In a Final Environmental Impact Statement issued on Aug. 29, the U.S. Forest Service announced plans to reduce the acreage of Idaho roadless national forest opened to phosphate mining, logging, and road building from 609,000 acres to 405,000 acres. At 9.3 million acres, Idaho is second only to Alaska in total acreage of federal forest land.
Under the compromise, the Forest Service designated 250 roadless areas in Idaho and established five management themes that guide road construction, timber cutting, and mineral development. It expects its final rule on roadless management to take effect within 30 days after the USDA secretary signs it.
That would supersede the 2001 roadless rule enacted by the Clinton administration, which began a legal battle that prompted 10 lawsuits. The most recent decision by U.S. District Judge Clarence Brimmer in Wyoming rejected the Clinton rule for the second time. Idaho was the first state to go to court to block the Clinton rule.
The FEIS would leave about 3.3 million acres completely roadless, with 5.6 million acres enjoying similar protection with exceptions for logging in areas where fires could put communities at risk, and 405,000 acres open to all development.
“The Idaho Roadless Rule represents the first time a state and its citizens had a direct voice in creating a plan for resolving an issue of national importance,” said Lt. Gov. Jim Risch, who was governor when the state’s plan was drafted in 2006. He noted the federal government owns two out of every three acres in Idaho. “I believe the process we used can serve as a model for resolving these difficult natural resource issues in the future.”
Risch’s proposal would have returned the 609,000 acres of roadless lands to general forest management, which would have allowed permanent roads and logging. The new plan narrowed the restrictions on logging and road building in the largest designated roadless areas – the 5.3 million acre backcountry restoration areas – to limit logging to 442,000 acres of community protection zones.
“The Department and Forest Service are committed to the important challenge of protecting roadless characteristics,” said Mark Rey, Undersecretary of Agriculture for Natural Resources and the Environment. “The preferred alternative does not authorize the building of a single road or the cutting of any trees.”
Rick Johnson, executive director of the Idaho Conservation League, and Jim Riley, president of the Intermountain Forest Association, voiced support for the plan. It also was endorsed by the motorized recreation industry, county officials, and the Roadless Area Conservation National Advisory Committee, who negotiated with Risch and the Forest Service. The Wilderness Society, however, still supports the original Clinton bans on logging and road building on 58 million acres of roadless national forest, expressing concern about phosphate mining on acreage with less protection.
“It’s ironic that on Labor Day weekend, when many Idahoans head to the state’s national forest roadless lands for their tremendous recreation opportunities, the state of Idaho is promoting a policy that would condemn 400,000 acres of those roadless lands – an amount of land about twice the size of the Sawtooth Wilderness – to more roads, more development and certainly more open pit mines,” said Craig Gehrke, director of the Wilderness Society’s Boise office.
The largely undeveloped roadless lands have been the center of controversy in Idaho since the Wilderness Act was passed 40 years ago, protecting many of the nation’s remote areas. Preservationists have sought to add much of the roadless area to the wilderness system, where logging and motorized use is banned. Loggers and miners have sought to open some areas to new roads and logging. Others simply want the areas left as they are.
The Forest Service says it has a $660 million backlog of road maintenance and improvement projects in Idaho, where it has 34,000 miles of national forest roads. Since water quality rules and the Endangered Species Act sharply curtailed timber harvests and road building in the 1990s, the pressure to log and build roads in these areas has dropped – but not the controversy.
The original Clinton rule and a Bush administration substitute giving individual states more say in roadless area regulations have been enmeshed in two-track litigation in federal courts. It remains to be seen whether the new Idaho compromise will remain free of the legal battles. Colorado is also working out its own roadless plan.
“As the Bush administration heads out the door, it is giving the logging and mining industries the keys to Idaho’s most pristine national forests. The administration seems intent on doing the same in Colorado, where it is now rushing to finalize a rule that would open undeveloped national forests in the Rocky Mountains to a dramatic increase in logging and oil and gas drilling,” said Jane Danowitz, Pew Environment Group’s U.S. public lands program director.
“While groups on the ground in Idaho did a commendable job to significantly improve the original administration plan, national forests on the doorstep of Yellowstone National Park will be left vulnerable to development. We hope a new administration will embrace the federal roadless rule as the way to protect America’s forests for years to come.”