Clinton's Last Rights Roadless
Posted 8th January 2001

US President Bill Clinton today announced the adoption of a comprehensive strategy that bans road construction and commercial logging on nearly 60 million acres of U.S. Forest Service land. Speaking at a news conference at the National Arboretum in Washington, Clinton said that the new policy will insure that the pristine forest lands will remain "unspoiled by bulldozers, undisturbed by chain saws and untouched for our children. "This is about preserving the land which the American people own, for the American people who are not around yet," Clinton said. "Not everyone can travel to the great palaces of the world, but everyone can enjoy the majesty of our great forests." With the announcement of the new roadless rule, the Clinton administration has protected more land in the continental United States than any administration since Theodore Roosevelt The new policy, which Clinton first proposed in 1999, will prohibit road building and commercial logging on 58.5 million acres of inventoried roadless areas throughout the national forest system.

The policy was drafted to reflect the environmental importance of roadless areas, which provide critical habitat for a vast array of fish and wildlife, including more than 200 plant and animal species protected or proposed for protection under the federal Endangered Species Act. Conservation groups were quick to hail the new roadless rule, which will extend strong environmental protections to an area greater in size than all of the country's national parks combined. Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope called the rule the "greatest land protection victory in a generation," and he praised the outgoing president for "leaving a legacy of wild forests for all Americans who love to hunt, hike, fish and camp. "Today's announcement is a victory for us all - for everyone who has ever walked in a forest, for the millions of us who rely on our national forests for clean drinking water, and for future generations," Pope said. But the logging and mining industries renewed their vigorous and long standing objections to the rule, and a host of influential Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill promised overturn the new roadless policy.

Utah Congressman Jim Hansen, the newly elected chairman of the powerful House Resource Committee, said the outgoing Clinton administration has imposed an "arbitrary, illegal road ban over a third of this nation's national forests. "As chairman of the Resource Committee, I will make it a priority to undo this kind of reckless, last minute maneuvering," Hansen said. "The American people deserve thoughtful, rational policies that allow local management and public enjoyment of their own lands. They don't deserve this last minute manipulation and grandstanding by a man desperate for a legacy." Murkowski said the roadless policy would be especially devastating for timber harvesting activities in Alaska's Tongass National Forest, the nation's largest. Roadless areas in the Tongass, which had been exempted from the road building and commercial logging prohibitions in earlier drafts of the policy, are now subject to those restrictions, with certain exceptions. Murkowski, Hansen and other federal lawmakers have all claimed that the roadless policy will increase the risk of George Frampton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, was quick to counter that view. Frampton said that the new roadless rule was subjected to the "most robust public comment period ever," in which more than 600 public meetings were conducted and more than 1.5 million comments were reviewed by the Forest Service. "This has proved to be overwhelmingly popular," Frampton said of the rule. Any administration, to change the rule, will have to go through the full formal process under a number of federal environmental laws. That will involve scoping hearings and taking public comments all over again. Frampton said, "That's a very long, detailed process.

I think if it's started, it is going to produce a great deal of public opposition." Frampton dismissed charges that the roadless policy is too extreme, noting that it does contain provisions for thinning trees to reduce wildfire risks, and for restoring forest health. Frampton denied that the rule is a last desperate effort to save the pristine roadless areas from President-elect George W. Bush, whose environmental record had been ridiculed by many in the conservation community. Frampton said that the rule has been in the works for some time, and that it is designed to "close the loop" on a process begun in the 1920s by the great conservationist Aldo Leopold. Clinton gave credit to Leopold in his remarks on Friday, saying, "When we see the land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect." Asked if the country could expect the same kind of conservation commitment from the incoming Bush administration, Frampton said, "I guess you'd have to ask Gale Norton that question." President-elect George W. Bush's nominee for Interior Secretary has been sharply criticized by the environmental community. Norton, who formerly served as attorney general for the state of Colorado, is Bush's nominee for Secretary of the Interior. Environmental groups have been sharply critical of Norton, who has ties to James Watt, regarded by many as the most anti-environmental Interior Secretary in the nation's history.

Frampton predicted that it would be difficult for the incoming Bush administration to "roll back" the new roadless rule, or any of the 12 national monuments that Clinton has created by use of the 1906 Antiquities Act. "In past administrations there have been legal opinions to the effect that the designation of a monument is the exercise of delegated legislative power, so a subsequent administration cannot undo a monument by another executive order," said Frampton. Still, he added, "I don't think that's ever really been tested in court." Except for boundary changes, no national monument has ever been undone by another administration or Congress, Frampton noted. "It obviously remains to be seen what Congress will do or what the administration will do, but I hope in the end that they decide to move on to some of the challenges of the future."