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| Roadless Press Release 7-12-2004 |
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BUSH ADMINISTRATION ENDS POPULAR ROADLESS RULE
New Policy would end federal Protection for Washington's Roadless Forests
BOISE, ID ¨C Today the Bush administration announced its intent to repeal the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule and substitute it with a state petition process. Environmentalists, recreationists, and businesses around the country charge that this proposal will effectively eliminate all federal safeguards provided by the Roadless Rule and makes roadless areas vulnerable to road-building and commercial logging. The policy change was announced in Boise, Idaho and will reportedly appear in the Federal Register later this week.
"The Forest Service proposal fails to ensure that a single acre of the 58.5 million acres of roadless forests will be protected," said Tom Uniack, Conservation Director for Washington Wilderness Coalition, who also indicated that more than two million acres of roadless forests are at stake in Washington State. "Governors would need to petition for protection of existing roadless areas by a mandated deadline ¨C and even then the Forest Service does not have to grant them the protection requested."
The proposal would require governors to petition the USDA Forest Service to protect roadless areas in their states. However, the USDA does not have to adopt the petitions, as stated in a regulatory schedule released last week, "Such petitions would be evaluated and, if agreed to, addressed by the Secretary in a subsequent rulemaking on a State-by-State basis." Furthermore, if a governor chooses not to submit a petition the management of roadless areas would revert to the direction of local forest plans, which allow road-building and logging on most of the 58 million acres of roadless areas.
"The Forest Service proposal will gut the Roadless Rule," said Uniack. "They are trying to get western governors to do their dirty work for them while ignoring the unprecedented popular support for the rule."
To date the public has submitted more than 2.5 million comments supporting the Roadless Rule, more comments than any other rulemaking process in history. During the development of the rule, the Forest Service held more than 600 hearings including local hearings throughout the State in Spokane, Colville, Vancouver, Morton, Seattle, Everett, Sedro-Woolley, Omak, Okanogan, Port Angeles, Olympia, Port Angeles, Olympia, Walla Walla, Wenatchee, and Ellensburg.
Late last year, in a stealth move two days before Christmas, the Bush administration exempted 9 million-acres of the Tongass National Forest -- America's largest -- from the rule and took the first steps to exempt another 5 million roadless acres in Alaska's Chugach National Forest.
The Roadless Area Conservation Rule is a historic conservation initiative enacted in January 2001 under the Clinton Administration to protect 58.5 million acres of wild national forest land from most commercial logging and road-building. Among the benefits of this popular conservation policy are clean drinking water for 60 million Americans; protection of critical habitat for more than 1,600 threatened wildlife species; and unlimited recreation for hikers, hunters, and anglers.
The rule currently protects more than two million acres of roadless areas in Washington State. These roadless areas include some of the most important and well known forests in our state, including areas in the Colville National Forest's Kettle Range, the Dark Divide Roadless Area located between Mt. St. Helens and Mt Adams in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest and most of the proposed Wild Sky Wilderness, including the Eagle Rock Roadless Area.
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