Forest plan would reverse roadless rule

BOISE – The Bush administration wants to give states more control over the management of roadless national forest land in a plan that raised both alarms and accolades Monday.

The proposal, announced Monday, would lift a Clinton-era ban on road-building in nearly a third of the nation’s 191 million acres of national forest land. It would affect 9.3 million acres of roadless area in Idaho and 2 million acres in Washington.

Environmental groups decried the change as a giveaway of national resources to timber-hungry state foresters. Supporters of the new rule, including Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne, said local control will lead to wiser forest management. Kempthorne, like many Western governors, long has argued for more control of federal lands.

“There are areas of Idaho that appropriately should be designated as roadless – I don’t dispute that,” he said. “The old rule said, in essence, that Washington, D.C., decision-makers know better than those of us in Idaho what should work for us.”

But Washington Gov. Gary Locke had a different take on the announcement. “Once again, the Bush administration has abdicated its leadership on a critical environmental issue,” Locke said in a statement. “The management of our nation’s forests demands national solutions that account for the concerns of all Americans.”

The rule change was announced Monday in the Idaho Capitol rotunda by Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman. Roadless federal lands cover about 17 percent of Idaho – the most in the lower 48 states – and the state was the first to issue a challenge to the blanket ban on road-building by the Clinton administration. The previous rule has led only to “endless lawsuits,” Veneman said, and it continues to be disputed in federal court.

“We are pleased to move forcefully today to get conservation of our nation’s roadless areas back on track,” she declared.

Beginning in 2006, governors would be allowed to petition to either continue roadless protections or to write custom-tailored management plans that would potentially allow the building of additional roads for timber sales or hazardous fuels reduction projects.

But if they don’t ask for a change, individual forest plans would continue to govern whether roads can be built in pristine areas.

As the new state-specific rules are being formulated, Veneman said she would reinstate an interim rule giving Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth veto power over any road-building projects in roadless areas. When Bosworth had that veto power from July 2001 to June 2003, he didn’t approve any new roads, rejecting the handful that were proposed.

Mark Rey, U.S. undersecretary of agriculture for natural resources and environment, said, “I would expect in the next 18 months, you will not see any roads being built, period.”

What comes later, though, is the 58-million-acre question. The Clinton rule halted a number of potentially destructive timber projects in roadless areas, including in sensitive wildlife habitat and drinking water sources along the Clearwater River, said Gary Macfarlane, of the Friends of the Clearwater. He expects to see more logging in roadless forests.

“Given the economic interests that run this state, we’re going to see the destruction of our last wild lands,” he said.

Supporters of the nationally popular roadless rule have argued that allowing road-building on pristine roadless lands destroys their value as natural areas that could become wilderness, while opponents said the rule made all roadless areas into de facto wilderness areas, without declarations from Congress.

Opposition to roadless forest designation is widespread in many rural communities across the West and is fueled by anger that the federal government has locked away places previously open to work and play, said Dave Vig, a resident of Athol, Idaho, and president of the Northwest Access Alliance, which advocates multiple uses for all federal land.

“I like to see the local control,” he said. “That’s the way it should be. It should be the people here making the decisions on the land instead of the people back East or in Los Angeles or Seattle.”

Roadless areas are typically found in steep, mountainous tracts of forest previously inaccessible by logging trucks. They serve as some of the last refuges for sensitive wildlife species, such as bull trout, lynx and grizzly bears, said Mike Petersen, director of the Spokane-based Lands Council.

They also contain valuable stands of big-trunk trees. The roadless rule gave conservation groups a powerful weapon to fight timber sales in the area, Petersen said. Both the Colville and the Idaho Panhandle national forests redrew the maps of proposed timber sales to avoid incursions into roadless areas after being challenged by conservation groups.

“The roadless rule stopped some really bad projects,” he said.

The roadless rule was imposed during the final days of the Clinton administration and has been the subject of nine federal lawsuits. The rule was overturned by an Idaho judge, reinstated by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and then overturned again last year by a Wyoming judge. Though that ruling is being appealed, it has blocked the rule from being in effect for the past year, Veneman said.

Last year, the Bush administration suggested it might allow states to seek exemptions from the roadless rule. But Rey said, “We suggested that when there still was a roadless rule to get exemption from. Now, there is no rule to get exemption from.”

The new proposal essentially takes the opposite approach, requiring a state to actively petition the federal government if it wants protection for roadless lands.

Rey, a former aide to Sen. Larry Craig and a former industry lobbyist who has played a key role in developing the new rule, said the fate of roadless lands has been in limbo for two decades. Both the Carter and Clinton administrations tried to address the issue with sweeping, nationwide rules, but encountered legal and political problems, as did other administrations that relied on local forest plans.

“We’ve got two approaches that have been tried over 20 years, and both have been found wanting,” Rey said. “This approach has one singular advantage, and that is that no one has tried it yet.”

Kempthorne, who is chairman of the National Governors Association, said he thought governors would gladly join federal officials in working up new, individual roadless protection rules that fit their states.

“To those skeptics who will argue that no state governor will actually take advantage of this opportunity, I say just watch,” Kempthorne declared.

However, his communications director, Mark Snider, said after the announcement that Idaho hasn’t yet committed to file a petition under the new rule. “That decision hasn’t been made,” Snider said.

Rey said, “It’s my expectation that we’ll see petitions from the 12 affected states.”

Though 39 states contain some inventoried roadless lands, 97 percent of the lands lie in 12 Western states: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.

Of the 58.5 million acres of inventoried roadless lands in national forests, about 34.3 million now fall under local forest plans that would allow road-building. The remaining 24.2 million are protected from development by local plans. Jane Gorsuch, vice president of Idaho affairs for the Intermountain Forest Association, said her timber industry group welcomes the new rule, and would like to work with Kempthorne on developing an Idaho roadless rule.

“If the governor chooses to go down that path, we’ll be enthusiastic supporters in helping him develop whatever needs to be developed,” she said.