datwyler, manager of Trailhead Sports. "Many of those students are from areas that had failed to protect enough of their natural environment. Hopefully, we will do better." "It should be obvious to everyone that we have so few places set aside, that we have severe impacts in the places we do set aside. It is getting harder and harder to have a wilderness experience," said Randy Wirth, manager of the Caffe Ibis Roasting Company in Logan. "Because the state is growing in population, it should increase its open space resources. If we want to leave anything for our grandchildren, we need to do this now. We are at a crossroads. Although some people believe that land is being locked up, it couldn't be further from the truth." Heidi Belnap, manager of the Bluebird restaurant, said, "The Cache Valley area is known nationally for its great wilderness, and it is a complete fallacy to sacrifice that for timber of other exploitation." Stephen Thompson, Logan city councilman, said the national forest should not be used for timber harvesting, as it does not get much rainfall. "I support the efforts of ECOS in protecting our forest resources. We are kidding ourselves if we believe the Wasatch-Cache National Forest is a viable and appropriate timber producer," he said.
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