By Eli Clifton
WASHINGTON, Jul 21 2004 (IPS)

U.S. politicians and environmental groups are outraged at the Bush administration’s attempts to undermine a policy that is protecting wild forests in the lower 48 states and Alaska – which, combined, would be the size of the United Kingdom – from logging, road building and other forms of development.

The administration is acting in the financial interests of the logging industry, at the expense of national forests, by trying to repeal the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, said Senator Maria Cantwell and House Representatives Jay Inslee, Rosa DeLauro, Maurice Hinchey and Earl Blumenauer at a Capitol Hill press conference Tuesday.

The rule, enacted in January 2001 following more than two decades of debate and three years of official review and public participation, puts 24 million hectares (nearly 60 million acres) off limits to development.

"Six hundred meetings were held to discuss this," Inslee said in an interview. "Ninety-six-percent of the people at these meetings supported it. Now President Bush wants to tear it up."

Immediately upon taking office in January 2001, President George W Bush suspended the Roadless Rule. But in May 2001, under pressure from Congress and the public, his administration promised to uphold the rule with only minor changes.

Despite this promise, the administration announced sweeping changes to the rule in June 2003, and failed to defend it against a challenge in Idaho Federal District Court by timber company Boise Cascade, a Kootenai native Indian tribe and the State of Idaho.

The administration then chose to not defend the policy in the Ninth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals, despite a promise from Attorney General John Ashcroft during his confirmation hearings to do just that.

Environmental law firm Earthjustice, on behalf of nine conservation groups, took an appeal to the Ninth Circuit, which resulted in a December 2002 decision to overturn the Idaho injunction.

Last week, the Bush administration reneged on its May 2001 commitment to protect the Roadless Rule when Agriculture Secretary Ann M Veneman announced a proposal to repeal it.

The administration plans to replace the rule with a process that allows governors to petition for protection – or development – of roadless areas in their states.

"President Bush is trying to destroy the Roadless Rule. Sixty million acres were (under protection) last week. Zero would be protected under his new policy. He has effectively removed all protection of the roadless areas against clear-cutting," said Inslee.

The repeal of the policy would open the door to state-level applications from logging, mining and development interests.

In July 2003, the Bush administration formally proposed exempting Alaska’s Tongass and Chugach National Forests from the Roadless Rule. More than 300,000 comments were sent from members of Congress, major businesses and the public opposing the plan.

But on Dec. 23, 2003, the administration quietly released its decision to exempt the Alaskan forests from the rule.

"The Tongass exemption clears the way for nearly 50 timber projects currently being planned by the Bush administration and timber industry," according to a statement released by environmental group Heritage Forests Campaign (HFC).

They include the Three Mile timber sale on Kuiu Island (269 ha) and a proposed timber sale on Gravina Island (728 ha). Both of those areas were previously protected in the Tongass National Forest under the rule.

"This timber sale on Kuiu Island – an area that would have been protected by the Roadless Rule – and proposing to build further logging roads in the area, flies directly in the face of an existing U.S. House (of Representatives) amendment to the appropriations bill that limits the funding for logging roads in the Tongass," Emily Ferry, community organiser for the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, told IPS.

Other areas under threat if the policy is repealed include: the Siskiyou National Forest in Oregon and California, the Sage Creek Roadless Area in Idaho and the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest (CNNF) in Wisconsin, according to the HFC.

"Because the administration knows that the Roadless Rule is one of the most popular administrative actions in history, it hasn’t gone after the rule directly. Instead, the Bush Forest Service has refused to defend the rule against industry court challenges, has opened the Tongass National Forest roadless area to logging, and has proposed other loopholes such as allowing states to exempt themselves from the rule," Blumenauer said after the administration announced the proposed changes Jul 12.

Those changes would allow governors to opt out of the Roadless Act or request the protection of their natural resources by the Forest Service.

"Few, if any, governors are going to spend their limited resources and political capital asking the Forest Service to protect these remaining wild areas when they know at the end of this new process Mark Rey, a former timber industry lobbyist, will make the final decision on their request as the under secretary in charge of USDA (the U.S. Department of Agriculture)," said an HFC news release.

Under the substitute policy, governors are not limited to asking the Forest Service to protect roadless areas, but can also suggest how to manage roadless areas or to increase logging, mining or other development activities.

"These are national resources that belong to the whole country, not one state. It’s a mistake from a democratic standpoint," Inslee said. "We don’t give our governors veto over (federal) military bases," he added.

Groups like HFC, U.S. Public Interest Research Group (USPIRG), and the National Environmental Trust argue that the repeal of the Roadless Rule is an example of the Bush administration’s commitment to logging interests.

In the 2004 election cycle (in advance of November’s presidential election), the Bush campaign has received 512,271 dollars from forestry and forest-product related industries, according to the Centre for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan research group that tracks campaign contributions.

"By gutting this national policy objective, the Bush administration has broken its promise to uphold the rule. And in handing over management of our last remaining roadless national forests to state and local special interests to log, mine and drill, the Bush administration has betrayed its responsibility to manage these forests in the national interest," Hinchey told journalists Tuesday.

The changes to the Roadless Rule are subject to a 60-day comment period, ending Sep. 15, 2004, before the rule changes could be implemented through an executive decision. The administration has already received over 2.5 million public comments in support of the Roadless Rule but appears to have chosen to ignore them, according to USPIRG.

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