Make roadless rule law

The Register Guard argues it is time for Congress to codify the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule

A federal appeals court Wednesday upheld the Clinton-­era roadless rule. But congressional action still is needed to block development in the nation’s finite inventory of roadless federal lands.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the 2001 rule, which bars road building — and by extension, most logging, mining, oil and gas drilling and other resource extraction — on nearly 60 million acres of public lands. Most of those large tracts of unroaded lands are in the West, including 2 million acres in Oregon.

President Clinton adopted the roadless rule in 2001 after three years of scientific studies and public comment, which strongly supported leaving unroaded areas intact. Without any semblance of scientific scrutiny or deliberation, the Bush administration suspended the rule in 2001 and eventually replaced it with a weak substitute that allowed states to determine their own development policies.

Environmental groups, along with states including Oregon and California, sued to block Bush’s replacement policy, which catered to the timber, energy and mining industries.

The 9th Circuit Court panel called the Bush plan to repeal the roadless rule “unreasonable” and noted that it was “likewise unreasonable for the Forest Service to assert that the environmental (protected) species and their critical habitats would be unaffected” by the move.

As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama said he supported the roadless rule. After a frustrating delay, his administration has taken steps to restore it. Those steps included an order in May from Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack calling for what amounts to a one-year timeout on most development as the administration reviews the roadless issue.

Vilsack has said that any project proposed in roadless areas would have to get his personal approval. One of projects he is likely to review is a forest thinning proposal that includes 900 acres of inventoried roadless forests in the Umpqua National Forest near Diamond Lake. In light of Wednesday’s ruling, the secretary should not allow that project or others in the West to proceed.

Despite the court’s ruling and the administration’s timeout on road-building, the roadless rule remains at risk. Environmental regulations are vulnerable to legal challenges, and the roadless rule remains entangled in litigation. For example, environmental groups are appealing a Wyoming district court judge’s decision from last year repealing the roadless rule.

Congress should intervene to save the rule and the forests, grasslands and other areas it is meant to protect. Lawmakers should work with the administration to craft a bipartisan measure, similar to one that Obama supported as a senator, that would protect roadless areas from road-building, logging, mining drilling and other resource-extraction activities.

The roadless rule was one of Clinton’s landmark environmental achievements. Despite Bush’s eight-year assault on the rule, only a few miles of roads have been built in protected areas since 2001.

By putting the roadless rule into law, Congress can permanently protect the rule and the supply of roadless areas it was intended to safeguard.