From: Misty 
Subject: SNET: Clinton's Last Rights Roadless
Date: 10 Jan 2001 02:41:49 -0500
To: Surfing the Apocalypse ,
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        Armageddon or New Age? 

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Clinton's Last Rights Roadless
Posted 8th January 2001
http://www.pl.net/8politics/clinton.html

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."







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