Yesterday's announcement by President Clinton that he is instructing the U.S. Forest Service to protect remaining roadless areas on Forest Service Lands was panned by Wyoming's Governor and congressional delegation. However, recent public opinion polls in southern Wyoming show that citizens do support the presidents action. The Governor and delegation appear to be out of step with Wyoming residents, even in counties directly adjacent to National Forest lands.

In the past few years, two polls were conducted in southern Wyoming regarding land use issues on county federal land and on the Medicine Bow National Forest (MBNF). The results show that people want more wild areas of our National Forests protected from industrial use such as commercial timber harvest and motorized vehicles.

The County Land Management Study, dated October 28, 1998, focused on how residents of Albany County, Carbon County, Converse County and Platte County want to see the MBNF managed over the next ten years.

• In all four counties the highest priority in managing the MBNF was to consider the way the Forest looks when making management decisions. The second most important consideration in all four counties was to provide open areas for recreation that are not roaded (motorized) nor designated as Wilderness. We interpret this to mean that protecting roadless areas from commercial timber harvest and road construction is important to residents in Albany, Carbon, Converse and Platte counties. This priority was ranked second in importance in all four counties and above industrial interests in all four counties. (See page 25, D. Desired Future Conditions)

Other issues that were ranked third and fourth in terms of importance were:

• Residents of Albany County wanted plants and animals to be considered over humans and wanted more land to be set aside as designated Wilderness, third and forth priorities respectively.
• In the remaining counties, Carbon, Converse and Platte County residents wanted the MBNF to continue to provide products for their economic benefits to the community and consider plants and animals over humans when making decisions, third and fourth priorities respectively.

The second study was the Carbon County Land Use Plan --Draft-- from October 31, 1997.

• This study found that residents in Carbon County preferred to have an increase in governmental efforts to conserve timber, wildlife and water resources on the Medicine Bow National Forest (47.3%) rather than to harvest more timber on the MBNF to produce more commercial wood products (42.0%). (See Table 2-8)
• The survey also found citizens were evenly split, just under 45% want more federal lands available to local timber companies for commercial harvest of timber, and just over 45% do not support more federal lands available for timber. These results are consistent with another question that found almost two-thirds of the citizens polled want more federal land in Carbon County designated for purposes of conserving fish & wildlife habitat, as well as surface and groundwater resources. (69.5 % to 22.3% respectively, Table 2-11). Further, citizens overwhelmingly responded that more federal land in Carbon County should be designated for public recreation. See Table 2-11.
• Finally, residents in Carbon County felt that fishing, nature appreciation, hunting and overnight camping were the most important recreation opportunities.