Untouched national forests lose Clinton-era protections

The Bush administration yesterday opened the door to logging, mining and other development on 58 million acres of roadless national forests, scrapping Clinton-era protections and ceding Western governors greater control over vast swaths of public lands.

Gov. Christine Gregoire immediately promised to protect much of Washington's untouched national-forest land. But state officials were already questioning the challenge of devising a new management plan covering 2 million acres.

"The governor far prefers the Clinton rule," said Elliot Marks, natural-resources policy adviser to Gregoire, describing the Bush administration's new stance as "process-heavy and pretty burdensome."

The plan now allows governors to submit petitions within 18 months to stop road building on some of the 34.3 million acres where it would now be permitted. Governors also could request that new forest-management plans be written to allow the construction on some of the other 24.2 million acres.

The change will clearly put Western governors in the middle of an old controversy that pits environmentalists against timber, mining and other industries. According to The Associated Press, 97 percent of the federal forest land is in 12 states: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.

Environmentalists long embraced the 2001 roadless rule as a needed safeguard against encroachment on some of the nation's last pristine areas. But industries and some Western governors chafed under the strategy, saying it put valuable resources out of reach and froze states out of the land-management process.

Gregoire has yet to decide whether it will be worth writing a new state plan, in part, because there will be no guarantee the Forest Service would accept it, according to Marks. In her remarks, Gregoire did leave open the possibility that some Washington land covered by the Clinton rule might be opened for commercial use.

"We hope to have most, if not all, of our national-forest roadless areas in Washington protected," she said in a prepared statement.

The roadless lands at issue are scattered throughout the state, with concentrations in the northeast corner near Spokane, north-central Washington near Winthrop and Leavenworth, the Olympic Peninsula and south of Mount Rainier.

In neighboring Idaho, Gov. Dirk Kempthorne, a Republican, was much more enthusiastic about the Bush policy, saying it allowed more local control and would create a better plan as a result. Idaho has 9.3 million acres of roadless national-forest land at stake. The state previously sued, seeking to block the Clinton roadless rule.

Oregon's Democratic Gov. Ted Kulongoski, however, blasted the new rule yesterday, saying the Forest Service was shirking its responsibility onto states and leaving the protection of important lands uncertain. Oregon has nearly 2 million acres covered by the rule.

"This new rule transfers a significant new workload to the state, in terms of both time and money," he said in a prepared statement.

In Washington and elsewhere, there will probably be little immediate effect on most of the forests. But there was strong disagreement yesterday over the long-term impact.

Mark Rey, the undersecretary of agriculture overseeing the Forest Service, said roadless areas will remain protected while states assemble their plans. He declined to say how much land he thought would eventually be removed from the protections.

"It's my prediction that many of the state rules will protect the same areas as the 2001 [Clinton] rule," he said at a news conference.

The difference, Rey said, is that the new process will give states a stronger voice. That could make for a better plan and reduce the likelihood of lawsuits that plagued the Clinton-era plan, he said.

Environmentalists, however, are already girding for a possible legal challenge.

"The Wilderness Society is not at all ready to swallow this new Bush rule," said Mike Anderson, a senior resource analyst for the Wilderness Society in Seattle. "We think that this rule is probably illegal."

Anderson predicted that the rule could be used to reopen Northwest areas that were off-limits to logging.

It also could hurt environmentalists' efforts to get a federal judge to block logging on more than 8,000 acres of roadless areas burned by a 2002 fire in Oregon, known as the Biscuit fire.

In the long run, Idaho could be the biggest battleground, because it has never had comprehensive legislation setting aside wilderness statewide, Anderson said.

Chris West, vice president for the American Forest Resource Council, a forest-products industry group, said it will be up the governors to decide how much they want to change things. In Washington, he pointed to national-forest land in the state's northeast corner as a spot that deserves scrutiny and could be a major focus of the debate.

"There's a lot of controversy surrounding the roadless areas in the northeast of the state," he said.

Warren Cornwall: 206-464-2311 or wcornwall@seattletimes.com