Forest roadless rules urged

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Democratic lawmakers and environmentalists urged the Bush administration on Thursday to preserve a Clinton-era ban on logging and road building in a third of national forest lands.

"This struggle is very fundamental, and it’s titanic. It’s about America’s last wild forests, and it’s about whether or not those forests will in fact be able to survive," Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., said.

He was among a half-dozen members of Congress and dozens of environmentalists from groups including the Wilderness Society and Alaska Rainforest Campaign at a Capitol Hill news conference. Their renewed plea came ahead of Monday’s deadline for public comment period on the ban, called the roadless rule.

Just before leaving office, President Clinton approved the ban covering 58.5 million acres of national forests, an area more than twice the size of Ohio. The rule drew harsh criticism from timber, oil and mining interests, as well as some recreation groups, which said it was too sweeping and could actually harm forests.

"The roadless rule as written builds a wall around national forests. It keeps out firefighters, it keeps out scientists," said Michael Klein, spokesman for the American Forest &Paper Association, a forest products trade organization. "The rule prohibits preventative forest health treatment."

Citing lack of public input, among other reasons, the Bush administration said in May it wanted to revise the rule. In July, the administration formally reopened the debate by asking 10 questions about how roadless areas could best be managed. The public was given two months to comment.

Environmentalists say the public already responded with 1.6 million comments during the Clinton administration and hundreds of thousands more to those questions.

"The question is will President Bush listen to the public," said Jane Danowitz, director of the Heritage Forests Campaign, "or will he listen to the corporate special interests?"