Roadless Ruling a Blow to Bush Administration
By Michael Milstein, Oregonian
September 21, 2006

A federal judge Wednesday restored a sweeping Clinton administration ban against logging, road building and other development on nearly 50 million acres of roadless national forests, including 2 million acres in Oregon.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Laporte in San Francisco ruled the Bush administration acted illegally when it repealed the 2001 Clinton directive, reopening some lands to commercial use.

Bush officials replaced the Clinton rule last year with a new version requiring governors to petition if they wanted roadless lands in their states protected. But Laporte threw that out Wednesday, saying Bush officials had chosen to avoid environmental assessments in "a clear error of judgment."

The decision deals a blow to the administration, which had argued its approach showed more respect for state concerns. It is a victory for Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski and Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire, other states and environmental groups. They sued to reinstate the original 2001 safeguards, which applied to about a quarter of all national forests.

"We're back to where this thing should have been in the first place," Kulongoski said Wednesday.

He said the ruling should clear the way for the state to work more closely with the U.S. Forest Service to help overgrown forests at risk of catastrophic wildfires. The roadless land debate, with the state on one side and the federal government on the other, has been a distraction from that crucial goal, he said.

"There's more politics than there is forest management," Kulongoski said.

Roadless lands are typically remote and rugged, without valuable timber or mineral reserves to invite development. But their protection has turned into a long-running political and legal feud over some of the last undisturbed public lands nationwide.

Laporte did not restore protections, however, to 9.3 million acres of the timber-rich Tongass National Forest in Alaska, which President Bush had exempted from the roadless protections in 2003.

Appeal possible

The Bush administration has not decided whether to appeal Laporte's ruling, said David Tenny, deputy undersecretary of agriculture. But he predicted the ruling may well spawn further lawsuits.

In her Wednesday decree, Laporte ordered a halt to logging and other activities that would have been prohibited under the 2001 Clinton protections.

But Tenny said logging would continue on roadless lands burned by the 2002 Biscuit fire in southwest Oregon. The cutting in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forests already has survived other court challenges in its own right, including some involving the roadless debate. Two timber sales are under way there, with one nearly complete.

Environmental attorneys and Kulongoski, who sought a court order to halt that cutting, said it should cease immediately.

"They're going to have to stop," the governor said.

He said the Biscuit logging does not make economic sense.

"It was just a statement by some people who wanted to raise this issue again and say, 'We got into the roadless,' " he said. "Now they're told they shouldn't have been in the first place."

Oregon concerns

Laporte, in her ruling, cited concerns by Oregon officials that the loss of roadless protections would leave forests vulnerable to logging and road construction.

She ruled that the Bush administration violated the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act by undoing the roadless protections without examining the environmental fallout or effects on protected species.

The Bush administration's actions stretched federal rules "well past the breaking point," the judge said. She said its rationale for not assessing the environmental impacts of its move "ignores relevant factors and is infected with a clear error of judgment."

But Tenny said the administration sought a new approach that addressed the issue on a state-by-state basis instead of imposing the sort of nationwide rule that Clinton did.

"The best place to do good environmental analysis is local," he said. "The question of roadless is as much a question about how we govern as it is about what's happening on the ground."

Industry leaders

Timber industry leaders backed the administration's approach and said Wednesday that many roadless lands must be thinned to reduce the risk of wildfires like those burning this summer.

"If we set these areas off-limits to any management, then we're just dooming them to being destroyed by catastrophic events," said Chris West of the American Forest Resource Council in Portland.

He said Kulongoski and other state officials in California and New Mexico who sued to reverse the Bush administration's actions were driven by politics. He said they would have been better off working with the government.

Six governors have submitted petitions to protect roadless lands under the Bush approach overturned by the judge Wednesday. It's unclear how those petitions will be handled now, Tenny said.

But either way, he said, the process of developing those petitions improved communication with the states.

Kulongoski began work on a petition seeking renewed protection of roadless forests in Oregon, as required by the Bush administration rule. He said Wednesday that will continue until he learns whether the administration will contest Laporte's ruling tossing out its rule.

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Bush Dealt Setback On Opening Forests
By Blaine Harden and Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post
September 21, 2006

SEATTLE, Sept. 20 -- Ruling against the Bush administration's efforts to open national forests for logging and mining, a federal judge in California on Wednesday set aside a U.S. Forest Service rule that allows governors to decide which land in national forests is suited for development.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth D. Laporte largely reinstated one of the most sweeping, emotionally fraught and legally contentious land-protection measures in decades: the Clinton-era "roadless rule," which put nearly a third of the national forests -- roughly 60 million acres -- off-limits to most development.

Administration officials "don't agree with the decision of the court" in California and "are considering our options" in appealing, said Dave Tenny, the deputy undersecretary of agriculture responsible for Forest Service policy.

The court ruling did not stop Idaho Gov. James E. Risch (R) from presenting a petition on Wednesday to open up the majority of the state's 9.3 million acres of roadless areas to commercial development. Colorado and Utah may soon do likewise.

"Idaho is moving forward," said Brad Hoaglun, a spokesman for Risch. "It sounds like there will be another court case."

Laporte's order chastised the Bush administration for having changed the 2001 roadless rule without explaining why it was doing so, for failing to cite "any new evidence" for altering land protections that had been years in the making and for ignoring the consequences of its new policy on endangered species.

