Idaho forest plan moves toward federal rule

BOISE – Idaho’s proposed management plan for 9.3 million acres of federal roadless areas within national forests was accepted by U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns on Friday and will now move forward in the process of becoming a federal rule.

The procedural action came a day after the Roadless Area Conservation National Advisory Committee recommended Johanns accept the petition submitted by Gov. Jim Risch.

Risch said he was notified Friday by U.S. Department of Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey that Johanns had accepted Idaho’s petition. The federal agency will now work with the state to develop a memorandum of understanding for completing the final steps – including an environmental impact analysis – to put the state’s recommended changes into the national forest management plans for roadless forest lands.

“It is not often that the federal government moves with such speed, but I am very pleased they have given quick approval to move forward,” Risch said in a statement. “This plan was put together with a great deal of input from Idahoans and others who use and live near roadless areas.”

Environmentalists had been concerned about Risch’s plan, fearing that national forests would be opened up to logging and mining. But a letter put out by the national committee spelled out the Idaho plan in detail and put them more at ease, said Jonathan Oppenheimer of the Idaho Conservation League.

“I think this letter from the Roadless Area Conservation National Advisory Committee provides that level of clarification in black and white that this is what they heard the governor say and this is the way they recommend the secretary of agriculture move forward,” he said.

The committee made some recommendations about clarifying parts of the plan. Jim Caswell, director of the Idaho Office of Species Conservation, said the state can work with that.

“There is nothing in there that is a huge concern,” he told the Lewiston Tribune.

The committee asked for more information on how the state and U.S. Forest Service decided to remove 500,000 acres from the roadless designation. It also asked about management plans for several wild and scenic river areas.

“I think the advisory committee is envisioning fairly close scrutiny of those areas to see if it makes sense for them to be open to commercial development,” Oppenheimer said.

Risch said the federal rulemaking process for the Idaho roadless petition will include additional opportunities for public involvement. Earlier this year, Risch signed an executive order creating the Governor’s Roadless Rule Task Force that will work with the Forest Service in drafting the federal rule. Once completed, the rule must be published in the Federal Register to go into effect. Federal and state officials did not say how long they anticipated the rulemaking process to take.

Clashes over how to manage America’s roadless lands flared after Clinton prohibited logging, mining and other development on 58.5 million acres of roadless Forest Service land in 38 states and Puerto Rico.

In May 2005, President Bush replaced Clinton’s plan with a process requiring governors to petition the federal government to protect national forests in their states.

On Sept. 20, a California judge ruled Bush failed to do environmental studies before making changes allowing states to decide how to manage their individual national forests. U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Laporte’s ruling restored the Clinton-era rule, at least for now.

Undeterred, Risch is pushing ahead under a separate, decades-old federal rulemaking process that lets agencies such as the Department of Agriculture propose and establish regulations.