Bush aims to topple logging ban.

Byline: From Register-Guard and news service reports

The Bush administration on Monday said it will scuttle a Clinton-era rule that put nearly 60 million acres of national forests largely off-limits to logging and mining in favor of a new system that leaves it to state governors to seek greater - or fewer - strictures on road construction in forests.

The announcement abandoning the rule protecting so-called roadless areas was made by Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman in Boise, where opposition to the rule issued by then President Clinton was pronounced. Veneman described her proposal as a way to sidestep litigation over building roads through national forests and as a way to improve local participation in determining the use of national forests.

``State governments are important partners in the stewardship of the nation's lands,'' she said.

The move is likely to put huge pressure in Oregon on Gov. Ted Kulongoski. Environmentalists said they would press Kulongoski to keep Oregon's 2 million acres of federal roadless areas off-limits to logging, while timber industry officials said they want the governor to hold public hearings and gather comment.

James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said the White House "wants a process that will be respectful of local needs.''

Under the new proposal, he said, a governor could petition the Forest Service to reduce existing protections on roadless areas, keep them the same or expand them.

Many environmental groups reacted with outrage at Monday's announcement.

``This doesn't ensure that a single acre of roadless area gets protected,'' said Marty Hayden, legislative director with Earthjustice, one of several groups that are defending the Clinton-era rule in federal court. ``Everything could be up for grabs.''

Veneman's announcement was a signature moment for the Bush administration's environmental policy. After three years of gradually withdrawing from the sweeping preservation rule - which covered about 30 percent of the 191 million acres of national forests - the administration decisively rejected it and substituted a process that makes state officials big players in whether to log forests.

It's unclear how the new rule would affect federal forests in Western Oregon.

A separate set of rules - the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan put in place by Clinton - covers 24 million acres of federal forest in Western Oregon, Washington and Northern California. That plan put most roadless areas off limits to timber harvest and road building. So, even without Clinton's roadless rules, many roadless areas in Western Oregon would remain protected under the 1994 plan.

If the federal government sought to weaken that plan, however, up to about 1.7 million acres of the almost 2 million acres of roadless areas in Oregon could be opened to road building and logging, said Jay Ward, conservation director of the Oregon Natural Resources Council.

Under the 1994 plan, prohibitions on logging in roadless areas are substantial.

In the 1.7 million-acre Eugene-based Willamette National Forest, about 158,000 acres are considered to be in roadless areas. Of those, 71,000 acres are set aside as reserves where no logging or roads are allowed. Another 15,000 acres are largely off limits because they are in key watersheds.

Roads could be built on about 50,000 roadless acres spread throughout the Willamette forest, but under the 1994 plan, the largest trees in those areas can't be cut. That leaves only about 22,000 acres of roadless areas that would be open to logging.

The 1994 plan, like Clinton's roadless plan, can be changed, Ward said. "That's one of the reasons we in the conservation movement like wilderness areas, because it takes an act of Congress to implement them - while administrations come and go," he said.

Meanwhile, Kulongoski was disappointed in the administration's latest move. The new rules offer "virtually no protection for some of the most pristine areas in Oregon and in the West," Kulongoski press secretary Mary Ellen Glynn said. "We're going to be looking at our options to see what we can do about this."

Jeremy Hall, Northwest field representative for the ONRC, said he hopes the governor will show "strong leadership" on protecting roadless areas. "We haven't seen that strong leadership as of yet," he said, noting that Kulongoski was not among the governors who wrote to the Bush administration last year opposing the proposed change in roadless-area policy.

The ONRC will urge Kulongoski to ask the Bush administration to keep all Oregon roadless areas off limits to road-building and logging, Hall said.

But logging advocates were optimistic Monday.

Jim Geisinger, executive vice president for Associated Oregon Loggers, said Kulongoski should hold hearings and give Oregonians a voice in how roadless areas are treated.

Forest products industries would oppose any attempt by Kulongoski to continue the logging and road-building ban, he said. "That would be abdicating his responsibility to develop progressive-thinking management plans," Geisinger said.

The federal proposal, which will be open to public comment for the next 60 days, includes a provision for an 18-month period during which governors can prepare their requests. During that time, changes to the current roadless designations could be made by Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth. After that, the governors could seek changes in designations in individual forest management plans that predated the Clinton-era rule.

Gov. Dirk Kempthorne of Idaho, a Republican, appeared with Veneman at Monday's news conference and lauded the new rules. ``We now have a roadless process that can be accomplished by respecting state sovereignty," he said. Idaho has 20.5 million acres of national forest, 9.3 million of which were designated as protected roadless areas.

But Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, a Democrat, said the federal government should manage roadless areas consistently from state to state. The Bush administration, he said, ``wants to drill, drill, build, build,'' and ``abdicate its responsibility to the states for management of federal lands."

Register-Guard reporters Joe Harwood and David Steves and The New York Times contributed to this report.