Early in the Bush administration, timber companies and several Western states challenged the roadless rule, winning in lower federal courts but losing on appeal. About 97 percent of roadless areas are in 12 Western states. By issuing a new rule in 2005 that allowed governors to decide which roadless areas warranted continued protection, the administration said it was trying to head off "the prospect of endless lawsuits" that harmed local communities.

But when the Forest Service granted governors the right to make state-by-state decisions, it violated federal environmental law, Laporte wrote in a 53-page ruling released in San Francisco.

"Eliminating a major program triggers the obligation to perform environmental analysis," Laporte wrote, noting that the administration did none.

The decision can be appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which in the past has upheld the roadless rule.

The Forest Service has had "a great deal of success working with the states" under the current rule, Tenny said. "There's a lot of agreement out there about the need to protect roadless areas. If there are differences out there, they're on the margins."

The court challenge to the administration came from four Western states -- California, Oregon, Washington and New Mexico -- along with numerous environmental groups.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D), who is hoping to protect his state's 1.6 million acres of roadless areas, welcomed the court decision.

"This is a monumental victory for everyone who enjoys our wild forests," he said.

Kristen Boyles, a lawyer for Earthjustice who argued the case in behalf of 20 environmental groups, said the ruling is "a pretty direct assault on what the Forest Service is trying to do under the Bush administration."

The ruling does not affect 9.3 million acres of Alaska's Tongass National Forest, which is covered by a different Forest Service rule.

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Federal Court Upholds Protections for Roadless Forests
EPIC Press Release
September 21, 2006

San Francisco - Reversing the Bush Administration's efforts to undo protections for roadless national forests, federal Judge Elizabeth LaPorte today overturned the Administration's so-called "state petitions" plan to decide the future of 58.5 million acres of National Forest roadless areas. Judge LaPorte ruled that the original 2001 Roadless Rule, which the Forest Service wrote under the Clinton Administration, was illegally abandoned by officials appointed by Bush. The court ordered the Bush rule withdrawn and the 2001 rule reinstated.

Conservationists say it's a great victory, both for the record number of Americans who have spoken out in favor of roadless protection, and for the states, including California, which have responded to the Bush Administration's sham process by urging full protections be kept in place.

"The original Roadless Rule was the single most popular proposal that the Forest Service - indeed, that any part of the government - has ever put before the American people," said Scott Greacen, public lands coordinator with the Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC), "On the other hand, the Bush Administration's sham proposal, to ask the states, but let the political appointees running the Forest Service decide what to do with our last roadless areas, got a record number of negative comments."

To date, every state that has petitioned under the Bush rule has requested the protection of their roadless areas be consistent with the 2001 rule. Even Republican California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger urged full protection for all of California's remaining national forest roadless areas in a July 15th statement. California's national forests are home to 4.4 million acres of wild forestlands, pristine areas enormously valuable to Californians for clean water, recreational opportunities, fishing and hunting areas, wildlife habitat and buffers from wildfires.

EPIC's Greacen said today's ruling could help to protect key areas in northwestern California's national forests. "Despite what the American people and the courts have said, the Forest Service is still planning to develop many important roadless areas. This decision will make it much harder for the agency to deny the impact of roadbuilding and logging in these wild areas." He pointed to the Underwood roadless area on the Six Rivers national forest and areas around the Black Butte River on the Mendocino national forest as examples of areas which may enjoy greater protection thanks to today's ruling.

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The Roadless Rule Takes a New Turn
New York Times Editorial
September 25, 2006

You have to wonder when the Bush administration is going to stop ramming its head against the same wall on forest policy.

The Forest Service has been trying for several years to get rid of the “roadless rule” enacted near the end of the Clinton administration to protect millions of roadless acres of national forest from logging and other commercial intrusions. But these efforts, while popular in the timber industry, achieved little traction in the courts and none among the public at large. So last year the administration simply rescinded the old rule by regulatory fiat and replaced it with a less protective rule of its own.

Now that strategy has been derailed, at least for now. Last week Elizabeth LaPorte, a federal district judge in San Francisco, overturned the Bush rule and largely reinstated the Clinton protections.

Her most telling argument was that the Forest Service had flat-out failed to observe the regulatory protocols required of such a major rule change, sidestepped the detailed environmental analysis mandated by law and ignored the potential impacts of the new policy on endangered species.

The administration is likely to appeal the decision, thus prolonging the tiresome legal Ping-Pong that has marked this battle from the beginning. The Clinton rule has twice been enjoined by district court judges in Idaho and Wyoming in response to state and industry lawsuits, but has been upheld at the appellate level by the Ninth Circuit, to which an appeal from this decision must be directed.

It would make more sense for the administration to abandon the fight altogether. The Bush plan’s main claim to superiority is that it gives individual governors more say over the national forests within their boundaries than President Clinton’s “one size fits all” rule.

Yet the states, for their part, seem greatly to prefer the old Clinton rule. Several of them — including Oregon, Washington, California and New Mexico — actually joined in the lawsuit that led Judge LaPorte to reinstate it, and two others, Maine and Montana, filed supporting briefs. Somewhere in there is a fairly obvious message.

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