Bush Will Keep Clinton’s Rule on Logging, for Now

The Bush administration has decided to let stand a Clinton administration regulation protecting 60 million acres of national forest from logging and road construction, but with the intention of reopening the rule-making process for possible significant changes in the future.

The regulation was one of the most far-reaching of former President Clinton’s environmental initiatives and would protect more than a quarter of federal forests--including large tracts of Alaska’s Tongass National Forest--from most commercial logging, new road construction and mining.

Under the new approach to be announced today by Agriculture and Justice department officials, the government would grant logging, oil and gas exploration interests and local officials and residents far more say in revising the rules for governing individual national forests.

By allowing the rule to go forward while promising logging interests and Western lawmakers the opportunity for long-term relief, the administration will for now avoid another nasty confrontation with environmental groups and congressional Democrats over a major environmental issue. Later on, however, the administration could do much to reverse or substantially alter what Clinton has done.

Instead of imposing a blanket rule on all 60 million acres, the administration’s approach would allow the U.S. Forest Service to reconsider on a park-by-park basis what rules are best for protecting roadless areas in a way that would give more weight to the concerns of local businesses, residents and government officials. State officials of Alaska, Colorado, Idaho and Utah as well as the Boise Cascade timber company have complained in court that their objections to the Clinton plan were ignored.

However, the Clinton era protections for roadless areas would remain in effect until each forest is analyzed, according to sources.

Bush has come under fire for decisions to renege on a campaign pledge to crack down on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, disavowal of the 1997 Kyoto global warming treaty and his decisions to set aside tough new standards for arsenic in drinking water and other Clinton-era regulations.