[at-l] Even better news: Roadless ban reinstated

[Raphael Bustin]

[from NY times online, today]

September 21, 2006
Judge Voids Bush Policy on National Forest Roads
By FELICITY BARRINGER

WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 — In the latest round of legal Ping-Pong over the 
future of 49 million roadless acres of national forests, a federal judge in 
California on Wednesday reinstated Clinton-era protections against logging 
and mining on the land and invalidated the Bush administration’s substitute 
policy.

The judge, Elizabeth D. LaPorte of Federal District Court in San Francisco, 
said the new policy had been imposed without the required environmental 
safeguards.

The reversal, however, does not cover nine million acres of the Tongass 
National Forest in Alaska because a separate set of legal opinions 
determines their use.

Judge LaPorte ruled in a suit filed by a coalition of environmental groups 
and states that objected to the decision last year to scuttle what was 
widely known as the “roadless rule” of 2001.

The administration replaced that rule with a policy of state-by-state 
management under which governors submit recommendations for the use of 
national forest lands within their borders.

Judge LaPorte said that the original rule had laid out “the inherent 
problems in this kind of local decision making,” particularly “the failure 
to recognize the cumulative national significance of individual local 
decisions.”

In repealing the 2001 rule, she said, the Forest Service, which is part of 
the Agriculture Department, had failed to comply with the National 
Environmental Policy Act, which requires agencies to conduct detailed 
environmental analyses of alternative approaches.

Judge LaPorte said the Forest Service had failed to consult federal 
agencies responsible for protecting endangered species. Among other points, 
her order enjoined the service “from taking any further action contrary to 
the roadless rule without undertaking environmental analysis.”

Justice Department lawyers had argued that such analyses and 
endangered-species consultations would be performed as decisions were made 
on managing individual forests and that giving states the right to petition 
was more procedural than substantive.

The legislative director of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, Anna 
Aurilio, said that the judge’s ruling “sort of took it back to the first 
principles of environmental protection and said, you can’t just ride 
roughshod over the environment.”

“They can’t just trample on all the laws,” Ms. Aurilio said of the 
administration.

Two Agriculture Department officials said they had not decided whether to 
appeal the decision and would continue to accept and review state petitions.

“As a general matter, we disagree with it, but the court’s order is what it 
is,” Deputy Under Secretary David P. Tenny said.

Mr. Tenny said working closely with states to gather information was “more 
effective in managing roadless areas properly than a sweeping approach that 
deals with all areas at one time.”

“We’ll do our level best to keep working with the states,” he added.

Six states have submitted requests under the changed policy. Five of them — 
California, New Mexico, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia — 
sought protection for their entire inventories of roadless areas.

Idaho, with the largest inventory of roadless acres outside Alaska, 
submitted its petition on Wednesday. It sought full protection for 1.7 
million of its 9.3 million roadless acres and the option for logging and 
road construction in what state officials called the remaining 
“backcountry” areas.

A state environmental official, James L. Caswell, said that such logging 
would in general be intended to protect forest health and manage fire risks.

Kristen Boyles, the lawyer for Earthjustice who argued in support of the 
roadless rule, said the governors’ petitions were “never a guarantee that 
we would get the protections.” The repeal of the rule “was illegal, Ms. 
Boyles said, because the Forest Service didn’t look at the environmental 
consequences or the alternatives.”

In June, the Forest Service sold timber leases on two small roadless tracts 
of the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest near the Oregon coast despite 
the explicit objections of Gov. Theodore R. Kulongoski.

Fire ravaged the area in 2002.

The merits of the roadless policy and its successor have been argued in 
three federal courts — in Idaho, Wyoming and, now, California — for six years.

The rule was first enjoined by a judge in Idaho, an injunction that the 
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit overturned.

A judge in Wyoming then enjoined the rule nationwide, and the United States 
Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit did not rule on that appeal until 
after the Agriculture Department had rescinded the rule and set up the 
system of state petitions in May 2005. Thereafter, the 10th Circuit said, 
any ruling would be moot because the roadless rule was no longer in effect.

------------
rafe b
aka terrapin


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