A federal preservation proposal that would ban any new road construction within 43 million acres of National Forest Service land involves 150,000 acres in Montezuma, Dolores and San Miguel counties, forest service officials reported Wednesday.

Most of the four regions are located within or near the Rico Mountains and around Lizard Head Pass in the San Juan National Forest. The areas include 52,270 acres at Storm Peak, 17,750 acres at Blackhawk Mountain, and a 64,000 acre swath south of Lizard Head Pass that encompasses the area of Sheep Mountain, Grizzly Peak and Hope Lake, according to Thurman Wilson, forest planner with the San Juan National Forest.

Between 5,000 and 10,000 acres of Monteuma County encompassing Hesperus Peak, Shark’s Tooth Peak and Centennial Peak and a portion of the Bear Creek drainage would be affected by the plan, Wilson said.

A 5,000-acre section that abuts the Lizard Head Wilderness Area to the south is also considered under the proposal, which the Clinton administration announced Tuesday to help protect roadless areas from further development, including logging and mining.

Overall there are half a million acres of designated roadless areas within the 1.9 million-acre San Juan National Forest in Southwest Colorado, most of which is located in the central part of the national forest and the eastern sections near Pagosa Springs.

"The west side has flatter terrain and there are more roads, with not much roadless left in them, but there are some," Wilson said. "But there has not been much activity planned for those areas that would call for road construction, so from that standpoint I would not anticipate much impact."

Rugged, steep terrain and unstable soils in those areas listed on the western side of the San Juan National Forest make it unlikely that there would be any future interest in timber industry for the short term, Wilson said.

"It’s rough, remote country for timber sales so there have been some on the extreme fringes, but at the moment none are planned in the unroaded areas," he said, adding that no current plans would be shut down because of the proposal. "Most of our logging in those areas are in the lower areas of ponderosa pine stands where there are many roads."

Wilson said that the proposal does not ban logging per se, although it would makes it very impractical, forcing timber-harvesting companies to use helicopters to log in those areas, a difficult and expensive option.

"They will still be open to logging but it probably wouldn’t be too practical or economical to use helicopters, considering the product quality and market," Wilson said.

The proposal would not affect existing roads, trails, or further restrict motorized vehicle use, such as snowmobiling.

Under the plan, local forest planners would ultimately decide whether roads could be built for logging in the areas, a criteria that was criticized by environmentalists as being too lenient. The timber industry, on the other hand, says the proposed restrictions on roads threaten their livelihood, a tenuous industry that is already struggling to survive.

Local mill owners said it further restricts where they can go to harvest timber in order to stay in business.

"This (proposal) will definitely have an effect on us," said Charlie Mitchell, owner of the Western Excelsior Plant in Mancos. The company harvests aspen trees that are processed into chips and sold nationally for packing material and other uses.

"The government has already scaled back their timber sales and now they are telling us that there should be no more roads put in, so that hurts us even more," Mitchell said. "We having to go out farther and farther now to get timber."

"We’re bringing timber out of Utah and New Mexico to keep this place going, which is ridiculous because there is adequate aspen supply within fifty miles of us," he said, adding that many of the high altitude areas proposed for the roadless protection contain prime aspen strands and habitat.

"The best aspen is on federal land between 7,500 and 9,000 feet elevation," Mitchell said. "There is very little private land with aspen that is available to us. More restriction just multiplies the problem for me and my employees."

The land boundaries, designated roadless in the late 1970’s under the Roadless Area Review and Evaluation study, met the criteria to be listed in the roadless proposal announced Tuesday because each section contains at least 5,000 acres of roadless terrain, or sits adjacent to other federally protected areas such as wilderness areas or wilderness study areas. Wilson said that those areas listed are so remote that it is unlikely many roads have been built since the last study more than 20 years ago.

"It is still pretty much the same," he said. "Most of these areas are already being managed for back-country recreation and wildlife habitat right now."