Ten months ago, President Obama ordered a yearlong timeout on road construction and development in national forests. Since then, the administration has defended vigorously the Clinton era roadless rule, which was intended to protect 58 million acres of largely pristine federal lands. That support needs to be reiterated in view of contrary signals from U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.
Last month, the administration asked a federal appeals court to uphold the original 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, citing the 2 million comments Americans submitted in favor of the rule and the U.S. Forest Service’s statutory authority to formulate forest management rules.
The administration’s enthusiastic support marked a welcome change from the Bush administration, which spent eight years trying to undermine the rule.
But the Obama administration’s support was weakened recently by Vilsack’s embrace of Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter’s proposal to exempt his state from the federal rule. Such an exemption would affect 4.4 million acres of roadless national forests in Colorado.
Vilsack praised Colorado’s plan and announced that his department will start a federal rule-making process that would codify the numerous exceptions it allows for oil and gas leases, coal mining, logging and other development.
That’s starkly at odds with Obama’s support, both so far as president and as a candidate in 2008, for the roadless rule. It’s also at odds with the recommendations of more than 500 scientists nationwide who oppose Ritter’s effort to exempt Colorado from the federal rule.
In a letter this week, the scientists, including nearly a dozen at Colorado State University, urged the administration to apply uniform protections for all roadless areas nationwide, because those undeveloped lands provide critical wildlife habitat and protect important watersheds.
Colorado’s proposal has its origins in the Bush administration’s efforts to eliminate the roadless rule and substitute a new policy favored by the timber industry, a policy that left much of the forests’ fate in the hands of the states where they were located. It was a crazy-quilt strategy that kept most roadless areas intact in California and Oregon but allowed road building in states such as Idaho and Colorado. The decisions had little to do with carefully balancing forest use with forest protection — and everything to do with state politics.
Vilsack should remember that national forests aren’t the property of individual states. They are national treasures belonging to all Americans. Decisions on opening public lands to natural resource extraction should be made by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which has responsibility for the national forest system, not by individual states.
The Obama administration should reject Colorado’s petition and fully reinstate the roadless rule.
The president also should urge Congress to approve a bipartisan measure, which he supported as a senator, that would give permanent protection to roadless areas, including the 2 million acres that lie within Oregon’s borders, for the sake of future generations.
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Click here to read Oregon Wild's press statement on the Colorado proposal