Clearcut Values from Earthjustice.org
Rather old news, but the environment has been overlooked as an important issue to date.
When it comes to undermining the most important forest conservation legacy since Theodore Roosevelt created the forest reserves, the Bush administration has consistently tried to hide behind the rhetoric of ?protecting roadless values.?
On May 4, 2001, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman and Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth held a joint press conference in Washington, DC, to announce they believed in protecting ?roadless values? and were going to allow the National Forest Roadless Area Conservation Rule adopted during the Clinton administration to go into effect on May 12. They also said they would recommend minor changes to the rule in the future. Meanwhile, they had their lawyers roll out the red carpet for a federal district court judge in Idaho to issue a preliminary injunction barring implementation of the rule two days before its new effective date!
The Bush administration did not appeal the lower court?s ruling. Earthjustice did (on behalf of many environmental organizations) and successfully overturned the Idaho court?s injunction before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in December 2002. The rule was in force until July 2003, when a Wyoming district judge issued an injunction. Earthjustice again appealed and that case is currently before the Tenth Circuit. This time, the administration not only failed to appeal, but argued that citizens do not have the right to appeal when the Bush administration refuses to do so.
On July 12, 2004, Secretary Veneman showed the nation once and for all what this administration really means when it says it wants to protect ?roadless values? by announcing its new proposal intended to replace the Roadless Rule.
Rather than safeguard the last remaining unprotected wild forests in our national forest system, the Bush administration instead proposes to completely throw out the protections brought to 58.5 million acres of pristine forests by the Roadless Rule. In the rule?s place, they hope to allow governors to petition Secretary Veneman to ?establish management requirements for all or any portion of a national forest system inventoried roadless area within that state.? With this new petition process, a governor could certainly ask that all or some of the roadless areas in his or her state be protected. However, it is just as true that a governor could request more roadbuilding, logging, mining, and oil and gas development be allowed in these pristine forests.
Governors are not compelled to file a petition at all, whereas Secretary Veneman is under no obligation to do a rulemaking, or even if she does, to protect roadless areas with it. Her new ?roadless values? rule merely says she has to tell a governor whether or not she will undertake a rulemaking within 180 days of the filing of a petition. This proposal could take the ?national? out of national forests, as its result could be a hodgepodge of forest management largely driven by the relative influence of extractive industries in state politics instead of any national interest or priorities.
By eliminating the Roadless Rule, some 34.5 million acres of roadless areas are immediately open to roadbuilding and other development. Another 24 million acres had some protection--though not necessarily the same provided by the Roadless Rule--in forest management plans that were in place before the Roadless Rule was finalized. This is the sleight-of-hand by which Secretary Veneman and her Undersecretary and former timber industry lobbyist Mark Rey hope to hit pay-dirt. For example, pro-drilling, -mining and, -clearcutting Governor (and former Senator) Frank Murkowski of Alaska could ask the Secretary to undo pre-Roadless Rule protections that were contained in Alaska?s Tongass Rainforest?s 1997 land management plan (Read about the state of roadless protections for the Tongass here). Given this administration?s track-record of putting clearcuts and oil drilling first, it is apt to roll out the red carpet for the Governor Murkowskis of our nation, whereas a governor that wants to protect pristine forests desired by Big Timber is just as apt to be told ?thanks, but no thanks.?
While the Bush administration hopes to return to the bad old days of clearcut-and-run in our national forests, the outrage of American taxpayers over a program awash in an ocean of red ink was heard in the House of Representatives last month. Republican Steve Chabot, a fiscal conservative from Ohio, and Democrat Robert Andrews of New Jersey teamed up to win an amendment to the Interior spending bill that prohibits taxpayer financing of logging roads in the Tongass by a vote of 222-205. Last year, the Tongass timber program spent $36 million to sell just $1 million worth of timber. For decades, the Forest Service has hemorrhaged money to clear cut towering groves of ancient trees in the world?s largest remaining temperate rainforest and the House of Representatives just sent a shot across its bow. However, the future of this provision in the Senate is less certain, as Alaska?s senior senator chairs the powerful Appropriations Committee.
Rather old news, but the environment has been overlooked as an important issue to date.
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