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Roadless area meeting tonight Medford forum will give residents access to Clinton directive, Forest Service staff By PAUL FATTIG An informational meeting to review the Forest Service�s draft environmental impact statement for President Clinton�s roadless area directive will be held tonight in Medford. The session will be from 6 to 9 p.m. in the Red Lion Hotel, 200 N. Riverside Ave. In addition to reviewing the document, the public also will have an opportunity to talk with agency employees about how it could be implemented. However, no comments will be taken during the meeting, the second of three informational sessions being held in Southern Oregon this week. Comments will be taken during another series of meetings scheduled for the end of the month. The first roadless area informational meeting was held in Gold Beach Tuesday night; the third is set for 6 to 9 p.m. Thursday in the floral exhibit building at the Josephine County Fairgrounds in Grants Pass. The agency�s proposed management area plan would prohibit new roads on 43 million acres of inventoried roadless areas on national forests nationwide, including 1.6 million acres in Oregon. The plan calls for letting local agency officials decide whether to ban activities such as logging, mining and off-road vehicle use. There are nearly 81,500 acres of inventoried roadless areas in the 632,028-acre Rogue River National Forest. The 1.1-million-acre Siskiyou National Forest has slightly more than 284,000 acres of inventoried roadless areas. The first formal comment meeting will be June 27 at the Gold Beach Resort Convention Center, 29232 South Ellensburg, Gold Beach. The second comment meeting is set for June 28 at the Red Lion Hotel in Medford, followed by the third on June 29 at the Josephine County Fairgrounds in Grants Pass. Deadline for written comments on the draft EIS is July 17. Comments should be faxed to 877-703-2494 or mailed to: USDA Forest Service-CAET, attention: Roadless Area Proposed Rule, P.O. Box 221090, Salt Lake City, UT 841122. Comments can also be sent via the Web site http://roadless.fs.fed.us Obituaries | Sports | Business | Classifieds | Tempo | Prime Times | So Oregon Sites | Outdoor Journal | Subscribe | Contact | Movies | Advertise | Real Estate Showcase | Archive | Editorials | Letters to the editor | Religion | Wake-up Call | NIE | Cyber Chef | Job Network | So Oregon Weather | WSJ Northwest | Forums | AP Wire | AP Money | F.A.Q. | Awards Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. The Community Newspaper Subsidiary of Dow Jones & Co, Inc Copyright �The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA