Protect Roadless Areas

Obama should follow President Clinton’s lead

For nearly eight years, the Bush administration has worked overtime to kill President Bill Clinton’s Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which protected nearly 60 million acres of roadless public lands from logging, mining and drilling.

Despite Bush’s best efforts, the roadless rule is still standing — on wobbly legs, to be sure. Its fate hinges on the result of two pending federal court cases.

After the Bush administration four years ago tried to replace the rule with an alternative that gave states final say over federal lands in their jurisdictions, seven states, including Oregon, chose to stick with the Clinton protections. Roadless lands in Wyoming and Utah currently are unprotected. Colorado and Idaho have chosen to protect some of their roadless areas, while leaving other lands open to oil and gas drilling and other development.

Despite the Bush administration’s efforts to open roadless areas, only seven miles of new roads have so far been built in protected areas in the lower 48 states. But court rulings still could change the situation dramatically; the Clinton rule has been thrown out and reinstated so many times it’s hard to keep track of its status. The bottom line is that there is no permanent protection for America’s roadless areas, and their future remains in doubt.

Clinton had it right when he approved the roadless rule in 2001 after a lengthy process that included 600 public meetings and generated 170 million comments, 95 percent of them favoring the strongest possible protections for roadless lands.

At a time when the federal government can’t afford to maintain its existing road network on public lands, building new roads in difficult or sensitive terrain makes no sense and would cause extensive environmental damage.

In addition resource extraction, along with the road building that goes with it, would increase erosion, fragment fish and wildlife habitat, and degrade watersheds that are vital sources of drinking water.

There are reasons those nearly 60 million acres have remained inaccessible by road. They include some of the roughest terrain in the country, and the resources on or beneath them have not been worth the expense of extending the road network. Their real value is as a bank of relatively undisturbed land for the future.

President-elect Barack Obama should follow Clinton’s lead and issue a new administrative rule that protects all or most of the roadless areas. If Obama is too preoccupied with economic and national security matters to do so immediately, Congress should approve a bipartisan measure, which Senator Obama supported when it was introduced last year, that would give permanent protection to roadless forests.

Americans have made clear that they cherish this nation’s roadless areas — and that they expect their federal government to protect them for future generations.

The next president and Congress should honor their wishes.