MSNBC
STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
March
16 — In a move decried by environmentalists, President Bush asked a federal
court Friday to postpone former President Clinton’s ban on road building and
logging in one third of the nation’s federal forestland.
THE
JUSTICE DEPARTMENT filed a brief to delay a hearing on timber giant Boise
Cascade Corp.’s challenge to Clinton’s Roadless Area Conservation Policy,
the most significant forest protection legislation of the past century.
Boise Cascade had sought a temporary injunction of the policy’s regulations to
keep them from going into effect while the logging company wages a larger legal
battle against the plan in court.
Off-road vehicle groups, Boise and Valley counties, Idaho rancher Brad Little
and the Kootenai Tribe also joined Boise Cascade’s suit.
ADMINISTRATION
TO REVIEW BAN
The administration’s request Friday would give the
Bush administration more time to review the ban, which was scheduled to have
gone into effect March 13.
“Until the administration is finished with its review of the roadless policy,
it will not comment on the merits,” Justice Department spokeswoman Christine
Romano said.
Environmentalists
immediately voiced concern that Bush was signaling his intention to reverse the
regulations.
“This was their first opportunity to come in and defend the policy and instead
they’ve come in with an offer to suspend it,” said Tim Preso, a staff
attorney for the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund.
Under the measure, approximately 58.5 million acres of wild forest lands
nationwide would have been protected from road construction, commercial logging
and mining.
The Clinton administration published its final roadless rule in the Federal
Register on Jan. 12, only eight days before the president left office. Then on
Feb. 5, Bush delayed the rule’s implementation date by two months, from March
13 to May 12.
Since the forest restrictions were published before Bush took office, he cannot
block or alter them without going through a new rule-making process.
THREE OTHER SUITS FILED
There are three other lawsuits filed by states and industries challenging the
regulation.
Idaho Attorney General Al Lance, representing the state’s Land Board, filed
suit in January, alleging the U.S. Forest Service’s analysis of the plan was
inadequate under the National Environmental Policy Act’s requirements for
research and public comment.
Briefs
were due to be filed in the suit by March 21 and a hearing was set for March 30.
But on Friday, lawyers for the Agriculture Department, which oversees the Forest
Service, asked the court to delay the hearing until early May.
The lawyers offered to invoke a little-used administrative rule to suspend the
ban, saying the department “has committed to postponing the effective date of
the rule until this court has decided the motion for a preliminary
injunction.”
A coalition of environmental groups filed to intervene on the part of the Forest
Service, arguing that the roadless areas in Idaho protect blue-ribbon trout
streams in the state and must be preserved.
TWO YEARS IN THE MAKING
The policy was two years in the making, after the government solicited 1.6
million public comments and held 600 public hearings.
Creation of the plan began in 1998 when Forest Service Chief Michael Dombeck
announced he was considering a ban on road construction in roadless areas of
most national forests. In October 1999, Clinton said development of the proposal
was under way.
“Now the Bush administration is going to negotiate changes to it with only the
timber industry and a governor or two at the table,” said Philip Clapp,
president of the National Environmental Trust.