Bush seeks to open forests

	"Veneman, in remarks Monday, said, "Our actions today advance
President Bush's commitment to cooperatively conserving roadless areas
on national forests.""
Conserve roadless areas my arse.  Another Alice in Wonderland view of
things, where up is down and down is up.   Boy howdy, they sure take the
people for a bunch of rubes.

No wonder my spellchecker suggests that I replace "Veneman" with
"Enema".  Would feel a damn sight better.

Bush seeks to open forests
Road building, logging decisions left to governors
By TERRY KLIEWER
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle 
The Bush administration proposed Monday to open national forests to more
road building and logging in a move that angered Texas
environmentalists.
The new plan, revealed in draft form two weeks ago and announced Monday
by Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman , calls for state governors to
petition Washington if they wish to block road building in remote
national-forest areas.
None of the half-dozen environmental activists contacted by the
Chronicle expects Texas Gov. Rick Perry to press the federal government
to keep construction and logging crews out of the state's Sam Houston,
Davy Crockett, Sabine and Angelina national forests.
Representatives of Perry did not return phone calls seeking comment.
Under the proposal, the 58.5 million acres designated as roadless among
the 191 million acres of national forest will be protected from
development for another 18 months.
In 2006, each governor may submit a proposal either to continue
protecting the roadless land or allow it to be opened to multiple use.
The federal government would consider each state petition and then issue
a regulation determining the extent of future protection.
Though the environmentalists interviewed by the Chronicle did not flatly
state that the new plan is the beginning of the end for remote, roadless
areas of Texas' four national forests, they said they expected the
revised rules to be adopted despite controversy about their content.
"They will go ahead and do this," predicted Brandt Mannchen, forest
chairman for the Houston Sierra Club. "This is the culmination of the
Bush administration's assault on our wilderness areas."
The outcome, he predicted, will be dire.
"Stumps don't lie."
Janice Bezanson, executive director of the Texas Committee on Natural
Resources, said, "I'm just appalled by this lessening of our
protections. These are among our last wild places, and this will
seriously erode their protection."
The previous policy, adopted in 2001 by the Clinton administration,
blocked road construction in 58 million acres of national forests to
prevent logging and other commercial activity.
The Bush administration for nearly two years had been eyeing changes to
the rule, and officials Monday hailed the new policy as a common-sense
plan that protects back-country woods while advancing a partnership with
state governors, particularly in the West.
Announcement of the new plan opens a 60-day public comment period
extending into September.
After that will come a resumption for 18 months of the interim rule that
has been in place for the past two years pending the announcement of a
new general policy.
The interim rule calls for Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth to approve
any new road construction proposed for previously protected areas.
Federal officials said they expected little, if any, new road building
during the interim period because Bosworth approved no such projects
after the Bush administration let the old roadless rule lapse in 2002
and began work on a replacement policy.
However, reassurances that not much may change short term did little to
lessen the fears of Texas environmentalists, who claimed they had long
foreseen Monday's developments.
Phyllis Dunham, director of the South Plains Region of the Sierra Club,
which includes Texas and neighboring states, said the state's forests
are already being heavily exploited.
She said that in the Sam Houston forest, which she termed a pilot for
the new Bush policy, more than 30 gas and oil wells are either proposed
to be drilled or re-entered.
However, Bezanson suggested that the new rule may have a far more
serious impact on U.S. forests in Western states than on those in Texas
because the state's forests already have relatively little roadless
territory.
"This is something the Western governors have wanted," she said.
Dunham said the timber industry's goal is to remove hardwood forest and
supplant it with pine tree "plantations." Doing so wrecks forest
ecology, she said.
The Bush administration heralded the plan as an end to the legal
uncertainty overshadowing the millions of acres of backcountry in the
United States.
Veneman, in remarks Monday, said, "Our actions today advance President
Bush's commitment to cooperatively conserving roadless areas on national
forests."
She said the new policy illustrates the president's commitment "to
maintaining the undeveloped character of the most pristine areas of the
national forest system."
Several Republican governors in the West have strongly criticized the
Clinton-era rule, saying it unnecessarily locks up millions of acres of
public land from logging and other economic development.
Federal judges twice have struck down the Clinton-era rule, most
recently in a Wyoming case in July 2003.
The verdict is under appeal by environmentalists.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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