Forest road ban reinstated

A federal appeals court Wednesday blocked road construction in at least 40 million acres of national forests, including about 2 million acres in Washington state and 2 million acres in Oregon.

The decision by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstates most of a 2001 rule put in place by President Clinton just before he left office. That rule prohibited commercial logging, mining and other development on about 58 million acres of national forest in 38 states and Puerto Rico. A subsequent Bush-administration rule had cleared the way for more commercial activity on those lands.

The latest ruling, issued in San Francisco, sides with several Western states, including Washington, and environmental groups that had sued the U.S. Forest Service after it reversed the so-called "Roadless Rule" in 2005.

But it is not the final word on roadless forests.

A separate case is pending in the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where environmental groups are appealing a district-court decision in Wyoming repealing the Clinton roadless rule.

"We're not out of the woods yet. ... But we are confident that the Wyoming decision will be reversed," said Mike Anderson, a senior resource analyst with The Wilderness Society in Seattle.

The 9th Circuit decision "halts the Bush-administration assault on roadless areas, but the Obama administration must now take the next steps necessary to make protection permanent and nationwide," he said.

The Obama administration cited the legal uncertainty this spring in ordering a one-year moratorium on most road-building in the forests.

A May 28 directive by U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack gives him sole decision-making authority over all proposed forest-management or road-construction projects in designated roadless areas in all states except Idaho. Idaho was one of two states that developed its own roadless rule under the 2005 Bush policy, which gave states more control over road-building in remote forests.

Lawyers involved in the case said the 9th Circuit ruling reinstated the Clinton-era rule everywhere except Idaho and the Tongass National Forest in Alaska. The Tongass was exempted in a separate 2003 decision.

Vilsack said in May that his directive should ensure that oversight of activities in the affected areas can continue while long-term roadless policy is developed.

No word on Wyoming

Justin DeJong, a spokesman for Vilsack, said, "the Obama administration supports conservation of roadless areas in our national forests, and this decision today reaffirms the protection of these resources."

The Obama administration has not said whether it will defend the Clinton rule in the Wyoming dispute, but environmentalists say the administration should step in.

Even without that step, environmental advocates hailed the ruling, calling it the end of the Bush-era rule on roadless forests.

"This is a huge step. It puts the roadless rule back in place," said Kristen Boyles, a lawyer in the Seattle office of the environmental group Earthjustice, which represented a coalition of environmental groups in the case.

Boyles, who has fought for nearly eight years to uphold the 2001 rule, said the 9th Circuit ruling "is what we need to be able to have the protection on the ground for the last wild places and for hikers and campers."

Wednesday's ruling "gives us back protections for areas that millions of Americans have supported protecting, and that's a good thing," she said. "This win means that we're that much closer to getting permanent protection for these last pristine forest areas."

Decision hailed

Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire also hailed the ruling. "This is a great victory for Washingtonians, who have long stood for the protection of our roadless areas," she said in a statement. "These special places provide clean water, fish and wildlife habitat, and priceless recreational opportunities for Washington families."

But a timber-industry group expressed disappointment. The Bush administration's state-by-state planning process "lets the people who are most impacted have a say in the disposition of those lands," rather than subjecting them to "blanket policies coming out of the government," said Tom Partin, president of the American Forest Resource Council, which represents nearly 100 forest-products companies.

In its 38-page decision, the appeals court said the 2005 Bush rule "had the effect of permanently repealing uniform, nationwide, substantive protections that were afforded to inventoried roadless areas" in national forests, replacing them with a system the Forest Service "had rejected as inadequate a few years earlier."

The court said the 2001 rule offered greater protection to remote forests than the 2005 rule, adding that the 2001 rule has "immeasurable benefits from a conservationist standpoint."

Timber sales approved

Meanwhile, developments continue on the ground.

Last month, Vilsack approved a timber sale in a roadless area of the Tongass National Forest. The sale allows Pacific Log and Lumber to clear-cut about 380 acres in the largest federal forest. About nine miles of roads will be constructed to allow the logging.

Timber sales in other roadless areas are pending, including a thinning project in Oregon that would allow logging of about 900 acres in the Umpqua National Forest near Diamond Lake. About 25 miles of roads would be built.

"What the Forest Service is proposing on the doorstep of Crater Lake National Park is harmful, unnecessary and illegal," said Doug Heiken, of the environmental group Oregon Wild.

Partin, of the timber-industry group, countered that the project would reduce the risk of wildfire and insect infestation. "If we don't treat them before they die [of the infestation] we will have massive wildfires," Partin said.

Information from The Associated Press, San Francisco Chronicle and The Seattle Times staff was used in this report.