WASHINGTON, July 12 — The Forest Service today proposed scuttling a Clinton-era rule, which put 58.5 million acres of national forest largely off-limits to logging, mining or other development, in favor of a new system that leaves it to state governors to seek greater or fewer strictures on the construction of logging, mining, recreational or other roads on federal forest land.
The announcement, made by Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman in Boise, Idaho, a state where ideological opposition to the Clinton rule was most pronounced, was a signature moment for the Bush Administration's environmental policy.
After three years of gradually retreating from the sweeping preservationist rule, which covered about 30 percent of the 191 million acres of national forests and was embraced by environmentalists, the administration decisively rejected it and substituted a patchwork process that makes state officials the moving force in decisions of whether to log or to conserve forest lands.
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But a broad spectrum of environmental groups — including some usually sympathetic to the Bush administration — voiced outrage and disappointment at the announcement. "This doesn't ensure that a single acre of roadless area gets protected," said Marty Hayden, a lawyer with Earthjustice, one of several groups that are defending the Clinton-era rule in Federal court.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/12/national/12CND-FOREST.html?hp
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