For Immediate Release
Monday, July 12, 2004
Contact Brian Kennedy or Matt Streit at (202) 226-9019

Bush Administration Moves Roadless Rule Policy to Local People

Washington, DC - United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Ann Veneman today announced a proposed rule that would conserve important roadless areas in national forests and involve states in important policy making decisions. In the interim, the Forest Service has reinstated a directive that would afford roadless areas the same protection given by the 2001 rule.

"This proposal embraces the fact that local people are the best stewards of our forests," said Resources Committee Chairman Richard W. Pombo. "It injects common sense and local control into Clinton's eleventh-hour, mindless edict. Forest management decisions should be made at the state level by people who know individual forest conditions best, not by bureaucrats surrounded by concrete in Washington. Today's decision will be praised by Americans throughout the West, where ninety percent of these roadless areas occur."

The roadless rule was finalized in the waning hours of the Clinton Administration with little public comment and has been the target of endless litigation ever since. The eleventh-hour rule was hastily formulated on an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for approximately 60 million acres that was undertaken in just one year's time.

"This proposal moves the decision-making process closer to the ground where it belongs," said Resources Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health Chairman Greg Walden. "Instead of locking up 58 million acres through presidential edict as the Clinton-Gore roadless rule did, this proposal establishes a cooperative process with the states to determine which areas need to be protected."

The new rule establishes a collaborative process in which governors will work with the USDA and all interested local parties to make state-specific rulemakings for both conservation and management of roadless areas. The approach will give local communities the ability to identify areas for inclusion, set up local management plans, and protect local resources.

The approach will ultimately protect public health through management policies that will protect forests from the negative effects of wildfire, insect infestation and disease. By properly managing the forests, communities can ensure clean water sources and clean air.

In July 2003, Federal Judge Clarence Brimmer permanently enjoined the roadless rule. According to Judge Brimmer, "in its rush to give President Clinton lasting notoriety in the annals of environmentalism, the Forest Service's shortcuts and bypassing of the procedural requirements of NEPA has done lasting damage to our very laws designed to protect the environment."

Brimmer continued in his opinion to state that the Forest Service's designation of 58.5 million acres as roadless areas "was a thinly veiled attempt to designate 'wilderness areas' in violation of the clear and unambiguous process established by the Wilderness Act for such designation... In sum, there is no gainsaying the fact that the Roadless Rule was driven through the administrative process and adopted by the Forest Service for the political capital of the Clinton administration without taking the 'hard look' that NEPA required."

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White House Proposal Would Leave Forest-Use Decisions to Governors
By FELICITY BARRINGER

Published: July 12, 2004


WASHINGTON, July 12 — The Forest Service today proposed scuttling a Clinton-era rule, which put 58.5 million acres of national forest largely off-limits to logging, mining or other development, in favor of a new system that leaves it to state governors to seek greater or fewer strictures on the construction of logging, mining, recreational or other roads on federal forest land.

The announcement, made by Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman in Boise, Idaho, a state where ideological opposition to the Clinton rule was most pronounced, was a signature moment for the Bush Administration's environmental policy.

After three years of gradually retreating from the sweeping preservationist rule, which covered about 30 percent of the 191 million acres of national forests and was embraced by environmentalists, the administration decisively rejected it and substituted a patchwork process that makes state officials the moving force in decisions of whether to log or to conserve forest lands.

In her press conference today, Secretary Veneman portrayed the Bush administration's proposal both as a way to avoid the tangle of litigation provoked by the Clinton rule and a way to enhance local participation and federal flexibility in determining the use of national forest land. Final decisions on state petitions will be made by the Forest Service.

But a broad spectrum of environmental groups — including some usually sympathetic to the Bush administration — voiced outrage and disappointment at the announcement. "This doesn't ensure that a single acre of roadless area gets protected," said Marty Hayden, a lawyer with Earthjustice, one of several groups that are defending the Clinton-era rule in Federal court.

"Everything could be up for grabs," he added.

Jim Range, a former senior Republican congressional staffer who in 2001 helped establish the Forest Road Working Group, issued a statement today saying that the loss of the Clinton-era protections was a disappointment.

"The current regulation established an important degree of certain protection to these valuable areas, which provide important fish and wildlife habitat and recreational opportunities for American hunters, anglers, campers, hikers, and others," Mr. Range said in a prepared statement.

"The new process by which state governors can submit new roadless area protection plans will perpetuate the uncertainty associated with this issue and may lead to a substantial reduction in the level of protection that roadless areas are afforded."

The proposal, which will be open to public comment for the next 60 days, includes a provision for an 18-month moratorium on new activity, during which time changes to the current roadless designation could be made only with the approval of the Forest Service chief, Dale Bosworth.

One timber sale, involving 665 acres of land in the Tongass National Forest, was approved by Mr. Bosworth last week. The Tongass, a West Virginia-sized swath of rock and timber in southeastern Alaska, had separately been exempted from the Clinton rules protections by an earlier decision.

The new proposal would allow Alaska's governor to petition for further logging efforts. The 12 states most affected by the roadless controversy, which contain 56.6 million acres, or 97 percent, of all roadless areas in the country, are: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.

Dirk Kempthorne, Idaho's Republican governor, appeared with Secretary Veneman at today's news conference and said of roadless protections: "There's a right way and a wrong way to make that determination. Today the Federal government and the Bush administration is doing it the right way. We now have a roadless process that can be accomplished by respecting state sovereignty."

In a later conference call with reporters, New Mexico's Democratic governor, Bill Richardson, said of his state's 1.1 million acres of roadless forest: "These are areas that the federal government should manage consistently from state to state." Today's announcement, he added, "is another abdication" of federal responsibility.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/12/national/12CND-FOREST.html