Court restores restrictions on road-building in national forests

Environmentalists cheer the ruling, which reverses moves by the Bush administration to reopen wilderness lands to development. More legal wrangling remains, however.

By Jim Tankersley

11:12 AM PDT, August 5, 2009

Reporting from Washington — A federal appeals court handed environmentalists a victory this morning in a long-litigated fight over road-building and other development in national forests, striking down a Bush administration policy that effectively gutted forest protections set out by President Bill Clinton.

The ruling, by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, reinstates the Clinton-era Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which sealed nearly 60 million acres of public land from logging, road-building and other activity. Much of the protected wilderness lies in the West.

The Bush administration attempted to undercut the rule by exempting many large areas of land from its protections, and by allowing states to set their own development policies. Timber interests sued to block the Clinton rule; environmentalists and many states, including California and Oregon, sued to block the Bush policy.

Today, the 9th Circuit called the Bush plan to repeal Clinton's nationwide protections "unreasonable," and it said "It was likewise unreasonable for the Forest Service to assert that the environment, [protected] species, and their critical habitats would be unaffected" by the move.

That decision is far from the last word. A different court has struck down the Clinton rule. The Obama administration -- which supports road-building restrictions in principle but effectively defended the Bush rule before the 9th Circuit -- has called what amounts to a one-year timeout on development to craft its own road policy.

Still, environmentalists celebrated.

"The court of appeals today affirmed and reinstated throughout the lower 48 states the most popular environmental rule of all time," said Kristen L. Boyles, an attorney with the environmental group Earthjustice, who argued the case. "Finally, the Bush administration's attacks on the 2001 roadless rule are over, and this administration is now free to pursue President Obama's pledge to 'support and defend' the 2001 rule nationwide."

Some groups used the ruling to crank up the pressure on Obama to issue a permanent roadless rule.

"The Obama administration's recent 'timeout' directive on activity in roadless areas is a good first step, but more than ever our last unspoiled national forests need permanent protection under a national rule," Jane Danowitz, director of the Pew Environment Group's U.S. public lands program, said in a statement. "We hope the president will put the full weight of his administration behind reinstating this landmark policy."

"It's a disappointment for us," said Tom Partin, president of the American Forest Resource Council, an industry group based in Portland, Ore.

jtankersley@latimes.com