Protecting America's Public Land

On January 12, 2001, after nearly three years of analysis and the greatest public outreach in the history of federal rulemaking, the U.S. Forest Service adopted the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which seeks to conserve a large portion of unprotected wildland on National Forests. Unfortunately, the Bush Administration has failed to implement the Rule, and, in fact, is trying to overturn it. Even a recent federal court ruling in support of the original Rule is not deterring the Administration from its anti-roadless area objectives.

From the gently sloping mountains of the Blue Ridge in the East to the abundant freshwaters of the Superior National Forest in the upper Midwest, to the rugged peaks of the Rockies, to the spectacular vistas of the Cascades and Sierra Nevada in the West and on to the Tongass rainforest in Alaska, the Roadless Rule is a legacy of wild forest protection that would preserve a fundamental piece of our natural heritage for future generations.

The Roadless Area Conservation Rule, however, has yet to be implemented by the Bush Administration. As a result, many controversial logging, road construction and oil and gas drilling projects, spurred on by the administration's corporate special interest friends, are threatening some of our nation’s finest hunting and fishing resources.

On September 20, 2006, U.S. District Magistrate Judge Elizabeth LaPorte reinstated the original, 2001 roadless rule put in place by the Clinton Administration to protect some 58.5 million acres of unroaded, wild forests. The Judge found that the Bush Administration violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Endangered Species Act (ESA) when it repealed the 2001 Roadless Rule. The court reinstated the 2001 Rule.

The timber industry moved rapidly to appeal LaPorte’s ruling to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. And the state of Wyoming has asked the District Court to reinstate a 2003 injunction of the Clinton rule.

Mark Rey, formerly chief lobbyist for the timber industry and now USDA Under-Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment, is urging governors to continue filing the petitions that were provided for by the Bush administration’s version of the rule, saying that they will be applied to the 2001 rule.

Following Judge Laporte's ruling, the Chief of the Forest Service has issued an agency-wide directive prohibiting any "further management activities in inventoried roadless areas that would be prohibited by the 2001 Roadless Rule." Remarkably, in the six years that environmental groups, the conservation community and thousands of hunters and anglers have worked to protect roadless forest areas against incursions by the Bush Administration, nearly all are still intact. AHSA is following all of these developments closely, with an eye toward keeping our roadless areas wild and natural.