The Allegheny National Forest will have more wilderness, new remote recreation areas and new standards to govern oil and gas well drilling, according to a new, long-awaited, 10-year management plan.
In addition, the U.S. Forest Service will try to raise money to buy some of those underlying mineral rights.
Realization of many of the goals in the new plan released yesterday by the Forest Service here in the shadow of the state's only national forest will require additional federal funding at a time when most other national forests are getting less.
The plan designates Minister Valley, in the west-central part of the forest, and Chestnut Ridge, in its northern corner as wilderness study areas. Those two parcels totaling 12,379 acres, will be subject to additional biological review but can't be designated as wilderness without an act of Congress.
Such a designation would boost the Allegheny's total wilderness from 8,979 acres to 21,358 acres or 4 percent of the 513,000-acre forest, still far below the 20 percent average in national forests.
Kirk Johnson, executive director of Friends of Allegheny Wilderness, had proposed eight new wilderness areas totaling almost 54,500 acres but said he was pleased with the plan's two recommendations. He vowed to advocate for more.
He said the public overwhelmingly supports more wilderness in the Allegheny, based on written comments made during the Forest Service planning process. Of 8,277 public comments received, 6,800 specifically favored designating the maximum amount of wilderness. Twenty-one regional and national environmental groups also endorsed the proposal.
Allegheny Forest Supervisor Kathleen Morse said the wilderness recommendations were weighed against other, competing uses in the forest, located 150 miles north of Pittsburgh. The popular recreational venue draws more than 1.2 million visitors annually.
"This is the best balance given the trade-offs," she said. "We're trying to provide a spectrum of opportunity for vegetative management and recreation too. These aren't the only new areas that would qualify for wilderness, but they are the most appropriate to achieve balance for our various users."
The plan creates three new remote recreational areas: along the Clarion River on the forest's southern boundary and on the East Fork of Hickory Creek and a small area near Hearts Content, both in the western part of the forest.
Timber cutting is limited to 54.1 million board feet annually, less than the limit of 90 million board feet set in the old forest management plan approved in 1986, but more than the 25 million board feet cut on average over the last six years.
The Pennsylvania Forest Products Association said the plan failed to provide enough "forest management and timber harvesting" to sustain the region's forest products industry.
The projected continuing boom in oil and gas well development in the forest moved Regional Forester Randy Moore to approve new standards for siting oil and gas wells to minimize surface disruptions.
Oil and gas rights under 93 percent of the national forest are privately owned, and the plan outlines a strategy for raising money to purchase up to 10 percent of those mineral rights and targets those purchases in wilderness areas.Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
