New help for old growth

AS DENSELY wooded as northern New England is, very little of it enjoys the federal government's highest level of protection against logging, snowmobiling, and all-terrain vehicles. Such ''wilderness" protection requires an act of Congress. To their credit, the congressional delegations of Vermont and New Hampshire are backing bills to expand the acreage in national forests in both states that would be allowed to mature into the old-growth forests of generations to come.

Wilderness designation is the best way to protect watersheds, preserve the habitat of plant and animal species, and provide quiet recreation to hunters, anglers, bird-watchers, hikers, campers, cross-country skiers, and snowshoers. A hands-off wilderness area serves another purpose as well: as a passive laboratory of natural change. The naturalist Aldo Leopold called it a ''picture of how healthy land maintains itself as an organism."

Putting more land into this category is especially important at a time when the Bush administration is doing its best to reverse President Clinton's designation of almost one-third of all national forest land as forever roadless, a less restrictive level of protection than wilderness designation. Protection is especially needed in Vermont, where the plan for future use of the Green Mountain National Forest unwisely envisions the possibility of all-terrain-vehicle corridors across the land. The White Mountain National Forest plan for New Hampshire and Maine would continue its ban on these vehicles, which cause erosion and noise pollution.

Under the Vermont bill, the largest new wilderness area would be Glastenbury Mountain, northeast of Bennington. New Hampshire's bill would expand the Sandwich Range wilderness and create a new one in the valley of the Wild River, near the Maine border and just south of Route 2.

Both measures will face complaints from advocates of logging and motorized recreation. But critics cannot say that too much of either state is federally protected wilderness. In New Hampshire it's about 2 percent, andin Vermont about 1 percent. Both states have substantial networks of trails on private land for both snowmobiles and ATVs. As for logging, the new plan for the Green Mountain National Forest actually calls for increasing the annual timber harvest from the forest, which has not been a major source of wood for the state. The national forest providesless than 1 percent of all wood cut in Vermont.

Both states will be richer, not poorer, if the wilderness bills become law. If anything, the states should be looking to expand the wilderness areas beyond the borders outlined in the bills. Residents of southern New England can only look with envy at the wilderness areas to the north, and make plans to visit them.