Roadless rule - Ritter makes right call on forest plan

In CO, the state-by-state process designed to undermine national roadless protections, slows down & opens up.

For almost a decade, there has been debate about how to manage the country's roadless national forest areas. Now facing its third presidential administration, the issue appears to be nearing finalization, but cannot reach it without settling some of the tensions that have erupted along the way. In announcing a plan to put Colorado's proposed roadless rule back out for public comment, Gov. Bill Ritter made the right decision for bringing the lengthy and disparate discussion closer to closure.

Begun in the waning days of the Clinton administration, the national conversation about protecting the country's roadless national forests began with a nationwide series of hearings designed to gather input and public opinion about whether to extend increased protections to areas that were undeveloped by roads, mining, timber or intensive recreational activities. The overwhelming sentiment revealed in the hearings and in the public comments submitted after the meetings was that Americas favored protecting these untouched areas. In response, near the end of his term, President Bill Clinton enacted a rule that banned roads on 58 million acres of national forests.

President George W. Bush reversed the Clinton rule, calling it a last-minute effort to lock up public lands, and instead turned to the states to come up with their own roadless forest plans - a dubiously reasoned assignment, given the national ownership of the forests in question. Colorado put together a task force of various stakeholders that came up with a plan similar to the Clinton rule, with some exceptions troubling to some interests, including conservationists and wildlife advocates. Among the exceptions in question are provisions allowing communities to craft wildfire protection plans that could lead to road-building anywhere within one and a half miles of its bounds. This overly broad language could have dramatic implications for the roadless intentions of the rule, which has yet to be signed off on at the national level. The plan was submitted for U.S. Department of Agriculture approval in 2007. With various lawsuits in various stages of adjudication, as well as an administration shift, the rules - Colorado's and the larger national measure - remain in limbo.

Now that he has been appointed U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack has put a one-year moratorium on road-building proposals in inventoried roadless areas, buying time to revisit the Clinton rule and come up with an updated version. That is where the process should be located: at the federal level. After all, these are national forests in question, and a state-by-state approach - however inclusive its process - does not reflect said ownership. By sending the state rule back out for public comment, Ritter has rightly offered Coloradans a voice in a debate that has yet to be settled. The input gathered here can influence the national process, and vice versa. There is no reason to rush the Colorado process to completion, given the larger effort now under way.

Ritter recognized that and has given the state an opportunity to fine-tune a plan that has been sitting unseen by the public eye for one year, despite a series of changes to the draft rule. Given those changes, and the larger context within which the discussion is now taking place, bringing the public into the fold is appropriate and timely. The final rule - at whatever level it is issued - will benefit from the process.

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To learn more about the Roadless Rule see Oregon Wild's Roadless webpage here