September 1, 2003
The Roadless Rule
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Even before he took office, President Bush expressed his distaste for the landmark Clinton administration initiative protecting 58 million acres of wild forest lands from road-building and commercial logging. And, within a month of his inauguration, Bush directed the Forest Service to delay implementing the roadless rule. Ever since, the White House has been chipping away at the protections.
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 · Related Places · The Tongass National Forest · Related Players
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The administration did not attack the roadless rule directly -- overturning the Clinton decision would have required an act of Congress or an extensive rule-making process, complete with public hearings. Instead, the Bush team has sought to limit its reach. The frontal assault on the rule has been left to the administration's allies: Republican governors in Idaho, Utah, and Alaska and the giant logging company Boise Cascade, all of which challenged the rule in federal court.
The administration waited until the very last day of a court-imposed deadline before announcing its response to the suits. It was a sterling piece of political double-speak. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman declared that the administration would uphold the road-building ban, and would defend it in court. But Veneman also said the rule-making process would be reopened, allowing the protections to be amended on a forest-by-forest basis. Less than a week later, after what environmentalists described as a feeble legal defense on the part of Justice Department lawyers, US District Court Judge Edward Lodge issued an injunction against the roadless rule, barring it from taking effect.
The injunction was lifted in December of 2002, but a federal judge in Wyoming subsequently struck down the roadless rule again, declaring it a "thinly veiled attempt to designate 'wilderness areas'." It now appears likely that the matter will end up before the Supreme Court. But the Bush administration isn't waiting. A day after the Wyoming ruling, the White House declared plans to exempt the two largest federal forests -- Alaska's Tongass and Chugach -- in order to settle a lawsuit brought by the state's Republican governor.
"The roadless rule is one of the most popular federal policies in the history of the United States," says Sean Cosgrove, a forest policy expert with the Sierra Club. "We're talking about the last remaining 58.5 million acres of roadless forest, and one of the first things President Bush did in office was to tell the forest service to halt implementation."
© 2003 The Foundation for National Progress
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