Montrose - Daily Press

Matt Hildner

Daily Press Writer

MONTROSE — A federal district court in northern California set aside the Bush administration’s 2005 roadless area rule Wednesday and reinstated a 2001 Clinton-era rule that largely prohibits construction and reconstruction of roads on 58.5 million acres of national forest land.

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In her decision Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Laporte said the U.S. Forest Service did not adequately consider the affect of the 2005 rule on the environment and endangered species before issuing the proposal.

Laporte’s ruling consolidated two cases that objected to the Bush roadless proposal: one with claims from 20 environmental groups while the other involved opposition from California, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington

Under the Bush administration’s rule, states were allowed to petition the federal government with their own recommendations for how national forests within their boundaries should manage roadless areas.

In Colorado the ruling throws into doubt the work of the Colorado Roadless Areas Review Task Force, which submitted its recommendations to Gov. Bill Owens earlier this month.

The recommendations called for protecting much of the land that would have been protected under the Clinton rule with the exception of allowing temporary roads for wildfire prevention and to access existing energy and mineral leases. Owens had until Nov. 13 to submit the state’s petition to the federal government.

“We simply should not have a federal magistrate in San Francisco unilaterally dictating natural resource policy for the entire country,” Owens said in a written statement.

The state task force undertook a nearly year-long tour of the state, collecting public comment on how the state’s 4.4 million acres of inventoried roadless areas should be managed.

Montrose County Commissioner Dave Ubell, who was one of the 13 task force members, had yet to see the ruling Wednesday evening, but he was was disappointed the decision might jeopardize the work of the state task force.

“This task force, the 13 of us, really worked hard at this,” he said. “I think in the end — with the final document we did end up with — I think everybody on there probably wanted to see it a little different but that means we compromised.”

Steve Smith, a task force member who’s also assistant regional director for the Wilderness Society, felt the Clinton rule reflected much of the public sentiment he heard with the task force over the last year.

“What we heard was consistent with what was heard on a national scale six years ago,” Smith said of the previous public comments taken for the Clinton rule-making.

Nancy Fishering, who submitted comments on behalf of the Colorado Timber Industry Association and also attended all of the task force meetings, objected to the ruling. She argued that there would have been more environmental studies had the state been allowed to move forward.

“It makes absolutely no sense,” she said.

John Ellenberger, the former big game coordinator for the Colorado Division of Wildlife before he retired in 2004, thinks the Clinton rule would give more protection to roadless areas, but he regreted that the task force’s work might be wasted.

“It gave essentially everybody a say or an opportunity to voice opinions,” he said. “I’d hate to see that thrown out now.”

Both Ellenberger and Ubell think Wednesday’s ruling will not end the legal battles over roadless areas.

Wyoming Gov. Dave Fredeunthal said his state would attempt to revive a lawsuit that led a state judge to strike down the Clinton rule in 2003, according to an Associated Press Report.

Dave Tenny, an undersecretary at the Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service, said the federal government was weighing its options.

“What we’re doing right now is looking very closely at what the court had to say,” he said.

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