Administration
Is
Exempting Alaska Forest From Protection
By Jennifer 8. Lee
Published: December 24, 2003
WASHINGTON,
Dec. 23 - The Bush administration announced on Tuesday that
the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, the largest in the
country, would be exempted from a Clinton-era rule, potentially
opening
up more than half of the 17 million-acre forest for more development
and as many as 50 logging projects.The decision stems from
the settlement of a lawsuit between Alaska and the federal government
over the so-called roadless rule, which prohibited the building
of roads in 58.5 million acres of undeveloped national forest
across the country.
Environmental groups attacked the administration for the settlement
in July, saying it was an underhanded strategy for circumventing
the regulation. Conservation groups said the administration
had failed to defend the roadless designation adequately.
But Ray Massey, a spokesman for the Forest Service in Alaska,
said that agency officials felt there were already enough protections
for the Tongass. "We didn't really need roadless to protect
the Tongass," he said in a telephone interview. "We
already have a forest plan in place to protect the Tongass."
Before putting the roadless designation into effect, the Forest
Service had drawn up plans for the immediate development of
300,000 acres in the Tongass. Environmental groups say that
about 9.6 million acres of the Tongass could be affected by
the dropping of the ban.
The roadless rule was put in place after a two-year process
that included 600 scientific studies and two rounds of public
comments that generated almost two million responses, most
of them in favor of the rule.
Since its inception, the rule has been challenged through
a host of legal, legislative and administrative efforts. The
conflicts have highlighted the tensions between environmental
protection and economic development, and between state autonomy
and federal oversight.
Environmental groups supported the roadless rule as a way
to curb the development and logging that had already affected
half of national forest land. But Western states and the timber
industry said the rule was unjustified in its sweeping scope
- touching about 30 percent of national forest acreage in the
country.
Industry groups and states have made a concerted effort to
attack the rule through lawsuits around the country. In July,
a federal district court judge in Wyoming suspended the rule
nationwide. Environmental groups are appealing the case to
the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, in
Denver.
Before that, a federal court in Idaho originally threw out
the roadless rule, but that decision was overturned last December
by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit,
in San Francisco.
The Tongass National Forest, with 16.8 million acres, has
been particularly contentious because of its environmental
symbolism as the only temperate rain forest on the continent.
" This is the rarest forest type on earth and it needs to be protected," said
Jeremy Paster, a forest campaign organizer for Greenpeace.
—© 2003 The New York Times Company
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