Judge tosses Bush’s roadless forest rule

BOISE – Just as Idaho unveiled a groundbreaking new proposal for managing roadless forest lands in the state Wednesday, a federal judge in California threw out the Bush administration rule that asked states to take that role – and reinstated the 2001 Clinton administration rule that banned all road-building in roadless national forests.

Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire called it a “great day for Washington,” which was one of four states that sued to challenge the Bush rule. Gregoire said Washington residents submitted more than 80,000 comments on the 2001 roadless rule, and 96 percent favored “complete protection.”

“I am very pleased with the decision of the court,” Gregoire said. “Roadless areas contribute to our quality of life and our economy by providing clean water, fish and wildlife habitat along with recreational and business opportunities.”

Idaho Gov. Jim Risch, who spent months working up his detailed proposal for managing Idaho’s 9.3 million acres of roadless forests, vowed to proceed with his plan regardless. “It is only a step,” Risch said of the California ruling. “There’s going to be lots more happening.”

U.S. Undersecretary of Agriculture Mark Rey said the Bush administration will comply with the court’s decision, but still will proceed with reviewing the new “state-specific” plans for roadless areas. Idaho is the sixth state to submit such a plan – and the first to propose significant development on some of its roadless lands.

Rey said three federal judges have now upheld the 2001 Clinton roadless rule, and three have overturned it. “And I suspect there will be more federal judges” weighing in, he said. Once Idaho’s petition is processed, Rey said, another judge could again overturn the Clinton rule. Then, the Risch plan would kick in as the protection for Idaho’s roadless areas, he said.

“Prudence suggests that we carry forward,” Rey said. “I find it hard to believe that continuing to battle it out in federal courts is a better outcome than what we’ve seen here.”

Gregoire said Washington is working on its own state-specific petition and is currently seeking public input with plans to submit a petition in November. “I am committed to exercising all options to protect the character of our roadless areas,” she said.

Mike Petersen, of Spokane, executive director of the Lands Council, said he was “very thrilled” to learn of the court’s decision. The Forest Service is gearing up now to conduct timber harvests in roadless forests in North Idaho, Petersen said, and the ruling will help stop these sales, including a controversial proposal to harvest trees in the Myrtle Creek watershed near Bonners Ferry, Idaho.

About 800,000 acres in North Idaho, roughly a third of the Idaho Panhandle National Forests, were declared largely off-limits to new road building or development by the original roadless rule.

The Intermountain Forest Association came out in support of Risch’s plan but said it didn’t go far enough to allow more logging. “Many of Idaho’s roadless areas are overstocked with trees, which choke each other out in competition for nutrients and sunlight,” association spokeswoman Serena Howarth said in a news release.

Rick Johnson, executive director of the Idaho Conservation League, said of the court ruling, “It is just one step, but it is in my view a very big step.”

Rey said he thinks it’s now likely that the U.S. Supreme Court will make the final ruling on the issue.

Idaho has 9.3 million acres of designated roadless lands in its national forests, while Washington has 2 million. The two states have taken opposite approaches to the roadless issue, with Washington strongly backing the 2001 Clinton administration ban on new road building, and Idaho successfully suing earlier in federal court to overturn the rule, a ruling that later was overturned on appeal, but then was superseded by the Bush administration’s new state-specific rule in 2005.

That rule allowed governors to submit petitions asking to either protect their state’s roadless areas, or to allow development on some or all of them. So far, state petitions have sought mainly to protect the areas, though Rey said there have been some proposed changes in boundaries and other issues.

Risch said he’s spent huge amounts of time analyzing and going over the 275 parcels that make up Idaho’s roadless areas.

“The environmental groups are absolutely right when they say that included in this group of 275 are some of the most magnificent lands in the entire world,” the governor said. Those spots, he said, must be protected “at all costs.” But he also declared that those who’d say all 9.3 million acres should be “locked up as wilderness” are wrong. Idaho’s roadless areas, Risch said, are “a grand mosaic of every kind of land that you could possibly think of.”

Risch’s plan divides the lands into four categories that would have decreasing levels of protection:

•Wildland recreation, the most restrictive category, 1.4 million acres. No road-building would be allowed; forest health measures would be limited to prescribed fire. Motorized travel would be allowed only where it’s already allowed now.

•Primitive, 1.7 million acres. Salvage logging and fuel reduction projects would be allowed, but no road construction or intensive timber management. Motorized travel would be allowed where it’s allowed now.

•Backcountry, 5.5 million acres. Some commercial logging would be allowed as part of forest health projects; temporary roads could be built with mitigation for their environmental impacts. Motorized travel would be allowed where it’s allowed now.

•General forest, the least restrictive category, 521,169 acres. Permanent road construction would be allowed, as would a full range of commercial logging and forest health measures including prescribed fire. Motorized travel would be allowed where it is now and possibly in other areas, subject to travel planning.

Little of the North Idaho Panhandle’s roadless land would fall into the least restrictive category. Instead, the plan designates most Panhandle roadless areas as “backcountry” and some as “wildland.” But there are two roadless parcels in Boundary County that would shift to “general forest” under the Risch plan: Kootenai Peak and the Hellroaring roadless area.

Panhandle forest officials said they hadn’t yet had a chance to review the Risch plan.

Jim Caswell, a top aide to Risch, said the uses called for in the roadless petition are consistent with a draft forest plan already being developed for the Panhandle National Forests.

Risch said his plan also matches up with two pending wilderness bills in Congress – Sen. Mike Crapo’s Owyhee Initiative and Rep. Mike Simpson’s proposal for the Boulder-White Cloud Mountains.

Nez Perce Tribal Chairwoman Rebecca Miles attended the announcement and thanked Risch for taking her tribe’s input seriously. Risch said the plan is structured to protect specific areas important to the Nez Perce, including Pilot Knob in the Nez Perce National Forest, the Nemiipuu Historic Trail in the Clearwater National Forest and the Pioneer Area in the Mallard-Larkins roadless area.

Staff writer James Hagengruber contributed to this report.