Judge thwarts Idaho's plan for roadless areas

Governor vows to open up millions of acres

By STEVE BENSON
Express Staff Writer

Hours before Idaho Gov. Jim Risch held a press conference Wednesday to unveil his petition to alter the management of Idaho's 9.3 million acres of road-free national forest land, a federal judge in California threw out the plan that would allow him to do so.

But the governor remained undeterred and vowed to move forward with the petition, which was spearheaded by the Bush administration in 2004 to give states more control of their own public lands destiny.

National and local conservation groups sent out a flurry of news releases touting the federal ruling as a major victory for roadless lands and people who want them to remain protected from logging, mining, excessive motorized use and road building.

"Today's ruling is a victory for the millions of Americans from all walks of life who have told the U.S. Forest Service, time and again, to protect our last wild national forests," said William Meadows, president of The Wilderness Society. "This decision is a stark repudiation of the administration's push to ignore the public's wishes and turn over our public lands to special interests.

"In the past two months, trees have fallen in Oregon as the first timber sales in roadless areas were rammed through in defiance of the wishes of the people and the governor."

Trout Unlimited, which is committed to protecting and restoring North America's trout and salmon fisheries and their watersheds, has produced scientific reports for five states, including Idaho, to demonstrate the importance of roadless areas to fish and wildlife.

"This is great news for sportsmen," said Mike Beagle, a Trout Unlimited field representative. "It's important to note that this decision won't close any existing roads; it will simply keep the land like it is, without new roads damaging the backcountry."

The court ruling, rendered by U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth D. Laporte in San Francisco, reinstated President Clinton's 2001 roadless rule, which sought to permanently protect the nation's remaining national forest land from future development.

The plaintiffs included the states of California, Oregon, New Mexico and Washington and a consortium of conservation organizations, including the Idaho Conservation League, which has an office in Ketchum. They asserted the defendant—the United States Department of Agriculture—violated the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act and the Administrative Procedures Act, by issuing the state petitions.

The states of Idaho and Alaska, which both filed suits in U.S. District Court challenging Clinton's roadless rule in 2001, supported the defendants, as did the American Council of Snowmobile Associations, the pro-motorized-use Blue Ribbon Coalition, California Association of 4 Wheel Drive Clubs and the Silver Creek Timber Co.

"This is just another inning in the long game that's been going on for four years of lawsuits on this issue," said Jim Caswell, a former national forest supervisor and current administrator of the Idaho Office of Species Conservation. Caswell was hired by former Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne to take the lead on Idaho's petition process, which began at the county level. "It's now a draw—three federal judges have thrown out the Bush rule and three have thrown out Clinton's rule."

Caswell said the federal government will probably appeal Wednesday's court ruling, but there are other options, including submitting the petition separate from the Bush rule.

"Under the Administrative Procedures Act, anybody can petition the government," Caswell said. "It would be a separate track. We could have chosen two years ago to go on our own as a state to advance the federal rule. That's totally legal. That's part of democracy.

"This is not, as some people have already described it, over."

Furthermore, Caswell contends that Gov. Risch's petition does not stray much from current forest prescriptions. Currently, Idaho's 9.32 million roadless acres are divided into three categories: proposed wilderness (1.37 million acres); proposed backcountry (2.28 million acres); and proposed development (5.66 million acres).

Wilderness areas are under federal protection and closed to mechanized travel. Backcountry lands do not have roads and do not allow harvest (logging), but in some cases do allow motorized use.

Caswell said about 99 percent of the roadless acreage proposed for development was never developed.

Risch's petition breaks up the 9.3 million acres into four categories: wild land recreation (1.43 million acres); primitive (1.68 million acres); backcountry (5.51 million acres); and general forest (521,169 acres).

Wild land recreation basically refers to roadless land deemed suitable for future wilderness designation, and would not allow road construction. Primitive is the next step down. Road construction would not be allowed, but fuel-reduction projects would. Backcountry areas would be open to new road construction, with an "emphasis on temporary." General forest would include areas "that display high levels of human use," and the construction of permanent roads.

"We said all along we would start with the forest plan as the basis for considering the future and changes to those forest plans," Caswell said. "Our second principle was, if at all possible we wanted to defer to county recommendations ... and most counties to one degree or another were totally happy with forest service management prescriptions, and a lot of their public supported that."

Leafing through the 69-page petition, it's hard to find any changes to current management prescriptions. While the amount of land opened to potential future road building increased from 5.66 to 6.03 million acres, so too did the amount of land tagged for potential future wilderness—from 1.37 to 1.43 million acres.

"The devil's in the details," said Jonathan Oppenheimer, a conservation associate for the Idaho Conservation League.

Oppenheimer is most concerned with the language in the petition, which he considers vague to favor special interests.

"How will they define what 'forest health' is?" Oppenheimer wondered, referring to a section in the petition that will allow salvage efforts to occur to promote forest health. "That could open up to logging over 7 million acres. Of that, a little over 6 million acres could be opened to road construction.

"If everything is the same, then why go through (the petition) process?"

Breakdown of Idaho lands

· Size of state: 52,960,000 acres.

· National Forests: 20,458,000 acres.

· Wilderness: 4,005,754 acres (fifth largest sum in United States).

· Roadless: 9,322,000 acres (largest in Lower 48).

Proposal for Idaho's 9.3 million roadless acres

· Wildland recreation (potential wilderness/no road construction): 1.43 million acres.

· Primitive (open to salvage and fuel-reduction projects/no road construction): 1.68 million acres.

· Backcountry (road construction emphasis on temporary with mitigation): 5.51 million acres.

· General forest (road construction permanent/compatible): 521,169 acres.