White House Reignites Battle on Forest Roads

In two far-reaching actions, the Bush administration has thrown open the fate of the national forests, reigniting the battle over 58.5 million acres of backwoods and whether they will remain roadless or be available to logging companies, snowmobilers and energy and mineral extractors.

At stake is as much as one-third of the nation’s federally owned forests. Large swaths of the land are in the West, with the biggest chunks in Idaho and Montana.

On Friday, Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman announced she would seek to amend the Clinton administration’s roadless policy with the goal of giving communities surrounding the forests more input on their use and avoiding the legal challenges that threaten the rule.

But environmental activists and various industries and groups representing recreational users wasted no time Friday making it clear that their battle--in the courts, Congress, with the administration and for public opinion--would rage on.

“I don’t think we’re finished fighting over this,” said Stefany Bales, spokeswoman for the Intermountain Forest Assn., which represents forest and mill owners in Idaho and western Montana.

States, logging interests, tribes and other groups have filed six lawsuits in federal court challenging the rule restricting roads and logging in the backwoods areas, and all the plaintiffs are determined to continue pressing their cases. Environmentalists, meanwhile, were busy trying to rev up public opinion against the plan.

The decision to amend rather than abandon the roadless policy may reflect White House sensitivity to the negative public reaction to President Bush’s early decisions on carbon dioxide in the air, arsenic in water and other environmental policies.

In a recent Los Angeles Times Poll, about two-thirds of Americans surveyed said they approved of former President Clinton’s ban on logging and road-building on 30% of the total acreage in the national forest system.

Environmentalists predicted a tempestuous outcry if the Bush administration plans to build roads in more of the forests.

“If they ask for public input on gutting the roadless policy, they are going to be surprised at what they hear,” said Suzanne Jones of the Wilderness Society’s Four Corners office in Denver. “People support the policy.”

But a timber industry spokesman applauded the administration’s approach for addressing community concerns.

“The Bush administration has clearly made an attempt to seek some balance here,” said Jack Phelps of the timber industry group, the Alaska Forestry Assn.

The Clinton rule will go into effect May 12. Veneman said her department would propose its amendments next month, but a heated debate over those changes is expected to go on for months.

The so-called roadless policy was finalized but not enacted by the Clinton administration. Another Clinton administration regulation would have required forest supervisors to put the health of ecosystems first when planning how to manage their forests. The Bush administration rejected that rule last week, announcing that it would develop a policy to govern the management of the national forests.

The outcome of the two policy reviews will set forth the government’s philosophy toward national forests, which will guide the Forest Service, an agency of the Agriculture Department, in its long-term planning and day-to-day decisions in managing the lands.

Roadless areas in California include 639,000 acres in the Los Padres National Forest, where there are an estimated 21 million barrels of oil deposits in portions of Ventura and Santa Barbara counties.

Timber-rich stretches of the Six Rivers, Trinity and Shasta national forests in northwest California could also be affected by policy changes.

Traditionally, Forest Service supervisors have promoted the extraction of as much timber, minerals, energy and other resources from the forests as possible. In recent years, conservation has been valued more highly, particularly in the roadless areas.

Environmentalists fear that the Bush administration will reverse the trend and again encourage more exploitation of the forests. But in the meantime, the environmental community--which wants to preserve the national forests as wilderness--has gained political muscle. So such a redirection could not take place without a big fight.

“The battle for the heart and soul of the Forest Service is not over,” said Doug Honnold, a lawyer for Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund, who has been arguing in support of the roadless rule in a Boise court case.

The passions of the environmental groups are matched by the resources of the opponents of the roadless rules, who view their access to federal land as a political right as well as an economic necessity.

Included in this camp are many workers whose livelihoods depend on commercial use of the national forests. They run and work for sawmills, lumber companies, ranches, and mining or drilling firms.

In some cases, the proponents of opening the forests are arguing about the uses of specific parcels of land. But in many cases they are fighting for the principle that people should have access to public land for many uses, not just to hike and look at wildflowers.

Their clash with conservationists is not a new one, but the power balance has shifted in recent years, giving the environmentalists greater clout.

These battles take place in Forest Services offices around the country when supervisors are deciding whether to allow leases for timber harvest or other types of resource extraction or use. The Clinton administration’s roadless plan would effectively resolve many of these battles in favor of conservationists.

But even with the prospect of this landmark change, the Forest Service in Nez Perce National Forest, in north-central Idaho, is at the early stages of evaluating a plan to harvest trees by helicopter.

If the plan is approved, local environmentalists are ready to appeal the decision, first with the Forest Service and then in the courts if necessary.

Idaho is a hot spot for these conflicts, with at least 9.3 million acres--or 17% of the state’s total land area--designated as roadless national forest.

The state is one of the plaintiffs in the first lawsuit against the Clinton roadless policy to hit the courts. It was that suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Boise, that forced the Bush administration to state its roadless policy Friday.

Veneman said she hoped that her decision to enact the policy but then amend it would protect it from being struck down by a judge.

“If we don’t do something to amend this rule, the court may throw it out in its entirety,” she said.

But the plaintiffs expressed confidence Friday that they will be able to kill the rule outright.

“The roadless rule, as it was promulgated by the Clinton administration, is patently illegal,” said Idaho Attorney General Al Lance. “No amount of window dressing will change that fact.”

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Times staff writers Julie Cart, Kim Murphy and Deborah Schoch contributed to this story.

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Oil Source

The Los Padres National Forest, the only national forest in the state with a substantial amount of oil and gas reserves, produces 700,000 barrels of oil annually.

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Source: USDA Forest Service